May 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Donny Jackson

CoCo Communications (www.cococorp.com) officials said that version 4.0 of the company's Communicator software-driven networking protocol and application suite — a scalable, IP-based solution — is capable of providing nationwide interoperable communications for first responders for less than hardware-based solutions.

In contracts with the city of Dallas and federal agencies — most notably, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Secret Service — CoCo previously had enabled interoperable communications between disparate systems through a mesh-networking protocol that could scale to thousands of digital gateways, said Riley Eller, CoCo's director of technology. With the 4.0 release, CoCo has improved the scalability of its meshing protocol and designed a system that only resorts to ad-hoc mesh networking when an agency's IP network fails, he said.

By relying on IP networking as the primary routing protocol, CoCo customers can leverage open IP standards for pricing and take advantage of technological evolutions that address many key issues, such as routing protocols utilizing satellite networks, Eller said. Should the IP network fail or become unavailable — something that has occurred during large-scale incidents like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina — the system automatically will switch to CoCo's new meshing protocol, which now will support millions of gateways, he added.

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