BGP Route flaps, accidental fiber cuts, equipment failure, these are all things that trigger outages and cause traffic to behave erratically and unpredictably. In the moment of crisis, a five minute voice outage feels like an eternity. What many people do not realize is, just when the network begins to “normalize” itself, this will cause [...]
Archive for the ‘BroadWorks’ Category
Acme Packet SBC: SIP Endpoint Registration Behavior During a Network Outage (avoiding SIP overload and registration flooding)
Posted: 21st December 2012 by Mark in Acme Packet, BroadWorks, SBC, SIP0
Acme Packet SBC: Configuring “Selective” Early Media Suppression
Posted: 18th December 2012 by Mark in Acme Packet, BroadWorks, SBC, SIPThe Acme Packet SBC includes support for Early Media Suppression. This allows you to decide what Realms can and cannot support Early Media and in what direction Early Media is allowed. Taking it one step further, the Acme Packet SBC also supports Selective Early Media Suppression. This means that even if a realm is configured [...]
Acme Packet SBC and the “register-grace-timer” sip-config Option
Posted: 24th January 2012 by Mark in Acme Packet, BroadWorks, SBC, SIPThe Acme Packet SBC contains an optional parameter that may be added to the configuration which helps avoid a SIP avalanche from occurring. One instance of a SIP avalanche is when a very large number of SIP endpoints consecutively send SIP registrations to an SBC which then forwards them to a SIP registrar. This can [...]
Testing SIP Header Manipulation Rules from the Acme Packet (ACLI) Command Line
Posted: 9th May 2011 by Mark in Acme Packet, BroadWorks, SBC, SIPSIP Header Manipulation provides the flexibility to add, remove, or modify any attribute in a SIP message on the Acme Packet SBC. The most common reason for doing this is to fix an incompatibility problem between two SIP endpoints. This could range from anything such as Softswitch/PSTN incompatibility or an issue between two different IP [...]
Broadsoft and Cisco SIP 503 “Retry-After” SIP Header Support
Posted: 23rd March 2011 by Mark in BroadWorks, Cisco, SIPSIP 503 Service Unavailable is commonly seen in a VoIP network when a SIP device (such as a SIP server) is knowingly unable to process a call. Typically when this happens the endpoint that originated the Invite will try the next available host it receives in the SIP Contact header. In this particular example lets [...]
Configure 802.3ad Link Aggregation for Broadworks
Posted: 13th July 2010 by Mark in BroadWorks, Cisco, UnixThe Broadsoft Software Management Guide provides an example for configuring active/backup Ethernet interfaces (called mode 1) when configuring bonded Ethernet on a single Red Hat Enterprise server. Only one Ethernet interface is transmitting and receiving traffic at a time while the other interface is in standby mode. My preferred approach is 802.3ad Link Aggregation Control [...]
The Broadworks platform uses an enhanced algorithm called Overload Control to offer protection when a cluster node is under severe conditions. The goal is that during an overload period of 150% the throughput will be no less than 90%. Behavior of the Application Server is dependent upon a series of configuration parameters configured through bwcli. [...]
Acme Packet SIP Header Manipulation Rules
Posted: 23rd April 2010 by Mark in Acme Packet, BroadWorks, SIPThis is an example of how to modify a SIP header with an Acme Packet Session Border Controller (SBC). An SBC is a device most commonly used by Service Providers to provide topology hiding between their SIP platform and the public Internet. In the most simplistic terms think of it as a Cisco PIX or [...]
As of this writing the latest version of the Unix application sudo is not compatible with Broadworks. Version 1.6 and below will work appropriately although Broadsoft is working to fix this. In the event 1.7 is inadvertently installed and Broadworks will not start then the sudo application must be downgraded. Broadsoft has provided an advisory [...]
As the database grows on the Broadworks Application and Network servers there will be a need to change the memory allocation for the TimesTen datastore. The Maintenance Guide does not contain all the required steps. The rule of thumb is the allocated “perm” size should not exceed more than 25% of total system memory and [...]