Category: Telecom Info

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in VoIP

GDPR , Europe’s digital privacy legislation passed in 2018, replaces the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive. It is rules designed to give EU citizens more control over their personal data & strengthen privacy rights. It aims to simplify the regulatory environment for business and citizens.

To read about other Certificates , compliances and Security in VoIP which summaries

  • HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) ,
  • SOX( Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002),
  • Privacy Related Compliance certificates like COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act ) of 1998,
  • CPNI (Customer Proprietary Network Information) 2007,
  • GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)  in European Union 2018,
  • California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) 2019,
  • Personal Data Protection Bill (PDP) – India 2018 and
  • also specifications against Robocalls and SPIT ( SPAM over Internet Telephony) among others

Multinational companies will predominantly be regulated by the supervisory authority where they have their “main establishment” or headquarter. However, the issue concerning GDPR is that it not only applies to any organisation operating within the EU, but also to any organisations outside of the EU which offer goods or services to customers or businesses in the EU.

Key Principles of GDPR are

  • Lawfulness, fairness and transparency
  • Purpose limitation
  • Data minimisation
  • Accuracy
  • Storage limitation
  • Integrity and confidentiality (security)
  • Accountability

GDPR consists of 7 projects (DPO, Impact assessment, Portability, Notification of violations, Consent, Profiling, Certification and Lead authority) that will strengthen the control of personal data throughout the European Union.

Stakeholders

stakeholders of data protection regulation are
Data Subject – an individual, a resident of the European Union, whose personal data are to be protected

Data Controller – an institution, business or a person processing the personal data e.g. e-commerce website.

Data Protection Officer – a person appointed by the Data Controller responsible for overseeing data protection practices.

Data Processor – a subject (company, institution) processing a data on behalf of the controller. It can be an online CRM app or company storing data in the cloud.

Data Authority – a public institution monitoring implementation of the regulations in the specific EU member country.

Extra-Territorial Scope

Any VoIP service provider may feel that since they are not based out of EU such as officially headquartered in the Asia Pacific or US region they may not be legally binding to GDPR. However, GDPR expands the territorial and material scope of EU data protection law.  It applies to both controllers and processors established in the EU, and those outside the EU, who offer goods or services to or monitor EU data subject.

VoIP service providers as Data Processors

A processor is a “person, public authority, agency or other body which processes personal data on behalf of the controller”.
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. However, a processor’s liability will be limited to the extent that it has not complied with it’s statutory and contractual obligations.

Data minimization – It is now a good practise to store and process as less user’s personal data as necessary to render our services effectively. Also to maintain data for only a stipulated time ( approx 90 days of CDR for call details and logs )

Record Keeping, Accountability and governance

To show compliance with GDPR, a service provider maintain detailed records of processing activities. Also, they must implement technological and organisational measures to ensure, and be able to demonstrate, that processing is performed in accordance with the GDPR. Some ways to apply these are :

  • Contracts: putting written contracts in place with organisations that process personal data on your behalf
  • maintaining documentation of your processing activities
  • Organisational policies focus on Data protection by design and default – two-factor auth, strong passwords to guard against brute-force, encryption, focus on security in architecture
  • Rish analysis and impact assessments: for uses of personal data that are likely to result in a high risk to individuals’ interests
  • Audit by Data protection officer
  • Clear Codes of conduct
  • Certifications

As for a VOIP landscape thankfully every call or message session is followed by a CDR ( Calld Detail Record ) or MDR ( Message Detail Record).

Additionally, assign a unique signature to every data-access client the VoIP system and log every read/write operation carried out on data stores whether persistent datastores or system caches.

Privacy Notices to Subjects

User profile data such as :

  • Basic identity information, name, address and ID numbers
  • Web data such as location, IP address, cookie data and RFID tags
  • Health and genetic data
  • Bio-metric data
  • Racial or ethnic data
  • Political opinions
  • Sexual orientation

is protected strictly under GDPR rules

A service provider should provide indepth information to data subjects when collecting their personal data, to ensure fairness and transparency. They must provide the information in an easily accessible form, using clear and plain language.

Consent

The GDPR introduces a higher bar for relying on consent , requiring clear affirmative action. Silence, pre ticked boxes or inactivity will not be sufficient to constitute consent. Data subjects can withdraw their consent at any time, and it must be easy for them to do so.

Lawful basis for processing Data now include

In Article 6 of the GDPR , there are six available lawful bases for processing.

(a) Consent: the individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose.

(b) Contract: the processing is necessary for a contract you have with the individual, or because they have asked you to take specific steps before entering into a contract.

(c) Legal obligation: the processing is necessary for you to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations).

(d) Vital interests: the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life.

(e) Public task: the processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law.

(f) Legitimate interests: the processing is necessary for your legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party, unless there is a good reason to protect the individual’s personal data which overrides those legitimate interests.

File such as PCAPS , Recordings and transcripts of calls hold sensitive information from end users , these should be encryoted and inaccssible to even the dev teams within the org without explicit consent of end user .

Individuals’ Rights

The GDPR provides individuals with new and enhanced rights to Data subjects who will have more control over the processing of their personal data. A data subject access request can only be refused if it is manifestly unfounded or excessive, in particular because of its repetitive character.

