From HostedSwitch®

Contents 1 Foreword 2 Routing 2.1 Least Cost Routing 2.2 Quality Routing 2.3 Day-Time Routing 2.3.1 Creating Day-Time Rules 2.3.2 Assigning Day-Time Rules 2.4 ANI Routing 2.4.1 Use Case scenario 2.4.2 Enabling ANI Routing on a route 2.5 Priority/Weight Routing 2.6 Filtering by ANI 2.7 Filtering by Phone Number 2.7.1 Filling 2.7.2 Assigning 2.8 Failover Rerouting (Call/Stop Hunting) 3 Features 3.1 SIP/H.323 conversion 3.2 RTP proxy 3.2.1 Enabling RTP proxy 3.3 Codec Conversion 3.3.1 Enabling Codec Conversion 3.4 Codec Forcing 3.4.1 Enabling Codec Forcing 3.5 VPN Tunneling 3.5.1 Enabling VPN Tunneling 4 Translations (Enhancements) 4.1 Phone Number Translation 4.1.1 Creating a Simple Rule 4.2 SIP/ISDN Translation 4.2.1 Creating SIP/ISDN Translation Rule

Foreword

Because maintaining Routing operations is fundamental to succeeding in VoIP business, the main function of HostedSwitch®, class 4 Softswitch, is the Routing of large volumes of VoIP calls.

We believe that Routing should be comprehensive and easy-to-use at the same time (which is unfortunately not the case with many ITSPs nowadays). To deliver on the latter promise we have honed our interfaces for over a decade. To adapt faster to VoIP market changes and capitalize on short-term opportunities, which otherwise might have been missed, HostedSwitch® applies all Routing orders immediately.

Below we will elaborate on Routing options available to HostedSwitch® members and ways to enable these options.

Routing

Least Cost Routing

Least Cost Routing is an algorithm of selecting a Terminating Gateway (Customer, Route) based on price.

In order to activate Least Cost Routing at HostedSwitch® follow these steps.

As an example we will set up LCR to "Italy, mobile" for gateway 22.44.33.11. We assume that we have 3 terminating carriers with the following gateways: 55.66.77.88, 66.77.88.99, 77.88.99.00.

• Enter Routing page
• Create 3 routes to "Italy, mobile" (from 22.44.33.11 to 55.66.77.88, 66.77.88.99, and 77.88.99.00)

We assume that we charge our originator at $0.3/min and our terminators bill us at $0.15/min, $0.20/min, and $0.25/min, respectively.

• Set equal priorities to the routes (1st priority in our case)

• Set weights to "N/A"

Once we submit the changes, any "Italy, mobile" call coming from 22.44.33.11 will be routed to 55.66.77.88 (since its price is the cheapest), and only if the termination is not possible on this gateway, the call will be routed to 66.77.88.99 and then 77.88.99.00.

Note: LCR works only for those routes that have the same originating gateway, the same priority and "N/A" weight. It is a nice practice to have one terminating gateway per route.

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Quality Routing

Quality Routing is a functionality that allows to manage traffic based on a route's quality. QR provides you with the ability to change priority, weight, and number of ports of a route (with option to disable it) depending on the route's characteristics such as ACD, ASR etc. You can also subscribe for detailed QR alerts via e-mail.

To enable QR functionality follow these steps:

• Open the Routing page and click "Establish route" to create a new route (as described above) or click "Search" and choose one of already existing routes, tick it and click "Edit" button.

• Click on "Create Settings" link.

Right under "Available Gateways" (as shown on the picture above) you will see Quality Routing section.

• From the drop-down list choose the frequency with which route statistics will be recalculated.
• In the next section you may specify one codition, two conditions or no condition. Please note: no action is taken if the conditions do not match calculated ones. If you do not specify any conditions in this section then the quality routing system will take in to consideration the rules specified in the second section.
• Specify the conditions for ASR (in percent) and ACD (in seconds). Optionally you may specify conditions for Billing Minutes and for Call Attempts. For example if you want to be notified when traffic increases in 2 times or even more, you may specify this rule:"Billing Minutes" "Greater then previous value" "100". Leave a field blank if it is of no significance. It is necessary to have at least 1 field filled, in that case value of only this field will be taken into account.
• If you tick "Send an alert", an alert will be posted to your Feed any time the change in Quality occurs. If you enable Quality Alerts on E-mail Alerts page the detailed alert will also be sent to the specified email address.
• Finally, choose one of the additional rules from the drop-down list if necessary. If you leave the field blank, no additional action will be taken.

