May 16, 2009 by admin.

I have just upgraded our Sansay to the latest version and a secondary DB server. This platform in conjunction with Autolcr is the most complete wholesale solution that is available today period. Support from both companies is exceptional and with the addition of AutoLCR billing (this will be available to the public later this year), it provides our company with the most complete solution i have found. I have although not had much experience with the Mera switching system. If anyone out there can compare the Sansay with AutoLCR and Mera i would appreciate hearing their experiences…

When peak hour comes and the calls start coming in like a hypersonic machine gun 50 calls per second, 75 calls per second and climbing, every time i make a test call durning this phase i can hear the customer and the customer can hear me, i can distinguish their voice, we basically have a “good quality call”. I mean i can measure this by pings, response times and other measurements but the way these switches handle the “media Stream” just seems to work.

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May 11, 2009 by admin.

So we have been looking at some routing software because the Sansay and the Nextone both can provide basic routing capabilities both neither Switch has excellent routing capabilities. I have chosen to use the software from AutoLCR (www.autolcr.com). The software is written and managed by Rich Skidmiore, and I wish the softswitches handled calls as well as the software routes calls. Autolcr has a new version that basically works like this:1. Routing database that i upload all the rates and targets to. It will automatically then tell me where we have profitable business and the prepare rate sheets to all my customers. Not just that it will do that rocks my world. But that is just the beginning.2. Routing servers these servers are located in our rack (the database server can be anywhere in the World) as we have switches in New York and in Miami this is perfect for us. The routing server has redundant databases of our routes we are offering. I program the Sansay (latest version) and the Nextone 4.3m5 to send the call to the routing server and the routing server sends the call back to the softswitch with the best routes for that call. The Routing servers have no limit to the amount of servers in the cluster, the limit is defined by the amount of routes we need to look at. With this call flow we have no limit to the amount of routes we can use for our calls. I can define a global margin for all routes and the system will never let me loose money unless I apply overrides for specific routes or route groups. It is all so automatic, i have never seen something that makes routing so easy.It has almost limitless reporting and we are testing a module that includes billing and the price is unbelievably reasonable and support is great…

This is from www.autolcr.com (and let me tell you “it works”

AutoLCR is a scalable, fully automated Least Cost Routing system, using complex longest digit match algorithms to create, and upload routes to your Nextone/Nextpoint switch. Least Cost Routes are prioritized on profitability, and non-profitable routes are blocked automatically.

We designed AutoLCR to minimize the amount of “hands on” time required to create routes, and update your switch. AutoLCR automatically imports carriers, codes and rates from your existing billing system, eliminating duplicate data entry errors. AutoLCR generates hundreds of thousands of possible Least Cost Route combinations, then using native Nextone CLI commands, automatically uploads the most profitable, prioritized routes to your Nextone. QOS issues? No problem, we provide a full set of routing adjustments to correct any routing problems.

We provide tools and reports to perform rate analysis, and view the current least cost routes loaded on your switch. With our new CDR functions, we provide operational and revenue reports to evaluate your performance and profitability.

AutoLCR is simply the easiest to use, most functional, Least Cost Route generation software on the market today.

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March 13, 2009 by admin.

We are in the process of implementing the Blackberry Enterprise Server for Exchange (now the exchange part is not my favourite solution but it sure beats Lotus Notes). Blackberry has an add-on that called Blackberry Mobile Voice System (MVS). This software is really cool. By installing client software in a Blackberry phone we can add a secondary line on that phone and tie it to, for example, my office line. With this solution i can be talking to a someone in the car, arrive at the office put the blackberry call on hold and pick up on my office phone. Or, for example i am out of the office, anywhere, and i can dial a co-worker by extension or be connected to an office conference. The client software on the handset is NOT a VoIP client but rather software that will send a data packet to the MVS server announcing that the handset would like to make a call with the Called Number and the Dialled Number and the MVS server initiates the calls. Really the system is very cool and the possible applications are endless. And did i mention that the product is reasonably priced…

