The ENTICE session border controller offers two critically important features – admission control and security.
The Internet has been designed with priority-based class-of-service techniques like DiffServ and 802.1p to work well when there is plenty of bandwidth and when the only concern is managing packet priority. But no priority algorithm, can push voice and data packets beyond capacity limits without adding delay or dropping packets. Prioritization techniques don’t work for congested links because they don’t control demand. And once links are congested, voice quality will suffer.
If the propagation delay in a VoIP call grows too large or if too many packets are lost, the call can be unintelligible. Careful traffic management at bandwidth bottlenecks is essential, therefore, to the success of VoIP, video conferences, and other real-time interactive communication.
Stratus Telecommunications’ ENTICE session border controller employs session admission control to guarantee quality and service for real-time interactive communication across bottlenecks in IP access networks or when connecting any two IP networks together.
By controlling the number of real-time sessions allowed through network bottlenecks and ensuring their priority, session admission control provides the tools required by service providers to guarantee both call capacity and quality end-to-end.
And for security, service providers can use the Stratus ENTICE Session Controller to only allow authorized users access to their services and protect their internal service infrastructure from denial of service attacks. This infrastructure may include other softswitches, IP PBXs, application and media servers for unified messaging, conferencing, presence and instant communications or media gateways which terminate or originate to the PSTN.
Routing information must be concealed from inquisitive customers and competitors. If for example, a provider is aggregating services, providing transit or termination services through another provider, a customer might analyze traffic data to determine the original provider and approach them directly for a better price.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by Erin Monda
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.
Edited by Erin Monda