Rights of Data Subjets include

  • Right of Access
  • Right to Rectification
  • Right to Be Forgotten
  • Right to Restriction of Processing
  • Right to Data Portability
  • Right to Object
  • Right to Object to Automated Decisionmaking

For a VoIP service provider if a user opts for redaction then none of his calls or messages should be traced in logs . Also replace distinguishable end user identifier such as phone number and sip uri with *** charecters

Provide option for “Account Deletion” and purge account – If a user wished to close his/her account , his/her detaisl should be deleted form the sustem except for the bare bones detaisl which are otherwise required for legal , taxation and accounting requirnments

Breach Notification

A controller is a “person, public authority, agency or other body which, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of processing of personal data”,

A controller will have a mandatory obligation to notify his supervisory authority of a data breach within 72 hours unless the breach is unlikely to result in a risk to the rights of data subjects. Will also have to notify affected data subjects where the breach is likely to result in a “high risk” to their rights. A processor, however, will only be obliged to report data breaches to controllers

International Data Transfers

Data transfers to countries outside the EEA(European Economic Area) continue to be prohibited unless that country ensures an adequate level of protection. The GDPR retains existing transfer mechanisms and provides for additional mechanisms, including approved codes of conduct and certification schemes.

The GDPR prohibits any non-EU court, tribunal or regulator from ordering the disclosure of personal data from EU companies unless it requests such disclosure under an international agreement, such as a mutual legal assistance treaty.

One of the biggest challenges for a service provider is the identification & categorization of GDPR impacted data sets in disparate locations across the enterprise. A dev team must flag tables, attributes and other data objects that are categorically covered under GDPR regulations and then ensure that they are not transferred to a server outside of EU.

In the present age of Virtual shared server instance, cloud computing and VoIP protocol it is operational a very tough task for a communication service provider to ensure that data is not transferred outside of EU such as a VoIP call from origination in US and destination in EU will require information exchanges via SDP, vcard , RTP stream via media proxies etc.

Sanctions

The GDPR provides supervisory authorities with wide-ranging powers to enforce compliance, including the power to impose significant fines. You will face fines of up to €20m or 4% of your total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year. In addition, data subjects can sue you for pecuniary or non-pecuniary damages (i.e. distress). Supervisory authorities will have a discretion as to whether to impose a fine and the level of that fine.

Data Protection officer (DPO)

Under the terms of GDPR, an organisation must appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO) if it carries out large-scale processing of special categories of data, carries out large scale monitoring of individuals such as behaviour tracking or is a public authority.

Reference :

SIP Security

Major standards bodies including 3GPP, ITU-T, and ETSI have all adopted SIP as the core signalling protocol for services such as LTE , VoIP, conferencing, Video on Demand (VoD), IPTV (Internet Television), presence, and Instant Messaging (IM) etc. With the continous evolution of SIP as the defacto VoIP protocol , we need to underatdn the risk mitigartion practices around it .

I have written about VoIP and security in these blogs before

For Security around web browser based calling via webrtc i have written

  • Webrtc Security –https://telecom.altanai.com/2015/04/24/webrtc-security/ , which describes browser threat modal , access to local resource , Same Orogin Policy (SOP) and Cross Resource Sharing ( CORS) as well as Location sharing , ICE , TUEN and threats to privacy with screen sharing , microgone camera long term access and probable mid call attacks .
  • Genric secrutity of web Application build around hosting platform of webrtc . https://telecom.altanai.com/2014/10/03/security-for-webrtc-applications/ . Includs concepts like Identity management , browser security – cross site security amd clickjacking , Authetication of devices and applications , Media Encryption and regex checking.

Also Written about VoIP security at protocl level with SRTP /DTLS using TLS https://telecom.altanai.com/2018/03/16/secure-communication-with-rtp-srtp-zrtp-and-dtls/ and specifically using avaialble pre added modules on kamailio SIP server https://telecom.altanai.com/2018/02/17/kamailio-security/ . It describes Sanity checks , ACL lists with permissions , hiding topology details , countering Flood using pike and Fail2Ban as well as Traffic monitoring and detection .

In this article we will cover types of attacks on SIP systems

Types of attacks on SIP based systems

Registration Hijacking

malicious registrations on registrar by a third party who modifies From header field of a SIP request.

exmaple implementation :
attacker de-registers all existing contacts for a URI
attacker can also register their own device as the appropriate contact address, thereby directing all requests for the affected user to him

solution – Autheticaion of user

Impersonating a Server

attacker impersonates the remote server
user’s request can now be intercepted by some other party
user’s request may be forwarded to insecure locations

solution –
confidentiality, integrity, and authentication of proxy servers
Proxy/redirect sever, and registrars SHOULD possess a site certificate issued by CA which could be validated by UA

Temparing Message bodies

If users are relying on SIP message bodies to communicate either of

  • session encryption keys for a media session
  • MIME bodies
  • SDP
  • encapsulated telephony signals
    Then the atackers on proxy server can modify the session key or can act as a man-in-the-middle and do eaves droppng

exmaple implementation :
attacker can point RTP media streams to a wiretapping device
can changes Subject header field to appear to users as spam

solution – end to end ecryption over TLS + Digest Authorization

mid-session threats like tearing down session

Request forging
attacker learns the params of the session like To , From tags etc then he can alter ongoing session parameters and even bring it down

example implementation :
attacker inserts a BYE in a ongoing session thereby tearing it down
can insert re INVITE and redierct the stream to wiretaping device

solution – authetication on every request
signing and encrypting of MIME bodies, and transference of credentials with S/MIME

Denial of Service and Amplification

DOS attacks – rendering a particular network element unavailable, usually by directing an excessive amount of network traffic at its interfaces.
dDOS – multiple network hosts to flood a target host with a large amount of network traffic.

