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SIP Session Router Eliminates Complexities Inherent in Enabling Advanced Carrier Services

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

You’ve likely heard that Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) is growing in a number of deployments across multiple carrier infrastructures. At the same time, the number of associated IP endpoints is also increasing rapidly, and with the extensibility of SIP, there is also non-linear growth of user agents, messages and application endpoints. While this rapid growth is a result of advanced carrier services, in reality there is a challenge that also exists when the simplicity of SIP is burdened with excessive network administration. 

To address this challenge, Metaswitch is promoting the use of the SIP Session Router. Without a native dynamic route discovery mechanism, the endpoints within the SIP network rely on multiple table entries that are manually-configured and static forwarding. The result is a complex, fixed, mesh network that can be susceptible to configuration errors when trying to deliver advanced carrier services. Without the SIP Session Router, each route table in every node has to be updated with any move or change, leaving the resulting infrastructure prone to failure. 

The interoperability issues that exist can also hamper connectivity, including disparate multi-vendor implementations. These often occur with best-of-breed component selection deployments, early adoption or even company mergers. At the same time, there is also a desire to leverage SIP trunking techniques in an effort to deliver advanced carrier services. This can lead to creating a mix of even more endpoint variability and SIP traffic. 

Without SIP Session Routers, there are also additional scaling complications. SIP-based instant messaging and presence services combined with network-originating 3rd party call control or other enhanced services can cause significant increases in SIP traffic on core networks. At the same time, SIP is embedded in much more communication traffic; servers then supporting the applications have to be implemented with resiliency that matches the class of the advanced carrier services that are not native to the signaling protocol.

The good news is that these issues do not have to be inherent in the overall network. Metaswitch designed its SIP Session Router to untangle such complexities so that the existing network can handle smooth growth and straight migration to emerging architectures to successfully deliver advanced carrier services. The SIP Session Router can eliminate the complex mesh created by static interconnects, while it also maintains a flexible connectivity database. It also supports call detail record generation, and delivers a viable and cost effective alternative to tandem switches. 

The SIP Session Router from Metaswitch also offers a SIP load balancer to ensure that application clusters only experience the transaction-aware distribution of traffic with advanced carrier services. It can also handle the increasing number of SIP messages and transactions associated with next generation networks to enable smooth migration to NGN architectures.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jamie Epstein