CISCO CUBE is as SBC suitable for ISP

ciscoroutingvoicevoip

I am currently planning a voice network and test different ways. Currently a classic IP network with various Cisco Routers is used to bound different media (fiber, copper, MPLS) and route to a classic SBC. The SBC routes the calls to the Asterisk machine, with load balancing and failover.

Because I'm looking for a pragmatic solution which is redundant. Therefore, I have considered the SBC's from CISCO, I read that Cisco calls the system CUBE and Cisco say it is a carrier-grade SBC. I would prefer an ASR 1009x with two routing processing units (with two ESP Module) and the licenses for the CUBE.

Does anyone have experience with the CUBE as SBC in the ISP Environment? We expect traffic per location of approx 3,000 concurrent calls and about 25 SIP trunks. Does anyone have experience with the daily Tasks a SBC brings in? What are the difference to a classic SBC?

Here is a sketch of the current infrastructure.

enter image description here

To explain what I want to do I will show a few tasks that our SBC now brings in:

  • create new Endpoints (registered and static)
  • SIP and H.323 Support
  • Easy Support Codecs like G.711 G.721 or some exotic Codecs (easy to reload)
  • can I do a header manipulation of SIP packets
  • is it possible to do a normalization (NPI,TON of CDPN or CGPN)
  • How I can trace the Calls? PCAP for each call or any other Concept?
  • User management to delegate tasks to other user with access rules
  • CDR export for billing Issues
  • Loadshare or loadbalancing algorithms like (hunt high, hunt low, percentage …)
  • Backup and Restore process
  • SQL integration of CDR and configuration
  • SNMP functionality to insert SBC into monitoring environment
  • Is the amount of simultanous Calls limited to 16.000 Calls (this is
    onyl approx 1,5 GBit/s and we have a 40GBit ESP in the ASR Router)
  • CUBE supports RLT and SIP Call transfer, anyone use it to connect two Calls together, for routing Issues to reduce number of needed licenses?
  • It is possible to capture Calls directly on the Router for quality monitoring

Does anyone know what function is implemented and what function not implemented in a Cisco CUBE?

Best Answer

According to this Cisco document, Cisco Unified Border Element (SP Edition) on Cisco ASR 1000 Series, CUBE on the ASR 1000 series is designed for carrier-grade use:

The Cisco® Unified Border Element (SP Edition) is a high-scale, carrier-grade Session Border Controller (SBC), which is integrated into Cisco routing platforms and can use a huge number of router functions to provide a very feature-rich and intelligent SBC application.

The document includes some drawings and explanation.

Cisco has many documents which explain all of the features. For instance, Cisco Unified Border Element Version 10.0.2 Data Sheet has a table which answers most of your list.

CUBE also has a programming interface.

For more information, start with Cisco Unified Border Element.

Cisco is more than happy to give you specifics to any question you may have.

Related Topic