Can be created by sending falsified sip requests to other parties such that numerous transactions originating in the backwards direction comes to the target server created congestion.

exmaple implementation :
attackers creates a falsified source IP address and a corresponding Via header field that identify a targeted host as the originator of the request. Then send this to large number of SIP network element . This geneerates DOS aimed at target.

attackers uses falsified Route header field values in a request that identify the target host and then send such messages to forking proxies that will amplify messaging sent to the target.

Flooding with register attacks can deplete available memory and disk resources of a registrar by registering huge numbers of bindings.
Flooding a stateful proxy server causes it to consume computational expense associated with processing a SIP transaction

Solution –
detect flooding and pike in traffic and use ipban to block
challenge questionable requests with only a single 401 (Unauthorized) or 407 (Proxy Authentication Required), forgoing the normal response retransmission algorithm, and thus behaving statelessly towards unauthenticated requests.

Security mchanisms

Full encryption vs hop by hop encrption

SIP mssages cannot be encrypted end-to-end in their entirety since
message fields such as the Request-URI, Route, and Via need to be visible to proxies in most network architectures
so that SIP requests are routed correctly.
proxy servers need to also update the message with via headers

Thus SIP uses low level security along with hop by hop encrption and auth headers to verify the identity of proxy servers

Transport and Network Layer Security

IPsec – used where set of hosts or administrative domains have an existing trust relationship with one another.

TLS – used where hop-by-hop security is required between hosts with no pre-existing trust association.

SIPS URI Scheme

Used as an address-of-record for a particular user, signifies that each hop over which the request is forwarded, must be secured with TLS

HTTP Authentication

Reuse of the HTTP Digest authentication via 401 and 407 response codes that implement challenge for autehtication
provides replay protection and one-way authentication.

S/MIME

allows SIP UAs to encrypt MIME bodies within SIP, securing these bodies end-to-end without affecting message headers.
provides end-to-end confidentiality and integrity for message bodies

nonce-count

provides replay protection

SIP over TLS

SIP messages can be secured using TLS. There is also TLS for Datagrams called DTLS.

Security of SIP signalling is different from security of protocols used in concert with SIP like RTP , RTCP. and that will be covered in later topics of this article.

TLS operation consists of two phases: handshake phase and bulk data encryption phase

Handshake phase

Prepare algorithm to be used during TLS session

Server Authentication

server sends its certificate to the client, which then verifies the certificate using a certificate authority’s (CA’s) public key.

Client Authentication

Server sends an additional CertificateRequest message to request the client’s certificate. The client responds with

  1. Certificate message containing the client certificate with the client public key and
  2. CertificateVerify message containing a digest signature of the handshake messages signed by clients private key

Server authenticates client by client’s public key , since only client holding correct private key can sign the message.

prepare the shared secret for bulk data encryption

client generate a pre_master_secret, and encrypt it using the server’s public key obtained from the server’s certificate. The server decrypts the pre_master_secret using its own private key.
Both the server and client then compute a master_secret they share based on the same pre_master_secret. The master_secret is further used to generate the shared symmetric keys for bulk data encryption and message authentication

Public key cryptographic operations such as RSA are much more expensive than shared key cryptography. This is why TLS uses public key cryptography to establish the shared secret key in the handshake phase, and then uses symmetric key cryptography with the negotiated shared secret as the data encryption key.

Stateless proxy servers do not maintain state information about the SIP session and therefore tend to be more scalable. However, many standard application functionalities, such as authentication, authorization, accounting, and call forking require the proxy server to operate in a stateful
mode by keeping different levels of session state information.

Steps :

  1. The SIP proxy server enforces proxy authentication with
    407 Proxy Authentication Required challenge.
  2. UAC provides credentials that verify its claimed identity (e.g., based on MD5 [34] digest algorithm) and retransmits in authorization header

Security of RTP

confidentiality protection of the RTP session and integrity protection of the RTP/RTCP packets requires source authentication of all the packets to ensure no man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack is taking place.

end to end media encryption – SRTP ( Secure RTP )

encodes the voice into encrypted IP packages and transport those via the internet from the transmitter  to receive

References

  • The Impact of TLS on SIP Server Performance – Charles Shen† Erich Nahum‡ Henning Schulzrinne† Charles Wright , Department of Computer Science, Columbia University,IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

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 etc

Compliance certificates by Industry types

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)

Deals with privacy and security of personal medical records and electronic health care transaction

Applicability  : If voip company handles medical information

Includes : 

  • Not allowed Voice mail transcription
  • Should have End-to-End Encryption
  • Restrict  using unsecured WiFi networks to prevent Snooping
  • User security , strong password rules  and mandatory monthly change
  • Secure Firmware on VoIP phones
  • Maintaining Call and Access Logs

SOX( Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002)

Also known as SOX, SarbOX or Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act