A mobile handset that supports VoIP over the 3G network could be just as functional or much better, but i have not seen that solution work reliably yet, maybe when the 4G networks start rolling out we can make that work reliably… Nokia has VoIP software built into the handset and actually a Nokia E71 is my office extension the device has great quality voice and it works flawlessly. When i travel i can connect to any wifi hotspot, and i have my office extension but the issue is that wifi hotspot is not always there and then you have to mess with the config sometimes to connect to the VoIP network to make it work. Don’t get me wrong it works when there is internet but there is not always internet and with the MVS all i need is GSM service and GPRS or 3G and it works (so they say).

I do love my iPhone and maybe in the future there will be a client that will work on the iPhone but for now i will have to use 2 phone because this app. is way to cool to pass up just because it isn’t supported on the iPhone.

I will report more after we finish the install.

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March 12, 2009 by admin.

I have an idea. As we have been using the Nextone Softswitches for a while now i have become somewhat knowledgeable about the server “design”. Which is also something that sets the Nextone apart from the pack, is the Hot-knife PCI processor that the Nextone uses for routing. Call flow works something like this. Call leg 1 comes into the SBC Computer sends the call the the Hot-knife (basically a PCI computer) “HK” routes the call sends it back to the SBC computer for leg 2 - done.

What if we did something like this… Server with Two or Four 4 core Xenon Processors and like 16 or 32 GB of ECC RAM, Redhat RHEL 5.X software with Virtualization Enabled. Setup 2 VM’s, let’s call them VM1 and VM2. VM1 has a public IP and VM2 has a private IP. Calls com into VM1 (leg1) send them to VM2 for route processing and back out to VM1 (leg2).

Setup some ipchains rules and we should have a pretty good security solution and it could do some very interesting applications - IP to IP Gateway etc… With that kind of power in the Server hardware adding VM’s could add more solutions.

Just a thought… even better if Cisco made a blade for their 6500 series switches that was that kind of computer / server. Telco in a box.

Like what do you do if we have 10k ports on a Softswitch? I guess the Server cluster could handle the Call volume but i don’t see any Softswitches with interfaces (NIC’s) that can are more then 1 Gbps. Well with 10k ports or calls up i better have more then 1 Gbps of bandwidth into that server cluster or the calls will sound really bad. But the Manufacturers insist that they can do 10k 20k Nextone says 30k per server. So then you need multiple NIC’s or Signaling addresses and Media Addresses and management becomes a real bummer. But if there was an option to put the server directly into a large scale Data Switch like a Cisco 6500 Series then the server card/slot should have access to the backplane and could have any number of IP or SDH interfaces… I guess they could put a 10Gbps NIC into the Softswitch but i have never seen that option…

Anyway - Ramblings

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March 12, 2009 by admin.

I started working in telecom in the last few years and i come from an enterprise background. My hobby or interest, was security. So when I talk to Softswitch companies like Nextone or Sansay and we are going over a network design, and we have our softswitches open to the Internet - I cringe. I am used to designing layer upon layer of security in front of any internet related services.

I realise that we need the Softswitch or SBC out there for things to work correctly and there are some firewalls specifically designed for Softswitches but we just never had the budget for those devices. I manage some level of security with ACL’s but the list becomes a nightmare to manage. And i do admit that i bring down the ACL sometimes to allow providers in for support or whatever but it beats a blank for sure. And it sure beats listening to the Softswitch Companies telling us that their custom implementation of ipchaines is all the security we need.

I have an interesting thought though, Cisco recently released the ASR line of Routers. The model we will be using very soon (we just ordered) is an ASR1002. This is entry level in this class, but what a very nice class… The interesting thing here is this line comes in 2 basic flavours, 5 GB or 10 GB - Full services, including FW and IDS. Now with this kind of router with the power to do deep packet inspection in real time at 5 or 10 GB per second could really lock down the Softswitch, protect our company and provide good call quality without having to spend 100k on a router that can do 10gb. Of course the proof is the test call’s Sunday night.

