Understanding Session Border Controllers: Comprehensive Guide to Designing, Deploying, Troubleshooting, and Maintaining Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) Solutions

Understanding Session Border Controllers: Comprehensive Guide to Designing, Deploying, Troubleshooting, and Maintaining Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) Solutions

by Felipe Garrido, Kyzer Davis, Arunachalam Chidambaram, Chidambaram Arunachalam, Steve Holl, Kaustubh Inamdar, Gonzalo Salgueiro
Released December 2018
Publisher(s): Cisco Press
ISBN: 9780134645056

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Book description

The complete guide to deploying and operating SBC solutions, Including Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)

Enterprise and service provider networks are increasingly adopting SIP as the guiding protocol for session management, and require leveraging Session Border Controller (SBC) technology to enable this transition. Thousands of organizations have made the Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) their SBC technology of choice.

Understanding Session Border Controllers gives network professionals and consultants a comprehensive guide to SBC theory, design, deployment, operation, security, troubleshooting, and more. Using CUBE-based examples, the authors offer insights that will be valuable to technical professionals using any SBC solution.

The authors thoroughly cover native call control protocols, SBC behavior, and SBC’;s benefits for topology abstraction, demarcation and security, media, and protocol interworking. They also present practical techniques and configurations for achieving interoperability with a wide variety of collaboration products and solutions.

  • Evaluate key benefits of SBC solutions for security, management, and interoperability
  • Master core concepts of SIP, H.323, DTMF, signaling interoperability, call routing, fax/modem over IP, security, media handling, and media/signal forking in the SBC context
  • Compare SBC deployment scenarios, and optimize deployment for your environment
  • Size and scale an SBC platform for your environment, prevent oversubscription of finite resources, and control cost through careful licensing
  • Use SBCs as a back-to-back user agent (B2BUA) to interoperate between asymmetric VoIP networks
  • Establish SIP trunking for PSTN access via SBCs
  • Interoperate with call servers, proxies, fax servers, ITSPs, redirect servers, call recording servers, contact centers, and other devices
  • Secure real-time communications over IP
  • Mitigate security threats associated with complex SIP deployments
  • Efficiently monitor and manage an SBC environment

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. About This E-Book
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. About the Authors
  6. About the Technical Reviewers
  7. Dedications
  8. Acknowledgments
  9. Contents at a Glance
  10. Reader Services
  11. Contents
  12. Icons Used in This Book
  13. Command Syntax Conventions
  14. Foreword
  15. Figure Credits
  16. Introduction
    1. Who Should Read This Publication?
    2. How This Book Is Organized
  17. Part I Introduction
    1. Chapter 1 Laying the Groundwork
      1. Overview of SIP
      2. Overview of H.323
      3. Introduction to SIP Trunking
      4. Introduction to SDP
      5. Overview of B2BUAs
      6. Session Border Controllers
      7. Cisco Unified Border Element
      8. Summary
      9. References
    2. Chapter 2 SBC Deployment Models
      1. Purposeful Deployments
      2. CUBE Deployment Options
      3. Multi-VRF Support on CUBE
      4. SBC High Availability
      5. Summary
      6. References
  18. Part II Architecture, Capabilities and Design
    1. Chapter 3 Call Routing
      1. Dialing and Routing a SIP Call
      2. Call Routing Types
      3. Next-Hop Determination
      4. Next-Hop Availability Check
      5. End-to-End Call Trace
      6. CUBE Call Routing Mechanisms
      7. Summary
      8. References
    2. Chapter 4 Signaling and Interworking
      1. SIP–SIP Interworking
      2. SIP Header Interworking
      3. SIP Normalization
      4. Transport and Protocol Interworking
      5. Supplementary Services
      6. SIP–H.323 Interworking
      7. Summary
      8. References
    3. Chapter 5 Media Processing
      1. Real-Time Transport Protocol
      2. Real-Time Transport Control Protocol
      3. SBC Handling of RTP and RTCP
      4. Symmetric and Asymmetric RTP/RTCP
      5. DSP-Based RTP Handling on SBCs
      6. Media Anti-Tromboning
      7. Alternative Network Address Types
      8. Solving NAT Traversal Challenges
      9. Troubleshooting RTP
      10. Summary
      11. References
    4. Chapter 6 Secure Signaling and Media
      1. Understanding Secure Technologies
      2. Establishing Secure Sessions
      3. SBC Signaling and Media Security
      4. Alternative Security Methods
      5. Summary
      6. References
    5. Chapter 7 DTMF Interworking
      1. Introduction to DTMF Relay
      2. Variants of DTMF Relay
      3. DTMF Relay on SBCs
      4. Configuring and Troubleshooting DTMF Relay
      5. Summary
      6. References
    6. Chapter 8 Scalability Considerations
      1. Platform Sizing
      2. Licensing
      3. Overload Prevention Techniques
      4. Summary
      5. References
  19. Part III Integrations and Interoperability
    1. Chapter 9 SIP Trunking for PSTN Access Through SBCs
      1. Best Practices for ITSP Access with SBCs
      2. SIP Trunk Registration
      3. Authentication
      4. Registration with SBCs
      5. Troubleshooting
      6. Summary
      7. References
    2. Chapter 10 Fax over IP (FoIP) on SBCs
      1. Introduction to Fax
      2. Analyzing a Basic Fax Call
      3. Fax over IP (FoIP)
      4. SBC Handling of FoIP
      5. FoIP on CUBE
      6. Summary
      7. References
    3. Chapter 11 Network-Based Call Recording
      1. The Business Need for Call Recording
      2. IETF SIP Recording Architecture (SIPREC)
      3. SIPREC Configuration
      4. SIPREC Troubleshooting
      5. Cisco UC Gateway Services Architecture
      6. The XCC and XMF Data Model
      7. API-Based Recording
      8. API-Based Recording Configuration
      9. API-Based Recording Troubleshooting
      10. Summary
      11. References
    4. Chapter 12 Contact Center Integration
      1. Cisco UCCE Architecture
      2. Inbound Calls to Agents
      3. Call Transfers
      4. Courtesy Callback
      5. Call Progress Analysis (CPA)
      6. Troubleshooting Scenarios
      7. Summary
      8. References
  20. Part IV Security and Operations
    1. Chapter 13 Security Threat Mitigation
      1. An Overview of Security Threats to Collaboration Solutions
      2. Types of Security Threats
      3. Other SBC Security Features
      4. Designing Collaboration Networks for Security
      5. Summary
      6. References
    2. Chapter 14 Monitoring and Management
      1. Monitoring
      2. Management
      3. Summary
      4. References
  21. Appendix A Q.850 Release Cause Values
  22. Index
  23. Code Snippets

Product information

  • Title: Understanding Session Border Controllers: Comprehensive Guide to Designing, Deploying, Troubleshooting, and Maintaining Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) Solutions
  • Author(s): Felipe Garrido, Kyzer Davis, Arunachalam Chidambaram, Chidambaram Arunachalam, Steve Holl, Kaustubh Inamdar, Gonzalo Salgueiro
  • Release date: December 2018
  • Publisher(s): Cisco Press
  • ISBN: 9780134645056