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

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

    Foreword xxx
    Introduction xxxiii
Part I Introduction
Chapter 1 Laying the Groundwork 1
    Overview of SIP 3
    Overview of H.323 18
    Introduction to SIP Trunking 20
    Introduction to SDP 26
    Overview of B2BUAs 42
    Session Border Controllers 44
    Cisco Unified Border Element 53
    Summary 54
    References 54
Chapter 2 SBC Deployment Models 55
    Purposeful Deployments 56
    CUBE Deployment Options 61
    Multi-VRF Support on CUBE 68
    SBC High Availability 72
    Summary 108
    References 109
Part II Architecture, Capabilities and Design
Chapter 3 Call Routing 111
    Dialing and Routing a SIP Call 112
    Call Routing Types 128
    Next-Hop Determination 132
    End-to-End Call Trace 141
    CUBE Call Routing Mechanisms 149
    Summary 221
    References 222
Chapter 4 Signaling and Interworking 225
    SIP—SIP Interworking 226
    SIP Header Interworking 281
    SIP Normalization 283
    Transport and Protocol Interworking 299
    Supplementary Services 312
    SIP—H.323 Interworking 319
    Summary 323
    References 323
Chapter 5 Media Processing 327
    Real-Time Transport Protocol 328
    Real-Time Transport Control Protocol 334
    SBC Handling of RTP and RTCP 341
    Symmetric and Asymmetric RTP/RTCP 354
    DSP-Based RTP Handling on SBCs 356
    Media Anti-Tromboning 374
    Alternative Network Address Types 378
    Solving NAT Traversal Challenges 380
    Troubleshooting RTP 404
    Summary 413
    References 413
Chapter 6 Secure Signaling and Media 415
    Understanding Secure Technologies 415
    Establishing Secure Sessions 449
    SBC Signaling and Media Security 474
    Alternative Security Methods 504
    Summary 504
    References 505
Chapter 7 DTMF Interworking 509
    Introduction to DTMF Relay 510
    Variants of DTMF Relay 512
    DTMF Relay on SBCs 530
    Configuring and Troubleshooting DTMF Relay 546
    Summary 568
    References 568
Chapter 8 Scalability Considerations 571
    Platform Sizing 572
    Licensing 598
    Overload Prevention Techniques 610
    Summary 625
    References 626
Part III Integrations and Interoperability
Chapter 9 SIP Trunking for PSTN Access Through SBCs 627
    Best Practices for ITSP Access with SBCs 628
    SIP Trunk Registration 635
    Authentication 642
    Registration with SBCs 648
    Troubleshooting 671
    Summary 677
    References 677
Chapter 10 Fax over IP (FoIP) on SBCs 679
    Introduction to Fax 680
    Analyzing a Basic Fax Call 683
    Fax over IP (FoIP) 699
    SBC Handling of FoIP 721
    FoIP on CUBE 723
    Summary 750
    References 750
Chapter 11 Network-Based Call Recording 751
    The Business Need for Call Recording 752
    IETF SIP Recording Architecture (SIPREC) 753
    SIPREC Configuration 763
    SIPREC Troubleshooting 775
    Cisco UC Gateway Services Architecture 789
    The XCC and XMF Data Model 792
    API-Based Recording 797
    API-Based Recording Configuration 811
    API-Based Recording Troubleshooting 823
    Summary 836
    References 836
Chapter 12 Contact Center Integration 839
    Cisco UCCE Architecture 840
    Inbound Calls to Agents 847
    Call Transfers 885
    Courtesy Callback 902
    Call Progress Analysis (CPA) 914
    Troubleshooting Scenarios 931
    Summary 953
    References 953
Part IV Security and Operations
Chapter 13 Security Threat Mitigation 955
    An Overview of Security Threats to Collaboration Solutions 956
    Types of Security Threats 959
    Other SBC Security Features 998
    Designing Collaboration Networks for Security 1009
    Summary 1018
    References 1018
Chapter 14 Monitoring and Management 1021
    Monitoring 1021
    Management 1050
    Summary 1069
    References 1070
Appendix A Q.850 Release Cause Values 1073
9781587144769, TOC, 11/7/2018
    

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