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Day-Time Routing

Day-time Routing Rule – a set of day-time intervals (assigned to a route) according to which traffic termination is enabled/disabled.

In this article we will show how to create a Day-Time Rule for "France, mobile". In our example, a carrier wants to promote her route by allowing customers to make night calls (say, every day from 00:00 to 07:00) to "France, mobile" at a cheaper rate.

Each route can have one or no Day-time Rule assigned. Route with an assigned Day-Time Rule is only enabled at the time intervals specified in the Rule and otherwise disabled.

Each Day-time Rule is linked to a Region. Rule linked to a Region will affect Region descendants too, if there are no specific Rules specified for the descendants. If a descendant has its own Rule assigned, this Rule will take over the one specified for the Parent Region.

Creating Day-Time Rules

• Open Day-Time Rules page
• Enter a Region Name in to the “Region Name” field and click “Add Rule” button:

• Fill out the following fields on the page that appears:
  • “Region Name” (region you want to make the rule for)
  • “Rule name” (name of the rule)
  • “Display Name” (this name you will see in the “Region” column on the "Routing" page
• Specify the parameters of the rule: week day and time period during which this rule will be working.

• Click “Submit” (the rule will appear on your screen among the other rules you have created)

Assigning Day-Time Rules

• Open “Routing” page
• Enter a Region Name in to the “Region Name” field and click “Establish routes” button

• Find and select the region with the Day-Time Rule's Display Name in the “Region” column

• Fill out the rest of the route's parameters.
• Click “Submit” button and then click “Confirm” button.

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ANI Routing

ANI Routing (also known as Interstate Routing) is an ANI dependent filter assigned to a route, according to this filter traffic termination is enabled/disabled.

If you activate the filter on a route, HostedSwitch® will verify whether an incoming call's ANI (the “number” field in the “IE calling party number” part of the “SETUP” message) belongs to the route's Area Codes. If the ANI matches one of the route's Area Codes, the call will be passed on to the route's terminating gateway, otherwise HostedSwitch® will try another route (in the same region level) with the ANI option turned off. The call will be rejected if there are no such routes.

In order to activate ANI Routing for a HostedSwitch® account:

• Go to Advanced Settings
• Enable Interstate option

Use Case scenario

A carrier offers calls to United States at $0.01/min if a calling party is outside of the United States (Incoming ANI, for example, is 4471111111) and at $0.006/min if a calling party is within the United States(Incoming ANI, for example, is 12121111111).

To reproduce this case at HostedSwitch® one needs to create a route to United States with the rate $0.01 and “Interstate” option turned off and another route to United States with the rate $0.006 and “Interstate” option turned on.

Enabling ANI Routing on a route

• Open Routing page
• Enter a region name in to the “Region name” field
• Click “Establish Routes” button
• Fill out the appropriate fields
• Turn the Interstate option On

• Click “Submit” button and then click “Confirm” button.

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Priority/Weight Routing

For definitions of Priority and Weight please check corresponding Glossary topics:

• Priority
• Weight

Filtering by ANI

ANI Filter is a set of ANI patterns that, if applied, can be used to block calls with ANIs (caller phone numbers) matching ANI patterns. ANI Filter is global and applies to all routes, equipment and customers in an account.

Each pattern may include up to 20 characters. The only allowed characters are:

• digits (0 to 9)
• asterisk ("*")
• pound ("#")

They denote themselves. Patterns may also include:

• dot (".")

It stands for any allowed character in ANI

• letter "T"

It denotes any sequence of allowed characters in ANI.