Applicability : if managing the communications operations of a regulated, publicly traded company 

Includes : 

  • Retain records which include financial and other sensitive data
  • ways employees are provided or denied access to records or data based on their roles and responsibilities
  • do information audit by a trusted third party. 
  • Retention and deletion of files such as audio files like voicemails, text messages, video clips, declared paper records, storage, and logs of communications activities
  • Physical and digital security controls around cloud-based VoIP applications and the networks

Privacy Related Compliance certificates

COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act ) of 1998 

prohibits deceptive marketing to children under the age of 13, or collecting personal information without disclosure to their parents. 

any information is to be passed on to a third party, must be easy for the child’s guardian to review and/or protect

2011 amendment  requires that the data collected was erased after a period of time,

2014 FTC issued guidelines that apps and app stores require “verifiable parental consent.”

CPNI (Customer Proprietary Network Information) 2007

CPNI (Customer Proprietary Network Information) in united states is the information that communication providers  acquire about their subscribers. This Individually identifiable information that is created by a customer’s relationship with a provider, such as data about the frequency, duration, and timing of calls, the information on a customer’s bill, and call identifying information. This processing information is governed strictly by FCC and certification should be renewed on an annual basis

Provider can pass along that information to marketers to sell other services, as long as the customer is notified

In 2007, the FCC explicitly extended the application of the Commission’s CPNI rules of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to providers of interconnected VoIP service.

CALEA

Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) conduct electronic surveillance by imposing specific obligations on “telecommunications carriers” for assisting law enforcement, including delivering call interception and call identification functionality to the government with a minimum of interference to customer service and privacy.

Read more about CALEA and its roles in VoIP here Regulatory and Legal Considerations with WebRTC development

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)  in European Union 2018

Supersedes the 1995 Data Protection Directive

Establishes requirements of organizations that process data, defines the rights of individuals to manage their data, and outlines penalties for those who violate these rights.

No personal data may be processed unless this processing is done under one of six lawful bases specified by the regulation (consent, contract, public task, vital interest, legitimate interest or legal requirement). When the processing is based on consent the data subject has the right to revoke it at any time.

Controllers must notify Supervising Authorities (SA)s of a personal data breach within 72 hours of learning of the breach.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) 2019

consumer rights relating to the access to, deletion of, and sharing of personal information that is collected by businesses. 

Allows consumers to know whether their personal data is sold or disclosed , to whom .

Allows opt-out right for sales of personal information

Right to deletion – to request a business to delete any personal information about a consumer collected from that consumer

Personal Data Protection Bill (PDP) – India 2018

This bill introduces various private and sensitive protection frameworks  like restriction on retention of personal data, Right to correction and erasure (such as right to be forgotten) , Prohibition and transparency of processing of personal data. It also classifies data fiduciaries  including certain social media intermediaries. 

The Bill amends the Information Technology Act, 2000 to delete the provisions related to compensation payable by companies for failure to protect personal data.

Other data privacy acts similar to GDPR 

  • South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Act  2011
  • Brazil’s Lei Geral de Proteçao de Dados (LGPD)  2020
  • Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) to Australia’s Privacy Act 2018
  • Japan’s Act on Protection of Personal Information 2017
  • Thailand Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) 2020

Features offered by VOIP companies for Data privacy 

  • Access Control & Logging
  • Auto Data Redaction / Account Deletion policy 
  • SIEM (Security information and event management) alerts 
  • Information security , Encrypted Storage For Recordings & Transcripts
  • Disclosing all third party services that are involved in data processing too
  • Role Based Access Control and 2 Factor Authentication
  • Data Security Audits and appointing  data protection officer to oversee GDPR compliance

Against Robocalls and SPIT ( SPAM over Internet Telephony)

 2009 Truth in Caller ID Act 

Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991

Implementation of Do not call registry against use of robocalls, automatic dialers, and other methods of communication

Do-Not-Call Implementation Act of 2003

if a business has an established relationship with a customer, it can continue to call them for up to 18 months. If a consumer calls the company, say, to ask for information about the product or service, the company has three months to get back to him.

if the customer asks to not receive calls, the company must stop calling, or be subject to fines.

Exemptions – Calls from a not-for-profit B organisation , informational messages as flight cancellations , Calls from sales and debt collectors etc

Personal Data Privacy and Security Act 2009

Implemented to curb  identity theft and computer hacking. Sensitive personal identifiable information includes : victim’s name, social security number, home address, fingerprint/biometrics data, date of birth, and bank account numbers.

Any company that is breached must notify the affected individuals by mail, telephone, or email, and the message must include information on the company and how to get in touch with credit reporting agencies

If the breach involves government or national security , company must also contact the Secret Service within fourteen days 

TRACED Act (Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence) 2019

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) 2018 -32

A solution mechanism has already been standardised and active in adoption called STIR / SHAKEN ( Secure Telephony Identity Revisited / Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs) described in another article here.

Emergency services 

FCC E911 E911 / VoIP E911 rules

Unlike traditional telephone connections, which are tied to a physical location, VOIP’s packet switched technology allows a particular number to be anywhere making it more difficult for it to reach localised services like emergency numbers of Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) . Thus FCC regulations as well as the New and Emerging Technologies 911 Improvement Act of 2008 (NET 911 Act), interconnected VoIP providers are required to provide 911 and E911 service. 