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March 9, 2009 by admin.

Well i have not updated this blog for a while, sorry. I have been going through some changes, i am no longer working with Worldwide, actually for a while now, I am working with Worldxchange Telecom. I really like this new company we are opening routes all over the world and it looks like we are building a great company!

One of the things i needed to decide on as the “IT” Mgr. was our Softswitch. When i decided on the Nextone with my previous employer we had also looked at the Sansay switch. But my recommendation (which i still stand by) was the Nextone. We looked at the Nextone solution for our switch but the Sansay is so easy to program and manage, no issues that i can see, and the calls just work, that we decided to keep it. Sansay offered us a 30 day demo where they sent us a switch and we put it into routing. It was up and running in just a few hours via a web based config interface - no ssh access - everything is via the browser. Routing is easy to do manually and the file upload process for the LCR is also very easy to use. Sansay ROCKS. They have a quality product and price is very reasonable. The Nextone has more features, no doubt, but for all the extra money it costs i don’t think it’s worth it… Plus i cannot figure out what their company is… Nextone, Nextpoint or Genband - now it’s just voipliogic who answers the support line, it’s not the same as the Rockville company as we started with. I don’t feel like our business was valued.

Sansay support is handled by a strong team of engineers kind of the was Dialogic handles support for the IMG product line, very grass roots. Plus if i have a business question i can call and speak with the CEO, Andy Voss, at any time.  He even came to Honduras to visit us before we purchased the equipment. My support issues (the few we have had) have been answered almost immediately, and their engineers have even logged into our equipment to make recommendations on the config. They offered us financing on the equipment and were flexible on the term. Really, I am proud to say Sansay is our switching partner (plus they gave us cool hats…).  

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October 23, 2008 by admin.

Some fun with ssh. I found a cool little program called iSSH for the MAC which allows me to do an ssh connection to my servers remotely and proxy all my machines internet traffic via that ssh connection. With a little more investigation i have found that by just specifying  the -D (port #) option i.e. “ssh -D 8080 user@host” it sets up a socks proxy running on my local machine. By just configuring  a local SOCKS Proxy on my NIC card(SOCKS Proxy (yes) address “localhost” port (whatever you chose to use in the ssh statement)  With this setup I can remotely connect to any of my servers and connect to the internet without any complex routing in the servers or routers at my main site. All data is encrypted with ssh between my computer and our servers. Very similar to a vpn but much simpler.cool little trick. 

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October 23, 2008 by admin.

Well we just upgraded our Nextone switches to 4.3m5 we were on 4.3m3.  It seems that Nextone (or whatever they are calling them selves lately) really fixed the 4.3 line of software with this revision. Everything seems to be working - well. I am happy. 

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November 8, 2007 by admin.

Check this website if you have an iphone - they have made hacking this thing as easy as opening a url (website).HacktheiPhone.com  Update : the dev team is the primary source of iPhone hacking visit them @ http://blog.iphone-dev.org/ 

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November 8, 2007 by admin.

I have also recently been looking at different servers for email. As we have servers and a lot of internet bandwidth i feel it is stupid to use a “hosted solution” for internet email and website service. I decided to use linux boxes for all our servers, i am fairly new to Linux but after working with it for over a year now I do not regret the decision… Especially for our business model. I tested the following packages:

• OpenExchange
• SUN Communication suite
• Qmail
• Scalix
• Zimbra

After installing configuring and trying to setup each package i found that the Zimbra “open source” package was by far the simplest and easiest to setup and use. Really it took only about an hour after installation to be sending and receiving, remotely as i have a remote office from the servers, email calendering and mobile messaging.  Including all services running on SSL certificate based connections.I highly recommend this product - Zimbra. 

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