When it comes to VoIP network capacity, how big is big? Tens of thousands of subscribers? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?

As far as the big telcos go, you’re talking tens of millions of customers – and many of these big carriers will be faced with a huge challenge when it comes to time to start delivering quality VoIP service to their entire customer base.

As such, CommuniGate Systems recently demonstrated that its ComminGate Pro platform is scalable to up to 10 million subscribers – meaning, in one sense, that it has the largest capacity out of just about any telco-grade VoIP system on the market. Working with Hewlett Packard, Intel (News - Alert), Navtel Communications and F5 Networks, CommuniGate successfully demonstrated the platform’s extreme scalability during tests conducted on a 64-CPU HP Integrity Superdome server.

In addition to proving the capacity and scalability of the platform, the demonstration also served as a test to determine what a carrier can and should do in order to deliver the best quality VoIP possible to millions of subscribers simultaneously.

“Most of the carriers today are still doing tests in the tens of thousands of users so we wanted to do something pretty big,” said John Doyle, vice president of business development at CommuniGate, in a press release. “We chose a subscriber base of 10 million users, loaded up the system and ran it through a series of tests.”

“It was a pretty amazing test,” Doyle said. “We don’t think anybody has ever demonstrated something at these levels – or even one-tenth of these levels.”

In addition to demonstrating the capacity of the system, the test also served to demonstrate CommuniGate Systems’ commitment to eliminating proprietary service protocols and enabling end-to-end IP communications “to the entire global online base of nearly two billion accounts.”

“CommuniGate Systems seeks to convert all accounts into a single identity for all IP Communications, reachable globally via voice, video, IM and email - shattering traditional concepts of location and presence,” the press release states, outlining the company’s noble goal. “With all-active nodes clustered into a single grid-like unit, CommuniGate’s flagship CommuniGate Pro IP communications platform is the most cost-effective solution, with the clear ability to scale while providing truly unified IP communications - all your content in the Inbox.”

Although no service provider in the world - cable or otherwise - has 10 million VoIP subscribers as of yet, eventually, all service providers will need to migrate their customers over to an IP network. Many of these service providers will no doubt have a difficult time executing this task – however, with the right equipment, software and support in place, it should go a heck of a lot smoother.

But testing obviously must go far beyond just plain capacity – it also must involve the testing of unified communications and different combinations of services which can be delivered in bundled packages to customers via a single platform via a myriad of network architectures.

“Increasingly, service providers are including VoIP and other IP communications as part of their subscriber offerings,” said Maurene Caplan Grey, founder and principal analyst of Grey Consulting, in the press release. “To do so requires a messaging and communications infrastructure that can handle the load demands of carrier-class IP communications. Before purchasing such an infrastructure product, service providers should review benchmarking results to substantiate vendor claims of carrier-class scalability and reliability.”

For more information about the test, or about the CommuniGate Pro IP communications platform, visit http://www.communigate.com.

In addition, a full whitepaper report is available at http://www.communigate.com/content/whitepapers.htm.

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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.