…

Ref : 

CLI/NCLI, Robocalls and STIR/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 .

What is Call ID spoofing ? 

Vulnerability of existing interconnection phone system which is used by robo-callers to mask their identity or to make it appear the call is from a legitimate source, usually originates from voice-over-IP (VOIP) systems.

In this context understand the Caller Line identification CLI/ NCLI techniques used by VoIP and OTT( over the top) providers today.

CLI (Caller Line Identification)

If call goes out on a CLI route ( White Route ) the received party will likely see your callerID information

  • Lawful – Termination is legal on the remote end ie abiding country’s telco infrastructure and stable
  • Expensive – usually with direct or via leased line (TDM) interconnections with the tier-1 carriers.

Non-CLI (Non-Caller Line Identification)

The Caller ID is not visible at the call
If call goes out on a Non-CLI route (Grey Route) goes out on a non-CLI routes they will see either a blocked call or some generic number.

  • Unlawful – questionable legality or maybe violating some providers AUP(Acceptable Use Policy ) on the remote end.
  • Cheaper – low quality , usually via VoIP-GSM gateways

Example include robocalls , tele-marketting / spam etc which are unwilling to share their Caller Id for call receiver, to not be blocked or cancelled.

To overcome the problem of non-verifiable spam , robocalls a suite of protocols and procedures are proposed that can combat caller ID spoofing on VOIP and connected public telephone networks.

STIR/SHAKEN

Secure Telephony Identity Revisited / Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs

Used by robocallers to mask their identity or to make it appear the call is from a legitimate source
usually orignates from voice-over-IP (VOIP) systems

STIR

Standards developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) 

For telecommunication service providers implement  certificate management system to create and manage the public and private keys, digital certificates used to sign and verify Caller ID details. 

Adds information to the SIP headers that allow the endpoints along the system to positively identify the origin of the data , such as JSON web tokens encrypted with the provider’s private key, encoded using Base64,

There are three levels of verification, or “attestation”

  • A : Full Attestation
    indicates that the provider recognizes the entire phone number as being registered with the originating subscriber.
  • B : Partial Attestation
    call originated with a known customer but the entire number cannot be verified,
  • C : Gateway Attestation
    call can only be verified as coming from a known gateway

How can the Public Key Infrastructure be used ? 

In an interconnection network , each telephone service provider will obtain its digital certificate from a certificate authority (CA)  that is trusted by other telephone service providers. Calling party signs the SIP Header  caller ID as legitimate . The called party verifies that the calling number is authentic

STIR

Originating service provider’s encrypted SIP Identity Header includes the following data:

  1. Attestation level
  2. Date and Time
  3. Calling and Called Numbers
  4. Orig ID for analytics and/or traceback purposes among others
  5. Location of certificate repository
  6. Signature
  7. Encryption algorithm

FCC has also assigned the role of a Secure Telephone Identity Policy Administrator (STI-PA) which oversees that CAs do not provide certificate to spoofing robocallers and enforce the framework for STIR /SHAKEN .

Sample Identity header in SIP requst

INVITE sip:bob@biloxi.example.org SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/TLS pc33.atlanta.example.com;branch=z9hG4bKnashds8
To: Bob
From: Alice ;tag=1928301774
Call-ID: a84b4c76e66710
CSeq: 314159 INVITE
Max-Forwards: 70
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 13:02:03 GMT
Contact:
Identity:
"ZYNBbHC00VMZr2kZt6VmCvPonWJMGvQTBDqghoWeLxJfzB2a1pxAr3VgrB0SsSAaifsRdiOPoQZYOy2wrVghuhcsMbHWUSFxI6p6q5TOQXHMmz6uEo3svJsSH49thyGnFVcnyaZ++yRlBYYQTLqWzJ+KVhPKbfU/pryhVn9Yc6U="
Identity-Info: https://atlanta.example.com/atlanta.cer;alg=rsa-sha1
Content-Type: application/sdp
Content-Length: 147

v=0
o=UserA 2890844526 2890844526 IN IP4 pc33.atlanta.example.com
s=Session SDP
c=IN IP4 pc33.atlanta.example.com
t=0 0
m=audio 49172 RTP/AVP 0
a=rtpmap:0 PCMU/8000

SHAKEN

STIR is based on the SIP protocol and is designed to work with calls being routed through a VOIP network. Since traditional endpoints like POTS and SS7 networks also should be covered under this call authenticity framework , SHAKEN was developed to manage call via IP-to-telephone gateways .

Developed by the Alliance of Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS)

Working Steps  :

  1. When a call is initiated, a SIP INVITE is received by the originating service provider.
  2. Originating service provider verifies the call source and number to determine how to confirm validity.
    1. Full Attestation (A) — The service provider authenticates the calling party AND confirms they are authorized to use this number. An example would be a registered subscriber.
    2. Partial Attestation (B) — The service provider verifies the call origination but cannot confirm that the call source is authorized to use the calling number. An example would be a calling number from behind an enterprise PBX.
    3. Gateway Attestation (C) — The service provider authenticates the call’s origin but cannot verify the source. An example would be a call received from an international gateway.
  3. Create a SIP Identity header that contains information on the calling number, called number, attestation level, and call origination, along with the certificate thus caller ID “signed” as legitimate
  4. SIP INVITE with the SIP Identity header with the certificate is sent to the destination service provider.
  5. Destination service provider verifies the identity of the header and certificate.

