Our edge

High-performance SIP routing

Our Net-Net SR is supported on the Net-Net 3820, 4500 and 9200 platforms. On our purpose-built hardware, transaction-stateful routing performance scales to 5,400 SIP messages per second, while stateless performance scales to 7,500 messages per second. The ability of these platforms to maintain these performance levels reduces the number of session routing proxies required in a network, minimizing capital equipment and operating expenses.

Extensive routing control, flexible deployment options

Leading routing database products and services from Acme Packet ecosystem members are accessed via open, standards-based protocol interfaces such as ENUM, SIP, DNS and XML. These databases enable routing decisions for both the PSTN SS7/C7 and IP networks and include LNP, CNAM, LERG, E911, LCR, private and public ENUM and DNS. Routing decisions can be made using simple or very sophisticated combinations of parameters. Standard routing parameters include any combination of incoming network, destination number/URI, source number/URI, time/day, cost, carrier preference and codec. Our powerful SIP header and parameter manipulation rules enable routing by any number/URI in the SIP header.

Routing database information can be centralized or distributed to each Acme Packet SRP. When policy rules and route tables are provisioned locally, the SRP can scale to support up to two million routes. Larger numbers of dynamic or global routing rules are best supported using the high-capacity database products and services from our OSR ecosystem members. These choices provide tremendous deployment flexibility and facilitate network evolution from small-to-large numbers of border points and from PSTN to IP network-focused connectivity.

Open, flexible and interoperable solution

From the perspective of SIP signaling within the ETSI TISPAN or 3GPP IMS architecture, the Acme Packet SRP serves as the Breakout Gateway Control Function (BGCF). This function is responsible for selecting the optimum session border controller or softswitch/media gateway for sessions leaving a provider’s network, and the Serving Call Session Control Function (S-CSCF) for incoming sessions. For session security, the SRP offers hardware-accelerated, high-performance, high-capacity IPsec and TLS encryption of SIP signaling. Interworking of SIP transport and encryption protocols and response codes is also supported. SRP configurations are available on Acme Packet-designed systems as well as the Net-Net 4500 ATCA blade for ATCA chassis integration.

Carrier-class high availability

The Acme Packet SRP can continuously check external routing database availability and utilize backups in the event of database server or network failure. Similarly, the SRP can check egress SBC and CLASS 4 softswitch/media gateway availability and re-route if required. SIP transaction load balancing is also supported across multiple SIP signaling elements. The SRP can also protect itself against malicious or non-malicious SIP DoS/DDoS attacks and overloads, including mass calling events such as contest or entertainment televoting. In the event of failure of the primary active SRP, SIP messaging transaction state is checkpointed between active and standby units to ensure uninterrupted service.

Cost-effective, compact solution

In comparison with session-stateful, softswitch-based approaches, the compact, high-performance Acme Packet SRP reduces capital and operational expenditures as fixed line service providers transition to and evolve their next generation networks.