If the Caller Number (ANI) completely matches a pattern in the Filter, the call will be rejected with ISDN cause 1F ("Normal unspecified") being sent to an Originator.

To enable Filtering by ANI please send a request to Support@HostedSwitch.COM.

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Filtering by Phone Number

Phone Number Filter blocks undesirable phone numbers sent by an originating equipment and unloads a terminating equipment (since HostedSwitch® does not even pass the calls to the gateway).

To set up Filtering by Phone Number one needs to complete 2 steps

• Fill the filter with phone numbers
• Assign the filter to selected routes.

Filling

There are two options how to fill the Filter:

• You can fill the Filter with undesirable phone numbers in the CDR -> Call Filter tab.
• You can add phone numbers to the Filter manually

Clicking "Add Phone # to Filter" at Call Filters tab. Enter one or several phone numbers separated by comma in the appeared "Numbers" field. You can upload up to 10,000 characters in a single batch (For example, string "20100000000, 20100000606, 20100000905" contains 37 characters).

The Phone Number Filter can contain up to 300,000 numbers.

To delete a phone number from the list find a phone number which you want to delete (enter the number in the "Phone #" field and click "Search" button), mark it and click "Delete" button.

Assigning

Phone Number filter is activated for a separate route at the "Routing" page. You can activate a Filter on a route at any time. To activate Filter please mark "Calls Filter" check box.

Records of call attempts filtered by the filter are written with RV 88 internal disconnection cause.

Note: If you have 2 routes for the same destination and the black list is activated for 1 of them, a failed attempt will be written for a route where the black list is disabled. RV 88 will not be written in this case.

To enable Filtering by Phone Number please send a request to Support@HostedSwitch.COM.

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Failover Rerouting (Call/Stop Hunting)

HostedSwitch® always reroutes a call initiated by an originating equipment and rejected by a terminating equipment to another terminating equipment (specified in this or another route established for the same region) regardless of ISDN cause or SIP error returned by the terminating equipment.

In order to stop failover rerouting use "Restrict Call Hunting" option. This option is activated in "Advanced Settings" and applied to a route on "Routing" page.

Features

HostedSwitch® also offers a wide array of additional features improving Routing (connectivity, protocol conversion etc.). Some features are enabled by default and some have to be enabled manually.

SIP/H.323 conversion

HostedSwitch® automatically converts SIP messages to H.323 messages and vice versa. Enabled by default.

RTP proxy

Since several cases exist when direct end-to-end communication is not possible and RTP streams have to be relayed through another host, the main purpose of RTP proxy is to make the communication between SIP user agents behind NAT(s)(Network Address Translator) possible. RTP proxy can be used to setup such a relaying host.

Note: RTP proxy can also be used together with Log Analyzer to investigate one-way-audio or no-audio issues. Signaling logs for a call through RTP proxy will include aggregated RTP streams data.

Enabling RTP proxy

1. Enter Routing tab
2. Create new or Edit already existing Route
3. Check RTP proxy checkbox

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Codec Conversion

Codec Conversion is a feature allowing to interconnect VoIP gateways with different voice codecs (For example, when one of your carriers sends calls only with g.711 and your terminating provider accepts only g.723 and g.729)

Enabling Codec Conversion

1. Enter Routing tab
2. Create new or Edit already existing Route
3. Check Codec Conversion checkbox

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Codec Forcing

Even though your equipment may support many different codecs, sometimes your carriers can require only specific codec to be sent (for example, g.723 and g.729 are almost always preferable to g.711 because they use sufficiently less bandwidth). Codec Forcing delivers just that - you set up what codec is to be sent (forced) on a route.

Enabling Codec Forcing

• Enable Codec Forcing in Advanced Settings

• Enter Routing tab
• Create new or Edit already existing Route
• Select a codec from "Force Codec to" dropdown list

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VPN Tunneling

A VoIP VPN combines voice over IP and Virtual Private Network technologies to offer a method for delivering secure voice. Because VoIP transmits digitized voice as a stream of data, the VoIP VPN solution accomplishes voice encryption quite simply, applying standard data-encryption mechanisms inherently available in the collection of protocols used to implement a VPN.