Diagrammatic depiction of flow of how Telecom carriers to digitally validates authenticity before receiving or handoff through their network

SHAKEN

References

Hosted IP-PBX and its 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.

If you have a hosted IPPBX or PBX in your data-centre or on premise and you need controlled but heavy outflowing traffic, it is a good idea to integrate a resilient and efficient SBC to provide seamless interconnectivity.

Hosted PBX

For an enterprises such as an Trading floor or warehouse with multiple phone types , softphones , hardphones , turrets etc distributed across various geographies and zones a device agnostic architectural setup is prime . Listing the essentials for setting up such a system. Note supplementary services are data-services , logging , licensing etc are important but kept out of scope to keep focus on functional aspects .

An enterprise application usually is structured in tiers or layers

  • Client tier – the networks clients communication to the central java programs . Runs on client machines
  • web tier – state full communication between client and business tier . Runs in server machine.
  • business tier- handles the logic of the application. The business tier uses the Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) container, which manages the execution of the beans
  • data tier – encompasses DB drivers . Runs on separate machines for database storage

Event services for Line status notifications

providers lines status notification across enterprise for inter zone and softphone to hardphone .

Routing services

routing calls within enterprise and hardphone sites read more about resource zones later in the article

Call Control Manager (CCM)

consolidated set of all service and component that make up the VOIP platform besides media handlers . It includes SIP adapters , bridge managers , call processing frameworks , API frameworks , healthchecks etc .

Call processing framework ( CPF)

signalling and call routing logic , mostly in SIP and trunks . Manages identities such as Call Line information , Called Party Information , line status etc in shared memory.

Multiple shared Lines and their statuses

Incases where there is a need to process multiple calls from a single User agent device such as a softphone or hardphone ( common scenario for a turret phone) , the design involves assigning it multiple sip uris and each sip uri will establish a line.

When caller calls callee , the line is said to be BUSY , otherwise said to be IDLE. Transition of a shared sip line from IDLE to BUSY is transmitted to others via SIP PUBLISH as other UAs holding the same sip

Similarly any other event like transfer is propagated to other via SIP UPDATE

Clustering Call control managers (CCM)

A Call Communication manager (CCM) from various zones should be able to cowork on call and session management and advanced features such as routing from home guest zone to home zone , call transfer , refer , barge etc. Designing a clustered setup will also provide elasticity , fail-over and high availability. Can use clustered , HA compliant framework such as Oracle Communication Application Server , suited for enterprise level deployments.

Call Replication and distributed memory management

A node will store two types of data: active sessions and passive sessions. The active sessions are used by the node and stored in cache. The passive sessions are the replicas from the other nodes’ active sessions. The passives sessions are stored on a persistent storage.

Controlling Line Calls using AOR and Resource Zones

When dealing with many SIP endpoints , now referred to as resource, it is best to assign the resources to their respective zones. Thus a resource’s status updates will be only updated by its active resource zone while can be read by any resource zone.

Incoming request Zone vs Active Resource Zone

For an Incoming request such a INVITE , check whether the zone sending the request is its active resource zone or not .If the Active Resource Zone is the same zone on which the INVITE came in, then the call is handled by that zone. If the Active Resource Zone is a different zone, then the call needs to be forwarded to the Active Resource Zone.

Bridges for Local Media connections

Although call signalling is handled by a resources active resource zone only, we can still create media bridges in local zone of the resource .

Local MM bridges are used to auto answer an incoming sip line call and create trunk , especially from hardphones which do not support provisional responses.

Interzone proxy Handler

proxies call control messages between active and non active resource zones. Primarily mapping the sip messages with all custom headers inbetween the communication device interfaces.

Dial Trunk using multiple dedicated sip lines and connect via Media Bridge

To save up on call routing /connection time and to support te ability to add as many users on call at runtime , a dedicated media bridge is established for every call.

  • A sip line activated is auto-answered by MM , creates a trunk and waits for other endpoint to join the bridge. The flow is as follows :
  • As INVITE arrives for an IDLE sip line , it is connected to a trunk and auto answered by a local MM bridge .
  • Since the call is already answered , when caller dials number for callee , collect the DTMF digits over RTP using RFC 2833 DTMF events.
  • Run inter-digit timer for digit collection and detect end of dialing on timeout.
  • The dialed trunk connection is made and call is added to media bridge
  • When provisional responses are received on the trunk connection, generate in-band call progress tones (ringing, proceeding etc) via the MM
  • When the line answers, the progress tones have to be stopped and the called party gets bridged to the calling party via the media bridge.

Call Diversion involves forwarding calls from zone to another zone. joinjed parties get call UPDATE status and forward response .

Call barge is the processing of joining an ongoing call . The barge event is usually propagated to joined parities via SIP INFO. Private lines do not allow barge in and are exclusively reserved for only few users.

Interconnectivity provided by an SBC ( Session Border Controller)

Hold-Resume and Music on Hold in multi-line evironment

While a regular p2p call involves simple reinvite based hold and resume with varrying SDP, the scenario is slightly more detailed for hold resume on bridged trunk connection , as explained below.

