In-depth analysis on how Softswitch technology prepares for the new age of Communication Networks

Switches play an increasingly important role in networking, and also need to be properly applied to the Softswitch technology. So I studied how the Softswitch technology prepares for the communication network in the new era, and I will share it with you here, I hope it will be useful to you. The use of soft switches in the intelligent network transformation process is also a direction of softswitch applications. replacing the traditional exchange board switch with Softswitch can bring lower maintenance costs to the network.

In addition, because of the large size and convenient expansion of the softswitch network, more access gateways (AG) need to be placed at the terminal layer while the number of hosts and resources are sufficient) or the relay Gateway (TG) adds a processing board to the softswitch device, which has no impact on the network architecture.

On the other hand, Softswitch's support for intelligent networks also makes it sufficient for this role. The support for the Intelligent Network Application Protocol (INAP) has become a required capability of the softswitch device, no matter whether the IP address is used to carry the INAP, or the signaling transfer through the signaling gateway (SG, both the Softswitch technology can easily achieve interconnection with traditional intelligent network devices. At the same time, the softswitch itself can also have the service exchange point (SSP) function. When applying to intelligent network transformation, Softswitch may need to support external centralized database for user contract attributes, because using external contract attribute database is the mainstream Method for triggering intelligent network services.

As a part of call processing, the Softswitch technology identifies the most likely egress gateway to end the call and uses this information to command the relay gateway to execute the specified function, that is, the Softswitch technology can complete each call by selecting a minimum-cost route, so that the selected egress gateway is closest to the target phone. The emergence of softswitch has also brought considerable advantages to operators. In this way, business penetration and crossover are realized at the business level, making it possible to carry a variety of services based on a unified grouping network. It also provides users with both voice, data, and multimedia services through a converged network.

At the 2006 China Information Industry Economy Annual Meeting, Zhao huiling, Vice President of China Telecom Group's Beijing Research Institute, pointed out: "to achieve integrated services to provide platforms, integrated business management platforms, and portal to differentiate customer groups, this is our long-term goal. Then, we stop Circuit Switching in the entire exchange network and gradually develop SoftSwitch." As a commercial hardware platform based on open, standard, multi-protocol, and operational management technology representative, soft switches will become one of the important and critical systems and equipment technologies in NGN.

Softswitch "wake up" VoIP

VoIP integrates voice and data into a single network. This means that only one network needs to be built and maintained to provide services supported by multiple networks in the past. The cost of construction and O & M is reduced. VoIP is capable of voice compression and bandwidth statistics reuse, which is higher than traditional network bandwidth utilization and reduces transmission costs.

However, the quality of the IP bearer network remains unsolved, and the quality of VoIP cannot be guaranteed. Security issues cannot be ignored. Similar to QoS, private networks are the most thorough solution. If you create a private network for VoIP. The network has not been reduced, but has increased. In addition, VoIP requires far higher O & M personnel than traditional switches. This actually increases the O & M cost of VoIP. Therefore, VoIP requires a unified platform for improvement and development. The concept of Softswitch is fundamentally different from that of VoIP. VoIP can only be regarded as one of the services provided by SoftSwitch. The Softswitch technology should be a comprehensive business platform. In addition to voice, it also supports video, instant messaging, games, and various data services.

In NGN, a media gateway and a media gateway Controller Based on Softswitch can implement direct voice communication between a traditional voice network and a packet switching network. In other network environments, some network units that are logically separated from each other will appear, such as the media gateway, signal processing gateway, media gateway controller, and application server, they communicate with each other through the internal protocols of the switch, such as media gateway control, gateway control protocol, and initial session protocol.

A circuit switch is a physical link that corresponds to a connection, while a Softswitch is a physical link that corresponds to multiple virtual connections. The Softswitch control function is separated from the exchange function, and the software implements the control function and network function hierarchy. Each network entity connects and communicates through standard protocols.

The control and switching functions of traditional circuit switches are concentrated on MSC, while Softswitch only focuses on MSC-Server, and the switching functions are distributed on MGW of media gateway. traditional circuit switching is based on TDM exchange technology, while Softswitch is based on IP address segmentation networking.