Soft Switch - Softswitch
Softswitches are call control processing devices that can receive call requests for users and assign connections directly between communication devices. Soft switches only setup the connections, they do not actually transfer the call data. Softswitches were developed to replace existing end office (EO) switches that have limited interconnection capabilities and to transfer the communication path connections from dedicated high-capacity lines to other more efficient packet networks (such as packet data on the Internet). This allows a single softswitch to operate anywhere without the need to be connected to high-capacity trunk connections.