As the calls made are on bridge , a hold signal involves a RE-INIVITE with held-SDP to media manager (MM). If hold status on trunk is 200 OK the hold status will be sent to other call interfaces connected on the trunk. Else if hold is denied ,403 is sent back to hold-initiates.

Music on hold is an one way RTP mostly from media server.

For a bridged scenarios , separate Music on hold bridges are kept on Media Managers. When an UA has to hold , it is removed from original bridge and place on music on hold bridge . To be unhold/ resume it is placed back into the orignal bridge from music on hold bridge .

Conference

user initiates conference, the conference feature can execute on the zone where the user was logged on, irrespective of zones where the other conference attendees join from . The Call processing framework of originators zone completes the SDP exchange to establish two-way speech path among all the parties.

Incases there are multiple connections from a zone , a local MM conference bridge can be created for them which would connect back to originators MM conf bridge . this two part conf bridge will be transparent to the sip line sand users .

For provisioning inputs and settings setup a Diagnostics , Administration and Configuration platform which can process APIs for data services , licences , alarms or do remote device control such as using SNMP

Session Border Controllers (SBC)

At network level SBC operations include

  • bridging multiple interfaces in different networks even between the IPv4 and IPv6 networks
  • auto NAT discovery and STUN
  • protocol conversion such as TLS to UDP etc
  • Flood detection and IP filtering

For SIP specific functionalities , SBC does

  • SIP validation involving checks on syntax and message contents also consistency checks are performed.
  • stateful and call aware. tracing, monitoring and checking for validitya and health of all the SIP messages
  • Topology hiding
  • Traffic filtering
  • Codec filtering , reordering , media pinning, transcoding, or call recording
  • Data replication brings High Availability (HA) with hot backups or even Active-Active solutions.

Traffic sharing and routing roles of SBC can include

  • IP-based and Digest-based authentication
  • limiting traffic by number of concurrent calls or calling rate.
  • Dialplan and/or Custom routing
  • Dispatching/Load-balancing to a backend cluster of servers

SBC’s can be physical hardware boxes or software based applications, as the name suggests their purpose is to control the session at border between the enterprise and external service provider.

SIP to PSTN – SIP is an IP protocol whereas PSTN is a TDM one , achieving interoperability is also the KRA of an SBC

SIP trunking – SBC provide a secure sip connectivity to connect calls to sip trunks which provide bulk calls functionality at a flat pricing.

support for various fixed or mobile endpoints – SBC ensure they are RFC compliant and can extend SIP to any kind of telecom endpoint like PSTN , GSM, fax , Skype , sipphone , IP phones etc.

NAT / Network address translator – To meet the packet routing challenges across a firewall or even during private -public mapping. A combo of DHCP servers and NAT provider comes very handy to reroute or perform hole punching such that signalling and media packets are not dropped and meet the required endpoint. More about NAT here – NAT traversal using STUN and TURN.

Load balancing – Reverse proxies and Load balancers is a much adopted industry practise to mask the inner IPs of the VoIP platform and also route traffic appropriately between control and media server .

Security , QoS and Regulatory compliance – since SBCs are required to typically support a large array of clients they adhere to regulatory and industry accepted standards ,which also involves security features like AAA, TLS/SSL and other means for quality of assurance like logging and fault detection, preventing DDoS etc . In many cases SBC can also encrypt / decrypt RTP streams for probing , tapping or lawful inspection .

Terminating at carriers , PSTN and IP gateways

Additional SBC features

Inaddition to above it is good to have if an SBC provides extra features like forking , emergency number dialing ( 911 ) or active directory integration . Real Time Analysis and monitoring of call and metrics are also expected from a SBC since they reside on edge of the network and are more vulnerable to threats . For example Dialogic Mediant SBC’s and gateways , Audio Codes SBCs

With the shift from on premise PBXs to cloud based VM or microservice architecture , SBC vendors adopt a lager umbrella of services also including automation scripts for checks , reporting tools / consoles , developer friendly APIs to manage sessions via SBC and even WebRTC gateways to connect browser endpoints .

Usage Scenarios

Any VOIP dependant system which deals with bulksome voice / video traffic from external endpoints is a usages scenarios. Listing few

  • Contact Call centres
  • Remote work / offsite monitoring
  • CRM solution for sales/marketing
  • Connecting webrtc click to dial from webpage to enterprise representatives
  • connecting enterprise UCC clients to PSTN endpoints

There are many more.

VOIP Call Metric Monitoring and MOS ( Mean Opinion Score)

Metrics for monitoring a VOIP call can be obtained from any node in media path of the call flow . Essentially used for analysis via calculation and aggregation , and sometimes used for realtime performance tracking and rectification too .

Rating Factor (R-Factor) and Mean Opinion Score (MOS) are two commonly-used measurements of overall VoIP call quality.

R-Factor: A value derived from metrics such as latency, jitter, and packet loss per ITU‑T Recommendation G.107. It assess the quality-of-experience for VoIP calls on your network. Typical scores range from 50 (bad) to 90 (excellent).

  • R factor of 90 , Mos is 4.3 ( Excellent )
  • R factor 50 , Mos is 2.6 ( Bad)

MOS: It is derived from the R-Factor per ITU‑T Recommendation G.10 which measures VoIP call quality. PacketShaper measures MOS using a scale of 10-50. To convert to a standard MOS score (which uses a scale of 1-5), divide the PacketShaper MOS value by 10.

