The concept of soft switch originated from Softswitch

The concept of a soft switch originated from the translation of Softswitch. The exchange technology is the concept, feature, and function of a soft switch. It may take some time for a soft switch to pass in from outside China. Let's introduce the real source of this concept to you today.

Introduction: With the increasingly sophisticated communication network technology, especially the increasingly mature IP technology in recent years, the Application of end-to-end speech, data, and video fusion through grouping networks has shown a strong competitiveness in the future market. At present, it has been recognized that the separated voice, data, and video networks will gradually evolve into an open next-generation communication network (NGN) that integrates multiple services and groups IP addresses ).

Over the past year, people have been paying attention to and discussing NGN in line with this market trend. Fortunately, although there are some differences in the expression of NGN, we already have the following common understanding in principle: NGN will be based on the grouped data network and Unified IP protocol, even those who have conservative opinions on IP grouping technology agree that the integrated data network technology will become the core network technology of telecom operators in the next few years.

No one raised any objection to IP technology as the basic backbone service platform of the telecom operator NGN. NGN will mean that the transmission technologies of various services and applications are completely forward and integrated into grouping and broadband IP addresses. Smart light, DWDM, and high-speed routing and group switching technologies will be fully utilized.

NGN will provide an integrated and open network architecture system. Its development goal is to integrate various application networks with a unified network technology to achieve end-to-end multimedia service convergence. The NGN network will unify various service networks-wireless and wired networks, fixed networks and mobile networks, voice networks and data networks-on a common Transmission Basis and network application platform.

As a technical representative based on the commercial hardware platform and adopting open, standard, multi-protocol and operational management, the concept of soft switch will become one of the important and critical systems and equipment technologies in NGN. However, it must be seen that, due to the rare networking and practice of vswitches of a certain scale in China, the Discussion and Practice of the concept of vswitches only focus on the concept of local and individual technologies.

Over the past year, people have gained some practical understanding of the concept of vswitches, starting to discover that building NGN with a single soft switch technology will face a series of challenges and some fundamental conflicts. The author believes that the core of some of the key issues may not be technology, but the concept, angle, and way of thinking of the problems. Therefore, the author believes that it is necessary to review the concept, characteristics, and role of the soft switch in the NGN.

Basic concepts of vswitches

Although soft switches are currently a hot topic in the discussion of NGN, their concepts are still somewhat plausible. So is it a device concept? A System Concept? A technical architecture? What is the relationship between a soft switch and an IP address phone and an NGN ﹖

Origin of Softswitch

The term "Soft Switch" is translated from "Softswitch" outside China. Its concept is basically formed along with the development of the functional hierarchy of the IP telephone technology system and the concept of control separation. As we all know, in the traditional PSTN switching network, business control, call control, and transmission load are all concentrated in switches, and various services of the PSTN must be implemented through the TDM switch.

To meet users' demand for new services, a public service generation platform (Intelligent Network) appears in the PSTN network. The PSTN intelligent network proposed for the first time and implemented the separation of some all-network service generation and call control. Therefore, it improved the development of all-network services of the PSTN and improved the capability of centralized network service provision, this shortens the cycle for providing new services across the network.

The IP telephone technology system not only further strengthens the idea of separation of service generation and call control, but also looks forward to the separation of Call Control and media transmission bearer. The goal of this separation is to allow the control and generation of IP phone services to be truly independent from the media transmission network facilities, so as to achieve more flexible and effective integration of IP Phone and its related services and multimedia applications.

More importantly, this separation also facilitates telecom operators to implement centralized operation, management, maintenance and preparation of OAMP on the group network. Telecom operators and users can customize configurations and manage their own business features through IP connections in the local system, without worrying about the types and configurations of user terminals, in this way, the provision of business and application is more likely, flexible, and operable and manageable.