Moving toward an all IP environment, organizations can easily encounter technical issues, such as connectivity, admission control, security and regulatory compliance. To help overcome these challenges, session border controllers are often used. One provider in this space is Stratus Telecommunications (News - Alert), which provides the ENTICE session controller (E-SC). The E-SC solution is designed to be easy to use and evolve with the network.

The E-SC solution is a session border controller that enables peering directly with other service providers using SIP or H.323. This allows for connecting to the PSTN using any SIP, H.323, H.248 and SIGTRAN controlled gateways. Delivering connectivity and interworking for the call control, transport and application layer of the network, E-SC helps to pave the way for a smooth transition to IMS, as networks evolve in this direction.

One important feature for a session border controller is admission control. This element of the E-SC helps to guarantee quality and service for real-time interactive communication across bottlenecks in IP access networks. It will also drive performance when any two IP networks are being connected together.

Session admission control within the E-SC is integrated with the layer-5 signal processing to ensure real-time communication works over all network topologies. With this feature, the E-SC can accept or reject real-time sessions before they reach the point of overloading the network. Within this solution, admission control helps the session border controller to set policies; control admission; manage priorities; and track activity.

Session border controllers from Stratus Telecom are also designed with security in mind. This solution is used to ensure only authorized users can gain access to their services, while also protecting their internal service infrastructure from denial of service attacks. In addition, routing information is concealed from inquisitive customers and competitors and the E-SC works with a provider’s signaling infrastructure to perform access control based on layer-5 signaling messages.

Media streams can be enabled into firewalled networks, network topology can be hidden and call counts are established to intelligently throttle inbound or outbound traffic. The E-SC can be configured to defend against DoS attacks and perform security functions with minimal latency. This solution also supports a hosted NAT traversal feature to exploit periodic endpoint registrations and keep a signaling port open in the firewall.

Session border controllers from Stratus Telecom focus on the importance of admission control and security. The E-SC solution is designed to easily integrate with other ENTICE components in order to deliver cost-effective high growth and high profitability solutions such as VoIP and hosted IP Centrex. ENTICE session border controllers are designed to be flexible, modular, highly customizable and programmable so that powerful solutions can be delivered to the end customer.