The VoIP gateway-router first converts the analog voice signal to digital form, encapsulates the digitized voice within IP packets, then encrypts the digitized voice using IPsec, and finally routes the encrypted voice packets securely through a VPN tunnel. At the remote site, another VoIP router decodes the voice and converts the digital voice to an analog signal for delivery to the phone.

Advantages

Security is not the only reason to pass Voice over IP through a virtual private network, however. Session Initiation Protocol, a commonly used VoIP protocol is notoriously difficult to pass through a firewall because it uses random port numbers to establish connections. A VPN is also a workaround to avoid a firewall issue when configuring remote VoIP clients. However latest VoIP standard STUN, ICE and TURN eliminate natively some NAT problems of VoIP.

Enabling VPN Tunneling

If you would like to use VPN tunneling, please send a request to Support@HostedSwitch.COM

In case your carrier requests our IPsec details please provide the following information:

• IKE server: 209.3.12.204
• IKE implementation: Racoon, transformation set: esp-aes128-sha1
• SIP server: "Your HostedSwitch® Dedicated IP Address", mask 255.255.255.255
• IKE server is a PC with Linux CentOS 5.4 installed, both SIP and IKE servers are in the same location

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Translations (Enhancements)

Phone Number Translation

Phone Number Translation is an extension of Equipment's Prefix functionality. Unlike Prefixes that provide a single condition of change, Phone Number translations allow to set multiple conditions based on which Phone Numbers (Prefixes as well) will be modified.

For example, it is not unheard of to have a carrier who provides you with A-Z termination and requires to send calls to U.S numbers as they are (1 234 xxx xx xx) and send calls to other countries with 011 prefix (011 44 xx xxx xxxx). In this case it is not possible to make do with simple Prefixes.

Number Translation Rules are used in the following way: when there is a call from/to a gateway that has a Translation Rule applied, the call's phone number is compared to each record in the Number Translation rule in the ascending order of "Record No."(1,2,3 etc.). The phone number will be translated according to the rule indicated in the first matching record of the Rule, if such is found. The phone number will not be changed if there is no matching record.

A record consists of:

• Record No. - determines the order according to which the list of records is looked up
• Target Prefix - phone number must start with this prefix for the record to match it. Leave this field blank for record to match any prefix. If the prefix is not blank, it will be stripped from the number
• Result Prefix - if record matches the phone number, this prefix will be added to the beginning of the number. May be blank
• Min Length - a record will match the number if the number has at least as many digits as "Min Length" value. Leave this field blank if no minimal length restriction is needed
• Max Length - a record will match the number if the number has no more digits than "Max Length". Leave the field blank if no maximal length restriction is needed

Description - self-explanatory. Do not leave this field blank

Creating a Simple Rule

We will show how to create a Translation Rule based on the example above.

• Enter Phone Number Translation page
• Click "Add New"
• Name the Rule
• Fill out the fields (see the picture below)

• Submit
• Assign the Rule to an Equipment

Translation Rules in "My Equipment Sends" for an originating gateway

Translation Rules in "My Equipment Receives" for a terminating gateway

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SIP/ISDN Translation

Some telecoms may not accept particular ISDN errors as a valid response and penalize carriers whose equipment sends such errors. That's where HostedSwitch® 's ISDN Translation comes in handy. By creating an ISDN Translation rule you can substitute those undesirable errors with the desirable ones.

Creating SIP/ISDN Translation Rule

• Enter ISDN Translation tab
• Click "Add new"
• Name a rule
• Specify the undesirable errors in the left column
• Enter their substitute to the right column

• Click "Submit"

• Assign ISDN rule to an Equipment

Select ISDN rule for an originating gateway in "ISDN Translation Rules" field of "My Equipment Sends" section

Select ISDN rule for a terminating gateway in "ISDN Translation Rules" field of "My Equipment Receives" section

Note: In case ISDN rules are applied to originating and terminating gateway, translation will be first applied to terminating equipment and then to originating equipment.

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