Ingate Unveils New E-SBCs, Embedded Security Features

By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, IP Communications Magazines

Ingate Systems Inc. this week took the wraps off three new mid-range SIParator enterprise session border controllers and introduced a new top-end E-SBC SIParator solution.

The new mid-range models address applications that require support for 50 to 800 simultaneous calls, says Steven J. Johnson, president of Ingate, which this week is staging the SIP Trunk-UC Summit, which is collocated with ITEXPO (News - Alert) in Los Angeles.

The top-end SIParator solution, meanwhile, can handle up to 3,000 simultaneous calls. Johnson explains that its precursor topped out at 1,800.

Ingate also is promoting that fact that it has rolled an intrusion detection feature, which previously was available as a separate and premium-priced module, into its base product software. Johnson says that it did so because there have been some real life experiences of services being stolen and DoS attacks being launched against SIP trunking. This new embedded security feature is offered with all of Ingate’s new sales, and existing customers can opt upgrade to it.

Ingate got its start in 2001 with the introduction of a SIP-aware firewall. It came out with the SIParator a year later. Although the product wasn’t initially referred to as a session border controller, as that term emerged later on, Johnson says Ingate knew that if unified communications was ever going to be available to enterprise, there would be a need for such a function, because most firewalls don’t support SIP, at least not in a robust way.

Today, he says, Ingate is leading the E-SBC market player in terms of price and performance.

The company is also involved in work related to interoperability in SIP trunking.

As mentioned in a TMCnet posting yesterday about the Ingate event here at ITEXPO, driving the adoption of SIP trunking is SIPconnect, the SIP trunking interoperability effort driven by The SIP Forum (News - Alert). SIPconnect specifies a reference architecture for SIP trunking, narrowing implementation rules and guidelines around such implementations.

“There are multiple choices within SIP to do one thing,” Marc Robins (News - Alert), president and managing director of The SIP Forum, noted during the Ingate event that started yesterday.

SIPconnect address that problem by providing a universal approach to SIP trunking. That enables SIP trunking solutions to more easily be put in place to eliminate gateways and extend VoIP benefits, offer optimized quality of service, and provide security for applications.

SIPconnect 1.1 aims to strengthen must vs. should implementations, offer call transfer expansion, address implicit vs. explicit register issues, and UM issues for 2.0, says Robins.

The forum is now working with the IETF’s Martini group on SIPconnect 1.1, which is expected to be finalized in the next month or two.

(source: http://sip-trunking.tmcnet.com/topics/sip-trunking/articles/106724-ingate-unveils-new-e-sbcs-embedded-security-features.htm)