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Here at ECG, we're very excited about FraudStopper, our toll-fraud detection system. It is the only Fraud Detection tool optimized for VoIP service providers running BroadWorks, Metaswitch, or similar platforms. You can get more details on FraudStopper on the FraudStopper page.   Here are some of the common questions we're getting. What kind of fraud does FraudStopper stop? Fra...

In the 1960s, General Telephone and Electronics Corporation, GTE, employed my father to visit their Central Offices in Georgia to connect measurement equipment to their telephone switches. The purpose was to monitor the system for evidence of problems. They came up with all kinds of measurements in that era; one of the most enduring was Answer-Seizure Ratio, ASR. The ASR is 100*(number of call...

I once frustrated the Grandstream marketing folks at a tradeshow. The year was around 2007, and the show was SuperComm. (I think.) My exposure to GrandStream was the BudgeTone and the HandyTone. We had tested both devices, and made them work, but neither of them was something we could recommend. I asked the booth-staffers whether they had any business phones. They pointed at something with nov...

Seven years ago I sat down in a cramped office outside Boston. I was visiting Acme Packet, and the question on everyone's mind was this: How long will this "SBC" thing hold out? You see, in 2004, everybody I talked to about the Acme Packet thought it was a temporary fix to a technical oversight. Maybe the SIP people would modify the standard to accommodate NAT and Firewalls better. Or perhaps ...

Metaswitch Forum 2011, Las Vegas, NV, Oct. 3, 2011 -- ECG, a VoIP network design and integration consultancy, announces the success of FraudStopper, a new toll-fraud detection system optimized for VoIP providers. FraudStopper was deployed in June 2011 at a nationwide CLEC based in New York City. The system has successfully detected numerous incidents of attempted theft of service, saving the...

When will my Session Border Controller be "full"? The same question applies to any other signaling element in a VoIP network: how much more work can I put into this device before it's overloaded? In this discussion, we'll focus on the Acme Packet OS-C Session Border Controller, such as the NN4250 or NN3820. The typical constraints people bump into are CPU usage and session licenses. Predicting...

At the SIPNOC 2011 Conference held 2011 April 26-27 in Reston, Virginia, Samuel Rausch of Comcast spoke about their project tuning SIP Timers to improve failover performance in their network. They were able to successfully make network faults invisible by tuning the timers appropriately. I sat down with Samuel during a break in the conference and recorded a short interview on his presentation...

Cisco has made it much easier for engineers to properly account for costs when evaluating alternatives and options. They've published a very extensive list of product part numbers and retail pricing. The standard way to estimate pricing on larger items (like routers) involves a long and arduous back-and-forth with a Cisco reseller. The reseller does help by configuring the proper combination of...

Note: The following essay was adapted from a talk I gave to staff at Earthlink Business in January 2011. Do we really need telephone companies, or are they a relic of the past technology, now replaced by data networks? I had this question upon entering the voice side of the Networking Industry, coming from classical Computer Science and Data Networking. Technology history had shown that c...

ECG’s School of VoIP now includes an industry leading customizable class covering BroadWorks Call Processing and Troubleshooting. BroadSoft Connections 2010, PHOENIX, October 25, 2010 — Responding to the need for quality instruction for BroadSoft® BroadWorks® operations and engineering teams, ECG’s School of VoIP now offers a new course to provide comprehensive training on BroadWorks Call Pr...

ORLANDO, Metaswitch Forum. VoIP service providers are thinking more about IPv6 every day, based on my requests. Here at the Metaswitch Forum, the UK-based company is dedicating an entire session to IPv6 deployments. They'll be speaking to the 200+ carriers, large and small, assembled at this year's Metaswitch event. The questions we hear are, "How will it affect me? How should I be planning now...

ECG Applies best practices for VoIP network design and deployment Three obstacles plague VoIP Carriers. First, the flexibility and complexity of network design options can make network development take many months or years. Second, support for the complex features of SIP Trunking and Hosted PBX create a huge burden on staff. Finally, experienced VoIP engineers and technicians are hard to fin...

Integrated with Metaswitch, the NGTelsoft call rating platform offers new choice for mediation, rating and billing platforms ECG, a network and systems consulting firm, today announced completed integration of the NGTelsoft Call Rating platform with Metaswitch Call Detail Records. NGTelsoft gives telecom carriers a new choice for their mediation, rating, and billing platforms. NGTelsoft i...

Metaswitch has been talking a lot lately about VoIP Session Border Controllers (SBCs). They recently took their DC-SBC product to the SIPit interop testing event in June. And they just published another white paper about SBCs and their role in IMS. The Enfield company formerly called Data Connection Limited definitely makes solid software. Rumor has it some of these gents were hired to make ...

A few cases of SIP dictionary attacks using the "friendly-scanner" have been reported recently. These appear to be active attempts to steal service. We responded today to an attack on a nationwide Service Provider. They reported up to 69 REGISTERs per second originating from an IP address in Anhui province, China. 69 REGISTERs per second is roughly the equivalent load of 5,000 users. Unfo...