The communication age of Softswitch

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With the advent of the information age, communication methods between people have become diverse, and the speed is beyond our imagination. In the 20th century, line-based telephone exchange was the most important means of communication.

 

At the end of the 20th century, the emergence of the Internet has changed people's way of life. After just over a decade, the Internet has grown at an astonishing rate. The rich applications attract more and more people. Due to the convenience and efficiency of the Internet, people move traditional applications to IP networks, such as enterprise management systems and e-government systems. The Internet has been integrated into our lives, and human activities are inseparable from the Internet.

 

The emergence of the Internet makes people no longer meet the previous single means of communication, but not just voice communication. Therefore, email and instant message are free Internet-based applications, making paid traditional communication no longer the only choice. Their appearance immediately attracted a large number of users, but the traditional telecom market was not greatly affected. It seems that their business is not in conflict. Until the emergence of VoIP.

 

In fact, the VoIP technology began to appear in 1990s. However, due to bandwidth restrictions and immature technology, the quality of calls cannot be guaranteed, therefore, it is not favored by consumers like Im. However, bandwidth is no longer a problem today. The technology of VoIP is constantly growing and gradually maturing. Both signaling connections and Media Encoding have been greatly developed. As a result, the voice communication software began to appear.

Free, regardless of the distance. This is not an advertisement. It is the biggest advantage of IP phones. In Europe and the United States with developed networks, IP phones have been widely recognized by consumers. With the development of bandwidth, more applications will occupy a larger share.

 

The current IP communication technology is mainly based on SoftSwitch. The used Signaling Protocols include h323 and SIP (Session Initiation Protocol ). H323 is the main protocol used in early VoIP. But at the end of 1990s, IETF began to develop the SIP protocol. Because of its simplicity, scalability, implementation, and integration of other existing Internet technologies, such as HTTP and Uri, it quickly becomes the mainstream communication protocol of SoftSwitch.

 

Of course, some IP communication software that does not use Softswitch technology has also achieved great success in the current market. It is Skype. It uses P2P technology and is currently the most popular voice communication software. However, because it uses P2P technology, it has the following Disadvantages:

1. The connection takes a long time. It searches for called users in broadcast mode, so the Signaling connection time is sometimes 1 minute long.

2. It is not easy to expand services. This is a key factor restricting its development. Because it is based on P2P technology, there is no server, and all services must be implemented on its terminal. This means that if it wants to add a service, it must upgrade its terminal software. The more services you add, the more complicated the terminals it has.

3. interconnection is not easy. Because it adopts a confidential private protocol, it is difficult to connect with software developed by other vendors.

 

The Softswitch-based communication technology does not have these problems. It has a good, scalable network architecture and open standard signaling protocols. Makes it more compatible and can interwork with devices of different device providers. Moreover, its network architecture makes it quite easy for it to add various value-added services to existing network operators, whether for equipment providers or service carriers.

 

For traditional telecom, the voice market is saturated and is still challenged by software such as Skype. How to provide more value-added services and develop new markets is crucial to them. However, the high development costs make it difficult to expand value-added services, which is the weakness of traditional telecom operators. They also realized this. As a result, they also began to focus on Softswitch technology and try to integrate Softswitch into their networks, hoping to solve their problems.

 

Due to the various advantages of SIP, 3GPP, the standard setting organization of 3G, also proposed the concept of IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem. We hope to integrate several existing networks with IMS: PSTN, GSM, 3G, and IP. Achieve multi-network integration. IMS is also based on the Softswitch technology, which evolved from the SIP network, and its signaling is also based on the SIP.

 

So it can be said that the communication age of softswitch has started!