[asterisk-users] Session Border Controller time...

[RR]

On 7/8/07, Dovid B <asteriskusers at dovid.net> wrote:
> What does the NexTone run for ?
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Andy Brezinsky" <andy at mbrez.com>
> To: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion"
> <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 8:17 PM
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Session Border Controller time...
>
>
> > We use NexTone for our SBC's on our network.  We like:
> >
> > - 10,000 concurrent calls with media routing
> > - SIP & H.323 signaling with ability to take care of odd vendor
> > specific issues
> > - Basic routing engine allows you to create calling plans for
> > individual end points
> > - Limits by bandwidth or concurrent calls (or egress/ingress) for
> > either discrete endpoints or via an iEdge group.
> > - "Easy" GUI for those less tech savvy to do work on the machines.
> > - Reasonable pricing on a per-port basis
> > - Amazing Sales/Support teams.  We've had some super funky requests
> > we've thought about on a Friday night, they've got their teams together
> > to walk us through every part of the configuration.  Very knowledgeable
> > and fun staff. (Seriously, best vendor support we've ever had, Hi Dan!)
> >
> > If you upgrade your SBC's to their RSM product you get basically a full
> > Class 4 soft switch with a full LCR routing engine, reporting system and
> > analytics engine.  It's pretty powerful.
> >
> > Right now we're using just the SBC component and sending all ingress
> > traffic to a egress trunk group (pointed to our OpenSER routers) but
> > we're running a few thousand concurrent calls throught it.
> >
> > --
> > ~Andy Brezinsky
> >
> > On Tue, 2007-07-03 at 12:14 -0400, J. Oquendo wrote:
> >> Come on you carriers on the list... Give up the dibs what are you using
> >> and why?
> >>
> >> About to sledgehammer these SELECT * FROM GARBAGE WHERE SBC = 'nCite'
> >>
> >> Don't bother shooting me off Newport Networks stuff... Too pricey
> >>

I agree with J.Oquendo! Maybe the story with 4.2 ver is different but
their 3.1x line is horrible at the subscriber/access/line side, and
they admit to it and have personally asked/recommended
'off-the-record' for me to go somewhere else for providing feature
rich line-side features. A load of SIP METHODs/Messages aren't
supported, no support for geographical redundancy (both SBCs must be
placed physically in the same CoLo alongside with a x-over cable
between them), Registration throttling doesn't work for me, neither
does session-refresh, NAT traversal isn't adaptive (i.e. you can
either media route everything or nothing, it doesn't detect that two
endpoints might be behind the same NAT so don't bother media-routing
them all the way to the PoP and back), doesn't load-balancing multiple
application and/or call/proxy-servers (manually must assign priorities
to each server) and many more but the worst and absolute worst is the
support! I have solved more problems for them that I should be
charging them for support instead of the other way around. I've found
bugs, security holes, and incorrect implementation of the SIP RFCs. If
the bug is obvious and they can figure out a solution for fast, they
will work on it. If it involves investigation and/or major change/fix,
they let it lie there. I had about 2 bugs that lay there in their
system for almost 6 mths. Luckily I found workarounds for them and my
service is running on those workarounds and will forever till we
upgrade to 4.2 as we've been told that these might've (still no
guarantee) been fixed in the newer releases.

On the +ve side, their carrier side is good (but then,
carrier/peering/interconnect is prob 25% as complex as the line-side)
and robust, the quality is good and the pricing is very modularised,
so you can cherry pick modules u want depending on what services you
want to offer. Other SBC vendors sell you everything whether you ever
use it or not! although I've heard now that Netrake has wised up and
modularised their pricing after Audiocodes acquisition and having
fired most of the original execs from Netrake.

Anyone here heard of Covergence? I saw them at VON and had a LONG chat
with them with a demo of their product. VERY neat, and am sifting
through wads of their whitepapers before contacting them for inter-op
for the Next PoP. Apparently the V-Dawg (Vonage) uses them not that
that gives any credibility to anything but if anyone knows more than I
do about them, please share! What about Acme Packet? Or Metaswitch
SBCs, Juniper, Cisco, Sansay? Anyone written their own on Stacks
provided by companies like Data Connection?

oh BTW Dovid, You should be able to get very minimal config Nextones
for about $30K/piece for about 2000 media routed calls and 20,000
registrations. This might've increased with the 4.2 train as you now
HAVE to get the media-processor/DSP card which I believe is $6K extra

HTH
\R