SBCs – The Key to Successful VoIP Deployments

Geraint EvansTechnical Director – Enterprise Solutions, EMEAAcme Packet

Disclaimer

Acme Packet has made no commitments or promises orally or in writing with respect to delivery of any future software features or functions.  All presentations, RFP responses and/or product roadmap documents, information or discussions, either prior to or following the date herein, are for informational purposes only, and Acme Packet has no obligation to provide any future releases or upgrades or any features, enhancements or functions, unless specifically agreed to in writing by both parties. 

Agenda

Market Overview

What is an SBC?

SBC Applications

Case Studies

Conclusion

Market Overview

SIP Trunking Trends

APKT service provider customers lead the way

80 deployments and trials today

30 countries

Many different IP PBX/UC environments supported

SIP Trunking still in early stages

CY08, $130M in revenue, 208,000 SIP trunks

North America leads deployment

Driven by cost

EMEA market more fragmented, but growing rapidly

Large number of providers emerging

Characterised by value – not price NA21%

EMEA41%

CALA26%

APAC12%

SIP Trunking - BenefitsImproved network efficiency to control and reduce costs

Consolidate traffic from small remote sitesEconomies of scale, remove need for PSTN access at each remote branch

Leverage IP technologies for operational efficiency gainsSIP VoIP becomes just another overlay application

Lower operational costsEliminate TDM gatewaysImproved bandwidth utilisation = fewer circuits for the same number of calls

Improve voice quality Eliminate unnecessary IP-to-TDM-to-IP translations and associated latencyExploiting high fidelity IP codecs

Deploy new applications to increase efficiencySimplifies integration with hosted services

The time is now – In the current economy cost savings are critical

What is an SBC?

SBCs overcome UC obstacles

Support regulatory compliance

Enable call recording, call privacy, functional segregation

Secure the borders of a VoIP or UC network

Protect VoIP, video and UC sessions

Fix protocol interworking issues

Bridge incompatible systems

Connect remote workers easily and securely

Alternative to VPN Tunnels

Assure and measure session quality

Disaster recovery and survivability

SBCs overcome UC obstacles

On premise Hybrid Hosted/Centrex

SBC Applications

When do customers need an SBC?

SIP trunking

SBCs essential for security, interoperability, SLA management, diverse routing

Remote worker

Security, encryption, NAT traversal, QoS control

Branch office connections

Protocol interworking, QoS control, encryption termination, overlapping IP addressing schemes

Hosted services e.g. contact centre, Microsoft OCS

SBCs essential for security, interoperability, SLA management, diverse routing

Enterprise FMC

Security, encryption, topology hiding, NAT traversal

Direct connect deployment model

Many PBX and UC vendors have SIP interfaces or other methods for connecting PBX and UC elements to a carrier SIP trunk service

So Enterprise telephony managers ask:

Why can’t I just connect this interface directly to the carrier SIP trunk service?

Why do you need an enterprise SBC for SIP Trunking?

This presentation will address this question and others such as:

Why do I need an enterprise SBC for SIP trunking interoperability?

Why do I need an enterprise SBC for SIP trunking security?

Why do I need an enterprise SBC for SIP trunking control?

How does using an enterprise SBC enhance my disaster recovery, troubleshooting, and monitoring capabilities?

“Enterprise SBC” Reference Model (PBX* connects to Service Provider SBC via Enterprise SBC)

An enterprise SBC helps with SIP trunking interoperability

PBXs may not interwork directly to carrier SIP trunks due to differences in SIP implementations or when H.323 is the only available IP interfaceAcme Packet solves this problem by providing:

Complete SIP header manipulation rule (HMR) capabilities to interwork different SIP dialects between PBX and carrier SIP trunking elements

Full H.323 – SIP interworking

Media transcoding & DTMF format (INFO / 2833) interworking

Signaling transport (UDP / TCP / TLS) and media encryption (RTP/SRTP) interworking

These capabilities enable virtually any SIP or H.323 capable PBX or UC platform to talk to any carrier SIP trunk service

Proven interoperability with all of the major PBX and UC vendors

An enterprise SBC helps with SIP trunk security

Service Providers use SBCs to protect their network – enterprises should do the same

The VOIP FirewallEnterprise Security Managers will not connect to public data networks without a firewall on their premisesThey won’t connect to public VoIP services without an SBCEnterprise SBCs fit into the “Defence in Depth” model for IP security

The Enterprise SBC provides complete topology hiding and DoS protection of SIP signaling and media traffic for the Enterprise

Just like Application Layer Gateways (ALG) used for other enterprise IT applications todayFeatures include dynamic port control, dynamic trust management, encryption and overload protection

An enterprise SBC helps with SIP trunk control

In the simplest model, the enterprise SBC routes inbound and outbound calls between the PBX and the carrier SIP trunk via static dial plans

Many enterprises use SBCs for more advanced routing and control scenarios including:

Least cost routing, call quality-based routing, time-of-date routing

Connection Admission Control (CAC)

Failover & load-balancing routing

Called & calling number digit normalization

Routing Decisions Can Be Based On: Called or Called Party Number (or any field in the SIP header)Cost metrics, Time-of-day, CAC loadsMedia codec or type (voice vs. video)PBX or carrier trunk availabilityCall quality requirements (best effort or high MOS score)

