Telecom backbone networks have transitioned to cloud-interconnected infrastructures where IPsec is essential for secure communication, especially across mobile backhaul and interconnects. With the growth of virtualized architectures, operators now utilize IPsec to ensure encryption, authentication, and integrity, adapting to diverse environments and evolving security needs in modern telecom networks.
Category: Telecom Architectures
Network characteristics like architecture nodes and flows of Telecom Networks
IPSec vs MASQUE
For decades, private traffic hid inside a special protocol. IPsec, OpenVPN, and WireGuard still do that: they punch an encrypted L2/L3 tunnel across the public path, then stuff TCP, UDP, SCTP, or RTP inside it. Middleboxes learned the silhouette. ESP is protocol 50. IKE is UDP/500. If those ports are blocked, the VPN is gone. … Continue reading IPSec vs MASQUE
VoIP API design
Public API endpoints Internal API gatewaysAPI Rate Limiter Token based Rate LimitingToken bucket filterHierarchical Token Bucket (HTB)Fair QueingCBQ (Class Based Queing)Modular QoS command-Line interface (MQC) ShapingThrottling VoIP manages Call setup and teardown using IP protocol. The APIs can be used to provide public or internal endpoinst to create mnage calls , conference addon services like … Continue reading VoIP API design
High availiability and Scalibility in VoIP platforms
Load Balancers MPLSService-discoveryKeepalive, unregistering unhealthy nodesReplicationData Store Replication Quick Response / Low latencyScalabilityautoscallingPartitioiningMultiple PoPs (point of presence)Minimal Latency and lowest amount of tarffic via public internetHigh availiability (HA) 5 9's in aggregate failuresHA for Load balancer (LB)HA for Call Control app server Media Server HASecurity against malicious attacksMITMDDOS Identifying outages , logs and pcap analysis … Continue reading High availiability and Scalibility in VoIP platforms
EEP (formely HEP) Extensible Encapsulation Protocol with HOMER
EEP duplicates and IP datagram and encapsulates and sends for remote relatime monitoring for SIP specific alerts and notifications . HEP is popular among many SIP servers including Freeswitch , Opensips , kamailio , RTP engine as an external module .
- intended for passive duplicated for remote collection
- can be used for audit storage and analysis
- does not alter the orignal datagram or headers
HOMER is Packet and Event capture system popular fpr VOIP/RTC Monitoring based on HEP/EEP (Extensible Encapsulation protocol)
SIP Trunks
Traditional trunk call SIP trunk (older) systems Centralized SIP Trunk Model SIP trunking is an IP-based alternative to ISDN trunking services Planning to set up SIP trunk Features of SIP trunking Future of SIP trunks With the dawn of IP telephony service and cloud communication platforms in recent years, the SIP has caught the attention … Continue reading SIP Trunks
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in VoIP
VoIP service providers as Data Processors Most VoIP service providers are multinational in nature with services offered directly or indirectly to all regions. The GDPR imposes direct statutory obligations on data processors, which means they will be subject to direct enforcement by supervisory authorities, fines, and compensation claims by data subjects.
Problems and Attacks on SIP Networks
Major standards bodies including 3GPP, ITU-T, and ETSI have all adopted SIP as the core signalling protocol for LTE, VoIP, conferencing, Video on Demand (VoD), IPTV (Internet Television), presence, and Instant Messaging (IM) among others. With the continuous evolution of SIP as the defacto VoIP protocol, we need to understand the risk mitigation practices around … Continue reading Problems and Attacks on SIP Networks
Certificates, compliances and Security in VoIP
This article describes various Certificates and compliances, Bill and Acts on data privacy, Security and prevention of Robocalls as adopted by countries around the world pertaining to Interconnected VoIP providers, telecommunications services, wireless telephone companies , HIPPa , SOX , GDPR , COPPA , CPNI , CCPA , PDP,SPIT ,Traced ACT , CRTC , Fcc E911
CLI/NCLI, Robocalls and STIR/SHAKEN
CLI (Caller Line Identification)Non-CLI (Non-Caller Line Identification)Secure Telephony Identity Revisited (STIR) Attestation levelsSignature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs (SHAKEN) To understand the need for implementing an identification verification technique in Internet protocol based network to network communication system, we need to evaluate the existing problem plaguing the VoIP setup that is unwanted robo calls … Continue reading CLI/NCLI, Robocalls and STIR/SHAKEN
Hosted IP-PBX and SBC
SBC ( Session Borde Controllers ) are basically gateways that provide interconnectivity between the hosted IP-PBX of the enterprise to the outside world endpoints such as telco service provider, PSTN/ TDM , SIP trunking providers or even third party OTT provider apps like skype for business etc.
VoIP system DevOps, operations and Infrastructure management, Automation
operate and maintain a growing large scale VoIP Platform PCAP Collections CICD on Jenkins pipeline Configuration management using chef cookbooks virtualization and containerization using Docker Infrastructure management using terraform / Kubernetes Logs Analysis and Alarming
Secure Communication with SRTP and key managemnt protocols like SDES, ZRTP and DTLS
With advent of Voice over IP, the real time streaming of data/audio/video also became critically important to be protected from eavesdropping or modification over the open internet. While Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) is a profile of the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP), which can provide confidentiality, message authentication, and replay protection to the RTP traffic and to the control traffic for RTP, the Real-time Transport Control Protocol (RTCP).
sipP ( SIP testing tool )
SIPp is an opensource (GNU GPL license) performance testing tool for the SIP protocol and is widely used for Quality assurabce of callflows in voip applications for UAC / UASs cenarios. It can emulate functioing of a sip phone such as REGISTER , establishes and releases multiple calls with the INVITE and BYE methods , … Continue reading sipP ( SIP testing tool )
Gstreamer
GStreamer ( LGPL )is a media handling library written in C for applications such as streaming, recording, playback, mixing and editing attributes so on. Even enhanced applications such as transcoding , media format conversion , streaming servers for embedded devices ( read more about Gstreamer in RPi in my article here). It is a pipeline … Continue reading Gstreamer
