Dutch Cable MSOs strengthen peering capabilities
Dutch Cable MSOs have advanced the capabilities of their VoIP peering federation by hybridizing new (ENUM based) routing with the traditional (IN/C7 based) call management. The new capability, developed jointly by NSN and XConnect, essentially keeps more voice traffic within the IP cloud thus (1) eliminating PSTN interconnection fees, and (2) increasing chances of ‘HD voice quality’.
Conversions from IP to TDM/PSTN can result in call quality deterioration. If the call remains on the IP cloud end-to-end, and provided there is adequate bandwidth channel, the quality can be dramatically improved by using wideband codecs.
NSN is the primary equipment vendor to the Dutch MSOs. However their equipment has not been able to simultaneously support ENUM and IN/C7. The capability has been brought in by XConnect, which is now officially in the latest software version of NSN platform. This enables the Dutch Cable peering project to move to the next phases towards production, and also potentially allows ENUM registry based routing to spread into other NSN based networks.
If you fancy digging slightly deeper … this new capability, a hybrid scenario, uses ENUM for known IP numbers, and C7 for legacy fixed and mobile numbers. It also serves as a form of redundancy in routing i.e. if ENUM based routing fails for IP-to-IP calls then IN routing comes into play for the same.
The MSOs participating in the peering federation first route on an ENUM query. The originating hiQ (NSN’s call agent) queries the local copy of the peering Registry. The Registry in this case is a XConnect Local Directory Server which is regularly synchronized with a central peering Registry. If it is found, then that is the basis for routing the IP call. If it is not found in the local copy of the ENUM Registry, then the calls are still passed IP between the participating MSO’s NSN hiQs, and the receiving hiQ uses SS7/C7 to handle the final termination leg of the call.
This is supposed to be a major milestone in the project.