An enterprise SBC helps with disaster recovery

Some enterprises are moving to SIP trunks for improved network resiliency in disaster recovery (DR) scenarios

The enterprise SBC plays a key role in a DR architecture with support for the following capabilities:

1+1 High Availability clustering between SBC elements

Signaling and media state preserved in the event of a failover

Automatic detection and reroute around failed PBX or carrier links

No operator intervention or PBX reconfiguration required

An enterprise SBC helps with SIP trunk troubleshooting

A challenge for many enterprise telephony managers is to how to apply traditional TDM troubleshooting methods to SIP trunks

The enterprise SBC helps by providing an embedded probe that allows you to monitor all SIP & H.323 signaling and media traffic

Provides full signaling traces, ladder diagrams, and media statisticsInformation is automatically collected and can be retrieved via EMS and can be sorted based on calling or called party number, SIP call ID, time-of-call, etc.An embedded call recording utility is also providedEMS allows partitioned access to control who can view what information

Call Diagram = Ladder Diagram & Detailed Message Trace

Statistics = Media Quality Stats with MOS, packet loss, etc.

Play = Bi-directional Media Recording Capability (on-platform Session Replication for Recording (SRR))

Example Deployments

Case Study – Financial Services

ApplicationReduce Telco connect costs by moving from TDM to IP trunking for two data centers and 43 remote sitesExtend life of legacy IP-PBXDeploy secure network infrastructure to support current and future SIP applications

Problems overcomeInterop between a range of Avaya and Cisco PBX versions and protocols

SIP-H323 InterworkingAcme Packet advantage

A common platform in the data centres and 43 remote sites as the heart of an IP-centric, cost-optimized network-wide transformation

Case Study - Government

Acme Packet Advantage Dynamic trust management for DoS attack mitigation

Application SIP trunking for UCInterconnection data centre and remote usersNet-Net SBC at un-trusted access border

Problems Overcome Prevent DoS attacks and overloadsSignaling and media interworking issuesProvide phone service for small “critical” site via secure access to centralised SIP trunking services

Solution Overview Acme Packet Net-Net 4250Avaya Communication ManagerSIP trunking serviceROI anticipated: 6 months

Case Study – International Oil/Gas Company

Application Multivendor PBX interoperabilityCall recording Interconnection of data centre and remote site PBXs and usersSecure remote worker access over Internet

Problems Overcome Prevent DoS attacks and overloadsSignaling and media Interworking issuesProvide media steering to support QoSOverlapping IP addresses and dial plans

Acme Packet Advantage Dynamic trust management for DoS attack mitigationPeering featuresNormalize protocol differencesExtensive security features ensure security and continued operations

Summary

Acme Packet at a glance

Session Border Control (SBC) category creator & leader with 50-60% market share, founded August 2000

Top tier customers worldwideOver 835 customers in 95 countries48 of the top 50 service providers8 of Fortune Top 25

430+ employees in 25 countries Burlington, MA headquarters

Expanding focus Large enterprise & contact centreMultiservice security gateway, session routing proxy

Public company (NASDAQ: APKT) w/ strong revenue growth, profits & balance sheetAcquisition in April ‘09 of Covergence strengthens Enterprise presence

$3.3

$16.0

$36.1

$84.1

$113.1$116.4

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Annual revenue($M)

Acme Packet Net-Net Product Family

Multi-protocol

SecurityRevenue & cost optimization

Service reachmaximization

Net-Net OS SLA assuranceRegulatory compliance

High availability

Embedded GUINet-Net EMS & SAS

Net-Net 2600 Net-Net 3800

Net-Net 4250 &Net-Net 4500

Net-Net 9200

Net-NetOS-E

(software-only)

Capacity 25 - 500 (NNOS-E) 150 - 4,000 (NN2600)

150 - 4,000 250 - 16,000 (SD4250)500 - 32,000 (SD4500)

4,000 - 72,000+

SBC Feature Summary

Security – Net-SAFE ArchitectureSBC DoS/DDoS protection, access control, topology hiding, VPN separation, privacy; virus & SPIT protection; service infrastructure DoS prevention; fraud prevention; monitoring & reporting

SLA assurance and measurementCall admission control, signalling overload control, QoS marking/VLAN mapping, QoS & ASR reporting

Remote worker support Hosted NAT Traversal, signalling and media encryption

AT&T IPTrunking

Multi-protocol – SIP, H.323, MGCP/NCS, H.248…

InterworkingSIP Protocol Fix-up, SIP-H323, Overlapping IP Addresses, VPN separation, encryption protocols, DTMF…

Regulatory complianceCall replication, emergency service support

High availabilityActive/standby model with full state synchronisation means no calls are lost

The value of the Enterprise SBC for SIP Trunking?

Provides features for disaster recovery, troubleshooting, and monitoring

Enhances Security Topology hiding, DoS Protection, Encryption, Intrusion Detection, SPIT control

Ensures interoperability with different IP-PBXs and UC systemsSpeeds up deployment times and reduces dependence on equipment vendors’ certification

Improves controlRouting, number manipulation

“Enterprise SBC” Reference Model (PBX* connects to Service Provider SBCvia Enterprise SBC)

thank you