TextBook: Soft Switch

ETE405 :: Lecture 12 Chapter 3 Softswitch Architecture p.60- p.

Transport

Transport is the means by which voice is transported across the network. It connects the switches in the network. The Memorandum for Final Judgement (MFJ) in 1984 broke up AT&T and opened the long-distance market to competition. In essence, this opened the transport market. Simply put, three modes of voice transport are in use today: IP, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), and TDM.

Legacy, Converging, and Converged Architecture

VoIP and softswitch technologies rose out of the economic necessity for longdistance service providers to switch to the least expensive means of transport, which is IP. By bypassing TDM and ATM networks, longdistance service providers greatly reduced their costs of long-distance transport, which made them more competitive and more profitable than their TDM- or ATM-equipped competitors.

legacy

The vast majority of the Class 4 and 5 switch market was designed and installed when voice and data were handled via separate channels.

Legacy networks separate voice and data networks

Converged network
Service providers speak of a telecommunications market where voice, data, and perhaps video and other broadband services are provided over a single network, presumably based on IP. The subscriber consequently enjoys highly efficient IP services desktop to desktop. A converged market applies to a converged network where voice and data are handled on one network. In the converged market, voice switching is performed by classless switches. This is because the limitations of geography defined a Class 5 switch as providing local service and a Class 4 switch as providing long distance. If geography is irrelevant, then a Class designation is irrelevant.

A converged network is one network for voice and data.

converging network

A converging market applies to converging networks, where, in most instances, the legacy infrastructure of Class 4 and 5 switches remains at the periphery of the network while the core of the network is IP, which provides efficient voice transport.

Converging networks
a mix of circuit- and packet switched networks and technologies

IP Networks

The introduction of VoIP in the late 1990s focused the telecommunications industry on convergence, or the converging of voice and data networks as described earlier in this chapter. TDM was designed strictly for voice and does not handle data nearly as well as IP. New demands in business communications for email, instant messaging, video conferencing, and World Wide Web applications dictate a growing demand for data-based communications as opposed to circuit-switched communications. Wiring and managing two different networks are also inefficient, not to mention costly.

Advantages of converging

Lower equipment costs the integration of voice and data applications lower bandwidth requirements the widespread availability of IP

Large service providers (RBOCS and IXCs) in todays market operate the PSTN, the Frame Relay network, the ATM network, the IP network, the ISDN and DSL overlay networks, and, for some service providers, wireless and X.25 networks. Each of these networks requires separate maintenance, installation, operations, accounting, configuration, and provisioning systems with the necessary personnel and network management centers to monitor them. In contrast, IP offers the promise of replacing all those disparate systems with one central, efficient network.

Today virtually every enterprise is already using the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/IP protocol stack. IP is ubiquitous throughout the business world. Every personal computer supports IP. IP is used for LANs and WANs, dial-up Internet access, and handheld computers, and it is the preferred technology for wireless web and other nextgeneration applications. The result is a major opportunity to link systems and networks together through a combination of public and private IP infrastructures in much the same way as telephone systems combine PBXs, private voice networks, and the PSTN.With the possible exception of the SS7 signaling protocols, IP is the worlds most widely deployed protocol. It also offers the worlds only universal addressing scheme.

Chapter 4 : VoIP

How Does VoIP Work?

The first process in an IP voice system is the digitization of the speakers voice. the suppression of unwanted signals and compression of the voice signal. the system examines the recently digitized information to determine if it contains voice signal or only ambient noise and discards any packets that do not contain speech. complex algorithms are employed to reduce the amount of information that must be sent to the other party. Sophisticated codecs enable noise suppression and the compression of voice streams. Compression algorithms include G.723, G.728, and G.729. Following compression, voice must be packetized and VoIP protocols added. Some storage of data occurs during the process of collecting voice data, since the transmitter must wait for a certain amount of voice data to be collected before it is combined to form a packet and transmitted via the network.

Protocols are added to the packet to facilitate its transmission across the network. When each packet arrives at the destination computer, its sequencing is checked to place the packets in the proper order. A decompression algorithm is used to restore the data to its original form, and clock synchronization and delayhandling techniques are used to ensure proper spacing. Because data packets are transported via the network by a variety of routes, they do not arrive at their destination in order.To correct this, incoming packets are stored for a time in a jitter buffer to wait for late-arriving packets. The length of time in which data are held in the jitter buffer varies depending on the characteristics of the network.

In IP networks, a percentage of the packets can be lost or delayed, especially in periods of congestion. Also, some packets are discarded due to errors that occurred during transmission. Lost, delayed, and damaged packets result in a substantial deterioration of voice quality. In conventional error-correction techniques used in other protocols, incoming blocks of data containing errors are discarded, and the receiving computer requests the retransmission of the packet; thus, the message that is finally delivered to the user is exactly the same as the message that originated.