RESIDENTIAL VOICE-OVER-IP is quickly moving into the mainstream as more reliable technology and transport make the cost savings irresistible to carriers and end users.
It's been predicted that residential VoIP will be an $80 billion annual business and overtake traditional circuit switched telephony by adding computer-like interactive functions. Increasingly in popularity in the commercial space as a way to add graphics and video to business calls, this multimedia merge will make VoIP a wildly successful residential service.
This rosy future with high subscriber rates and dreamy revenue streams will come to naught, however if the technology is not properly installed and if the consumer experience is not equal to--and probably better than--today's telephone service.
Telephone calls are among today's more reliable transactions--cell phones notwithstanding. To compete on level footing, VoIP must match that reliability. To draw consumers from traditional service, VoIP must then raise the ante with multimedia interactive applications and features.
To deliver the next generation of interactive voice applications, VoIP service providers must use session border controllers (SBCs). As they have in the network backbone, long distance and enterprise markets, SBCs will break the barriers to clean VoIP communications and resolve concerns from the public safety community while continuing to preserve customer privacy and network security.
Unlike the backbone, long distance and enterprise space, where the transport is tightly controlled, residential VoIP presents challenges that Netrake's nCite SBC product family is uniquely positioned to handle.
Primary among the new challenges is oversubscription. No traditional carrier today deploys equipment that delivers 1:1 call capability. It's understood that only so many callers will pick up the receiver at the same time; that contention is handled through oversubscription, something that's common in the traditional phone space but rare in the best-effort IP space. It's also not a big problem in the enterprise and backbone.
The residential space is different. It's bigger; potentially more congested; and certainly more volatile.
Oversubscription
Any carrier offering residential VoIP must guess how many subscribers will be using the service at any given time and determine a way to handle those calls without over provisioning--and overpaying for--network technology.
Residential VoIP will attract millions of subscribers. The service provider, in deploying session border controllers, must be sure that the network is provisioned as efficiently as possible and that the session controller can cost-effectively meet consumer demand.
Netrake is the only SBC provider that supports oversubscription from the start.
While other session border controller vendors use add-on boxes to handle subscriber growth--or, worse yet, cannot viably handle oversubscription--Netrake's nCite has built-in oversubscription capability so providers can deliver VoIP even as the subscriber base predictably expands. Once in place, nCite is ready for the future and the present.
The cost savings--and that is, after all, the most important element when deploying new technology--are apparent from the start. The more successful a network is using nCite, the lower the price-per-subscriber goes. Other vendors, as the system succeeds, require new technology and upgrades and the cost-per-subscriber goes in the wrong direction. With other equipment it's inefficient and expensive to add new consumers. Since Netrake starts with a basic oversubscription model for network growth, a service provider using nCite is ready for new subscribers and, having already made the investment in the SBC, sees the price-persubscriber drop with every new paying customer.
Put into monetary terms, a session controller that costs $200,000 and can handle 200,000 subscribers on a 10:1 oversubscription ratio costs the operator $1 per subscriber. That's compared to an SBC that, on a 1:1 basis handles 20,000 subscribers and actually costs $10 per subscriber when the subscriber base grows to 200,000.
While oversubscription is a requirement of residential VoIP, another VoIP hurdle--giving law enforcement the ability to tap and record suspect phone calls according to the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)--also takes on added importance in a residential offering. Netrake's nCite product resolves these issues within the network--setting up points where the lines can be tapped and providing locale information for emergency services.
CALEA
Not every subscriber among potentially millions of VoIP users will require law enforcement surveillance--in fact, in some smaller systems it's unlikely that any individual will be the target of a CALEA investigation--but the network must be ready to ensure that law enforcement agents have access to the necessary information. Netrake, via software upgrade, puts that functionality in the hands of the service provider.
Firewall/NAT Traversal
Netrake's nCite product line has been honed in the best of carrier networks to prepare for the more rigorous demands of the residential consumer market where network security and reliability are more difficult to guarantee.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Again, this is where Netrake, with a hardened residential product, stands above other session border controllers. The nCite product features hosted firewall/network address translation (FW/NAT) traversal so a session provider can move Session Initiated Protocol (SIP) signaling through a firewall and/or NAT.
Hosted FW/NAT traversal means that a subscriber need not install client software or reconfigure equipment to allow outside calls to penetrate FW/NAT devices at the residence that--with or without the subscriber's knowledge--have been installed to protect against data intrusion but would block a successful voice conversation.
The nCite SBC accomplishes firewall traversal through continued periodic message activity once a "register" request is sent by a SIP device. Generated at an interval smaller than the firewall's time-out, the periodic messages keep a pinhole in the customer premise firewall open for incoming SIP signaling traffic.
The NAT traversal portion learns the public address/port number being used and assumes that if packets are forwarded to that address/port number they will be forwarded to the proper end point by the customer premise NAT. The nCite SBC filters periodic message activity at the border of the service provider network to protect the core proxy/registrar from becoming overloaded.
Provisioning
To get to millions of consumers sending and receiving VoIP calls, it will be necessary to provision millions of VoIP devices. This could mean millions of dollars in travel expenses to prepare and install the required equipment and to test that the systems are up and operating correctly.
Service providers can use nCite to auto-provision residential SIP devices. Upon registration by the new user, the nCite dynamically tweaks all the necessary message timers to seamlessly enable Hosted FW/NAT traversal.
Summary
Residential VoIP presents new challenges and new opportunities on grander scales than the voice-over-IP space has yet to experience. Netrake's depth of experience and understanding helps service providers answer these challenges and reap these rewards.
Netrake is prepared to handle the next level complexity that residential VoIP presents with an nCite session border controller product that has been hardened in the best of VoIP carrier networks and is ready for the strenuous demands of residential service.
