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As enterprises struggle to save money and simplify their communications in a difficult economy many are exploring Voice over IP (VoIP) to consolidate their voice and data communications. While consumers have benefited from a dramatic reduction in per-minute voice charges over the last 15 years, enterprises have seen a different story. Fixed infrastructure costs such as Primary Rate Interface (PRI) lines and Public Service Telephone Network (PSTN) gateways often cost $450-$600 each per month, yet many of those lines are underutilized because they force the enterprise to buy more capacity than it needs.

By combining voice and data communications on a single, IP-based network using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunks, enterprises can reduce their telephony costs significantly. Migrating from TDM/PRI trunks to IP-based SIP trunks yields immediate benefits two ways: by eliminating under-utilized PRI lines and reducing expensive PSTN toll charges. It also gives added benefits to the enterprise because IT gains more control over costs, quality and calling services. Read more

Aashu Virmani
Senior Director - Product and Corporate Marketing, Sonus Networks


  • How to Leverage SIP Trunks, Session Border Control and Session Management for Cost Savings and UC Deployment
  • Jay Lassman | Bern Elliot
  • 1 June 2010
  • Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a foundational component of a unified communications (UC) environment that supports voice, instant messaging (IM), presence, video, unified messaging and collaboration. The implementation of SIP trunks, session border control and session management can help the IT organization support an increasing number of secure, low-cost, reliable communications channels with high transmission quality.
  • Key Findings
    • SIP trunks can cost at least 28% less than Primary Rate Interface (PRI) trunks with comparable throughput. The aggregation of SIP trunks in the enterprise yields further cost improvements due to centralized trunking and applications, as well as economies of scale.
    • Session border controllers (SBCs) can reduce SIP-based denial of service (DoS) threats that originate from within and outside an organization, and provide interoperability with various versions of SIP being used by service providers and enterprises.
    • The complementary functions of session management and session border control improve enterprise communications security, UC application deployment, operational efficiency and reliability.
  • Recommendations
    • When deploying SIP trunks, avoid single points of failure for aggregated trunk configurations; consider more than one aggregation point to meet a geographically dispersed enterprise footprint; and maintain local direct inward dialing (DID) for consumer-centric business operations.
    • When evaluating an SBC, confirm that it not only prevents DoS and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, but also enables toll cost optimization. Ensure that the solution can function as an integral part of the enterprise UC solution, and provides comprehensive UC infrastructure protection and disaster recovery features.
    • Verify that the SBC provider has experience resolving integration and interoperability issues in a UC environment, and that the solution's licensing model provides for cost-effective growth.
 

Sonus Content

  • Today's Session Border Controller
  • Session Border Controllers (SBCs) originated as discrete devices in an IP network to provide two key functions: connectivity and security. As enterprises began deploying more advanced real-time applications over IP—including Unified Communications, video, instant messaging, and conferencing—the burden on SBCs grew. While their original purpose still holds—providing secure, controlled IP connections across IP borders—much has changed in their scope and function, including the borders themselves. Today, SBCs provide a broad range of functions.
  • Improve Security with Session Border Controllers
  • Enterprises must maintain strong security over corporate networks and the data moving across them. IT staff struggle to protect their networks from a rising tide of assaults: Denial of Service attacks, malware, botnets, and data theft to name just a few. When a company evaluates SIP trunking, the security team might raise concerns that VoIP will introduce new vulnerabilities. It's important to know that Session Border Controllers protect all network elements from voice intrusions that come from both outside the IMS core network and within the company. SBCs provide a line of defense that addresses pressing threats such as DoS attacks, eavesdropping, vishing, SPIT, call interception, and toll fraud.
  • Enterprise SIP Trunking: Save Money by Controlling Telephony Charges
  • With simplified network operations, improved ability to enable productivity applications and cost savings as their goal, many enterprises are looking to converge their voice and data networks by migrating from leased PRI lines to broadband SIP trunks. However, enterprises are also reluctant to completely cut the cord on dependable PRI connections and risk introducing IP-based security vulnerabilities into their voice communications. With Sonus Networks, enterprises can have the best of both worlds: G.711 (or better) voice and call control in a SIP trunk solution, a scalable platform that allows enterprises to gradually migrate from PRI to SIP user by user, and a secure network border powered by Sonus' advanced session border control device, the Network Border Switch.

    SIP Trunking Solutions from Sonus provide the industry's most robust call control, media transcoding, security/encryption and signaling interworking. With Sonus Networks, enterprises:

    • Interwork media codecs and signaling with their SIP trunk solution,
    • Receive a scalable platform that allows enterprises to gradually migrate from PRI to SIP user by user,
    • Secure their network border powered by Sonus' advanced session border control device, the Network Border Switch