Understanding Session Border Controllers : Comprehensive Guide to Designing, Deploying, Troubleshooting, and Maintaining Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) Solutions

The complete guide to deploying and operating SBC solutions, Including Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)

Enterprise and service provider networks are increasingly adopting SIP as the guiding protocol for session management, and require leveraging Session Border Controller (SBC) technology to enable this transition. Thousands of organizations have made the Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) their SBC technology of choice.

Understanding Session Border Controllers gives network professionals and consultants a comprehensive guide to SBC theory, design, deployment, operation, security, troubleshooting, and more. Using CUBE-based examples, the authors offer insights that will be valuable to technical professionals using any SBC solution.

The authors thoroughly cover native call control protocols, SBC behavior, and SBC’s benefits for topology abstraction, demarcation and security, media, and protocol interworking. They also present practical techniques and configurations for achieving interoperability with a wide variety of collaboration products and solutions.

• Evaluate key benefits of SBC solutions for security, management, and interoperability
• Master core concepts of SIP, H.323, DTMF, signaling interoperability, call routing, fax/modem over IP, security, media handling, and media/signal forking in the SBC context
• Compare SBC deployment scenarios, and optimize deployment for your environment
• Size and scale an SBC platform for your environment, prevent oversubscription of finite resources, and control cost through careful licensing
• Use SBCs as a back-to-back user agent (B2BUA) to interoperate between asymmetric VoIP networks
• Establish SIP trunking for PSTN access via SBCs
• Interoperate with call servers, proxies, fax servers, ITSPs, redirect servers, call recording servers, contact centers, and other devices
• Secure real-time communications over IP
• Mitigate security threats associated with complex SIP deployments
• Efficiently monitor and manage an SBC environment
  

Kaustubh Inamdar, CCIE Voice No. 42277, is an escalation point for the Multiservice teams of the Cisco Unified Communications Technical Assistance Center (TAC) in India. He has worked on numerous complex VoIP issues for Cisco partners and key customers. He is a subject matter expert in the area of real-time communications and has deep knowledge of the associated standards and protocols. He is also the co-inventor of five patents (pending) in diverse areas such as collaboration, security, machine learning, and cloud technologies.

Steve Holl, CCIE Collaboration No. 22739, manages a global engineering team that supports the Cisco Collaboration as a Service (CaaS) offering for Cisco’s largest customers. Joining Cisco in 2005, he previously served as a team lead for voice solutions in the Global Technical Assistance Center (TAC). Steve graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology with a bachelor of science in Applied Networking and System Administration, and he later completed a master’s of engineering in Engineering Management at the University of Colorado Boulder. In addition to holding a CCIE since 2008, Steve is also an ITIL Expert, PMP, and Six Sigma Black Belt. In his spare time, he enjoys cooking with his wife, Jenn, playing loud guitar solos, and undertaking outdoor adventures.

Gonzalo Salgueiro, CCIE No. 4541, is a Principal Engineer at Cisco, working on several emerging technologies and the services opportunities they offer. Gonzalo has spent more than 20 years at Cisco, establishing himself as a subject matter expert, an innovator, and an industry thought leader in various technologies, including Collaboration, ML/AI, Cloud, and IoT.

Gonzalo is an established member of numerous industry organizations and is a regular presenter and distinguished speaker at a variety of technical industry conferences and Cisco events around the world. He currently holds various industry leadership roles, including serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the SIP Forum, co-chair of the INSIPID and SIPBRANDY IETF working groups, a member of the IoT Directorate in the IETF, and co-chair of the WebRTC Task Group, IPv6 Task Group, and FoIP Task Group in the SIP Forum. He is an active contributor to various industry organizations and standardization activities.

Gonzalo previously co-authored the Cisco Press books IoT Fundamentals: Networking Technologies, Protocols, and Use Cases for the Internet of Things as well as Fax, Modem, and Text for IP Telephony. He has also co-authored 25 IETF RFCs, 4 IEEE papers, 4 ITU contributions, and numerous industry and academic research papers on a variety of different technical topics. He is also co-inventor of 100+ patents (issued and pending) and has contributed to various interop and open source development efforts. Gonzalo received a master’s degree in Physics from the University of Miami.

Kyzer Davis, CCIE Collaboration No. 54735, is an escalation point for the worldwide Multiservice teams of the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC). He is the focal point for supporting, troubleshooting, and resolving complex solution-level problems involving Voice, Video, and Cloud portions of the Cisco Unified Collaboration product portfolio.

In addition to his work on this book, Kyzer has also authored numerous technical white papers on Cisco Collaboration configuration, architecture, and protocol design. In addition, he works with Learning@Cisco on strategy and content development for numerous Cisco certifications. Kyzer is a technology enthusiast and mentor who is always working on automation initiatives and dabbling with new and evolving technology in the lab. He also enjoys a mean barbecue.

Chidambaram (Arun) Arunachalam, CCIE No. 14809, is a Cisco Principal Engineer, responsible for resolving complex problems in large-scale collaboration networks. He works closely with engineering teams to drive solution-level serviceability requirements for end-to-end call signaling analysis in contact center environments and with industry experts for defining end-to-end SIP message logging capabilities (logme). He co-leads the Collaboration focus area within the TAC Technology office and is currently working on innovations such as Faster Cisco Support Experience (direct connection to engineer) and TAC Virtual Spaces (Webex Teams as a real-time communication channel for support engagements). He is a contributor to Wireshark and guides NCSU graduate students in developing Wireshark dissectors. His areas of interest include ease of doing business, talent development, and innovation.