It's been predicted that residential VoIP will be an $80 billion annual business and overtake traditional circuit switched telephony by adding computer-like interactive functions. Increasingly in popularity in the commercial space as a way to add graphics and video to business calls, this multimedia merge will make VoIP a wildly successful residential service.
This rosy future with high subscriber rates and dreamy revenue streams will come to naught, however if the technology is not properly installed and if the consumer experience is not equal to--and probably better than--today's telephone service.
Telephone calls are among today's more reliable transactions--cell phones notwithstanding. To compete on level footing, VoIP must match that reliability. To draw consumers from traditional service, VoIP must then raise the ante with multimedia interactive applications and features.
To deliver the next generation of interactive voice applications, VoIP service providers must use session border controllers (SBCs). As they have in the network backbone, long distance and enterprise markets, SBCs will break the barriers to clean VoIP communications and resolve concerns from the public safety community while continuing to preserve customer privacy and network security.
Unlike the backbone, long distance and enterprise space, where the transport is tightly controlled, residential VoIP presents challenges that Netrake's nCite SBC product family is uniquely positioned to handle.
Primary among the new challenges is oversubscription. No traditional carrier today deploys equipment that delivers 1:1 call capability. It's understood that only so many callers will pick up the receiver at the same time; that contention is handled through oversubscription, something that's common in the traditional phone space but rare in the best-effort IP space. It's also not a big problem in the enterprise and backbone.
The residential space is different. It's bigger; potentially more congested; and certainly more volatile.
Oversubscription
Any carrier offering residential VoIP must guess how many subscribers will be using the service at any given time and determine a way to handle those calls without over provisioning--and overpaying for--network technology.
Residential VoIP will attract millions of subscribers. The service provider, in deploying session border controllers, must be sure that the network is provisioned as efficiently as possible and that the session controller can cost-effectively meet consumer demand.
Netrake is the only SBC provider that supports oversubscription from the start.
While other session border controller vendors use add-on boxes to handle subscriber growth--or, worse yet, cannot viably handle oversubscription--Netrake's nCite has built-in oversubscription capability so providers can deliver VoIP even as the subscriber base predictably expands. Once in place, nCite is ready for the future and the present.
The cost savings--and that is, after all, the most important element when deploying new technology--are apparent from the start. The more successful a network is using nCite, the lower the price-per-subscriber goes. Other vendors, as the system succeeds, require new technology and upgrades and the cost-per-subscriber goes in the wrong direction. With other equipment it's inefficient and expensive to add new consumers. Since Netrake starts with a basic oversubscription model for network growth, a service provider using nCite is ready for new subscribers and, having already made the investment in the SBC, sees the price-persubscriber drop with every new paying customer.
Put into monetary terms, a session controller that costs $200,000 and can handle 200,000 subscribers on a 10:1 oversubscription ratio costs the operator $1 per subscriber. That's compared to an SBC that, on a 1:1 basis handles 20,000 subscribers and actually costs $10 per subscriber when the subscriber base grows to 200,000.
While oversubscription is a requirement of residential VoIP, another VoIP hurdle--giving law enforcement the ability to tap and record suspect phone calls according to the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)--also takes on added importance in a residential offering. Netrake's nCite product resolves these issues within the network--setting up points where the lines can be tapped and providing locale information for emergency services.
CALEA
Not every subscriber among potentially millions of VoIP users will require law enforcement surveillance--in fact, in some smaller systems it's unlikely that any individual will be the target of a CALEA investigation--but the network must be ready to ensure that law enforcement agents have access to the necessary information. Netrake, via software upgrade, puts that functionality in the hands of the service provider.
Firewall/NAT Traversal
Netrake's nCite product line has been honed in the best of carrier networks to prepare for the more rigorous demands of the residential consumer market where network security and reliability are more difficult to guarantee.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Again, this is where Netrake, with a hardened residential product, stands above other session border controllers. The nCite product features hosted firewall/network address translation (FW/NAT) traversal so a session provider can move Session Initiated Protocol (SIP) signaling through a firewall and/or NAT.
Hosted FW/NAT traversal means that a subscriber need not install client software or reconfigure equipment to allow outside calls to penetrate FW/NAT devices at the residence that--with or without the subscriber's knowledge--have been installed to protect against data intrusion but would block a successful voice conversation.
The nCite SBC accomplishes firewall traversal through continued periodic message activity once a "register" request is sent by a SIP device. Generated at an interval smaller than the firewall's time-out, the periodic messages keep a pinhole in the customer premise firewall open for incoming SIP signaling traffic.
The NAT traversal portion learns the public address/port number being used and assumes that if packets are forwarded to that address/port number they will be forwarded to the proper end point by the customer premise NAT. The nCite SBC filters periodic message activity at the border of the service provider network to protect the core proxy/registrar from becoming overloaded.
Provisioning
To get to millions of consumers sending and receiving VoIP calls, it will be necessary to provision millions of VoIP devices. This could mean millions of dollars in travel expenses to prepare and install the required equipment and to test that the systems are up and operating correctly.
Service providers can use nCite to auto-provision residential SIP devices. Upon registration by the new user, the nCite dynamically tweaks all the necessary message timers to seamlessly enable Hosted FW/NAT traversal.
Summary
Residential VoIP presents new challenges and new opportunities on grander scales than the voice-over-IP space has yet to experience. Netrake's depth of experience and understanding helps service providers answer these challenges and reap these rewards.
Netrake is prepared to handle the next level complexity that residential VoIP presents with an nCite session border controller product that has been hardened in the best of VoIP carrier networks and is ready for the strenuous demands of residential service.
