VoIP Gateways Article

BeroNet’s VoIP Gateways now come with session border controller functionality. This new capability is available via the most recent release of beroNet OS.

The update enables beroNet VoIP Gateways users to:

• add SIP trunks to those Gateways to manage failover and least cost routing configurations direct from the Gateways,

• connect incompatible SIP devices,

• keep external SIP communications secure,

• leverage the VoIP gateway to take advantage of Secure SIP and SRTP even if your IP PBX doesn’t support it,

• simplify advanced PBX configurations, and

• use regular expressions in the Gateway (News - Alert) to ensure that each device receives SIP information in the format it expects.

SBCs are an important security mechanism to protect VoIP networks from threats. That includes denial of service attacks, distributed denial of service attacks, IP-based toll fraud, and malware.

A 2016 study by IBM’s (News - Alert) Security Intelligence group illustrates the importance of SBC functionality. It said cyber attacks using the SIP VoIP protocol increased in 2016, accounting for more than half of security event activity analyzed that year.

“Session border controllers are deployed at the border between the enterprise and the service provider,” explains SBC supplier AudioCodes (News - Alert). “In the enterprise environment, they form an effective demarcation point between the business’s VoIP network and the service provider’s SIP trunk, performing SIP protocol mediation and media handling (interoperability) and securing the enterprise VoIP network. In the service provider core, SBC provide security and protocol normalization.”

AudioCodes, Avaya, Cisco, Edgewater Networks, Huawei, Ingate, InnoMedia, Metaswitch, Nokia (News - Alert), Oracle Patton, and Sangoma are among the most well-known SBC players. According Exact Ventures, the  service provider SBC market was worth $189 million in the fourth quarter of last year.