ITU ?
The International Telecommunication Union is the United Nations specialised agency in the field of telecommunications, information and communication technologies (ICTs).

ITU-T ?
TU Telecommunication Standardisation Sector is responsible for studying technical, operating and tariff questions and issuing Recommendations on them with a view to standardising telecommunications on a worldwide basis.

Read more about RTCP and RTCP / AVPF : RealTime Transport protocol (RTP) and RTP control protocol (RTCP )

VoIP call quality metrics

RTP provides real time media stream , payload type identification , packet sequencing and timestamping headers .

sequence num : tracks incremental succession of incoming packets by sendor and tracls out of order delivery

timestamp : used by the receiver to play back the received samples at appropriate time and interval. 

source : wikipedia RTP

Note that all Synchronization source (SSRC) identifiers fields denote the synchronization source within the RTP session such as both legs of a call session

  • leg A between Caller and RTP proxy ,
  • leg B between RTPproxy and Callee

RTCP provides detailed monitoring of stream to participants in an ongoing session with statistical data and enhanced metrices for QoS ( quality of service ) and synchronisation using it SR ( senders Report ) and RR ( Receivers report) segments .

  • Packet loss rate
  • Packet discard rate
  • round trip delay
  • R factor which is voice quality carried over RTP ssession
  • mos lq for listening quality and mos cq for conversation qualityy
  • jitter buffer current delay , maximum delay
RTCP – SR
RTCP – RR

Can read more about RTP and RTCP packet structure here – https://telecom.altanai.com/2019/02/25/realtime-transport-protocol-rtp-and-rtp-control-protocol-rtcp/

Other call realted factors which are not specifically part of RTCP but provide information about call quality are

  • signal level
  • noise level
  • gap density , gap threshold
  • Burst density
  • residual echo return loss

Delays like following also play a signaificant influence in VoIP Quality

  • end system delay
  • Paketzation Delay
  • Setup delay ( auth , TLS handshake , accessing mic/camera stream ..)
  • Queing Delay
  • Serialization dleay
  • Network latency
  • End device processing delay such as CPU of the end device

It should be noted that in addition to these values which can be caluvulated algorithimically and with high precsiion , there are more subjective quality parameters which can be only evaluted manually ( ie witha person listening on both ends ) such as

  • robot voice
  • Perceptible sound but annoying speech quality

MOS ( Mean Opinion Score )

MOS is terminology for audio, video and audiovisual quality expressions as per ITU-T P.800.1. It refers to listening, talking or conversational quality, whether they originate from subjective or objective models.

  • Very Good: 4.3-5.0
  • Bad: 3.1-3.6
  • Not Recommenced : 2.6-3.1
  • Very Bad: 1.0-2.6

It provides provisions for identifiers regarding the audio bandwidth, the type of interface (electrical or acoustical) and the video resolution too , such as
MOS-AVQE for audiovisual quality;
MOS-CQE is for estimated conversational quality;
MOS-LQE for listening quality;
MOS-TQE is used for talking quality;
MOS-VQE depicts video quality;

For Audio Signal Speech Quality/ AV
– N denotes audio signals upto narrow-band (300-3400 Hz)
– W is for audio signals upto wideband (50-7000 Hz)
– S for upto super-wideband (20-14000 Hz)
– F is obtained for fullband (10-20000 Hz)

For Listening quality LQO

  • electrical measurement
    performed at electrical interfaces only. In order to predict the listening quality as perceived by the user, assumptions for the terminals are made in terms of intermediate reference system (IRS) or corrected IRS frequency response. A sealed condition between the handset receiver and the user’s ear is assumed.
  • acoustical measurement
    performed at acoustical interfaces. In order to predict the listening quality as perceived by the user, this measurement includes the actual telephone set products provided by the manufacturer or vendor. In combination with the choice of the acoustical receiver in the laboratory test , there will be a more or less leaky condition between the handset’s receiver and the artificial ear.

Conversational Quality / CQ

Arithmetic mean value of subjective judgments on a 5-point ACR quality scale, is calculated.

Talking Quality / TQ

This describes the quality of a telephone call as it is perceived by the talking party only. Factors affecting TQ include echo signal , background noise , double talk etc. It is calculated based on the arithmetic mean value of judgments on a 5-point ACR quality scale.

Video Quality / VQ

To account for differentiation in perceived quality for mobile and fixed devices and to allow for proper handling of different use-cases as
– M for mobile screen such as a smartphone or tablet (approximately 25 cm or less)
– T for PC/TV monitors
It is calculated based on the arithmetic mean value of subjective judgments, typically on a 5-point quality scale

Audio Visual Quality / AVQ

Refers to quality of audio visual stream under corresponding networking conditions. It is also calculated based on the arithmetic mean value of judgments on a 5-point ACR quality scale.

Other parameters also contributing to VoIP metric Analysis

Latency

It is the time required for packets to travel from one end to another, in milliseconds.
If the sum of measured latency is 800 ms and the number of latency samples is 20, then the average latency is 40 ms.
Header of the RTP packets carry timestamps which later can also be used to calculate round-trip time.

The Terrestrial coaxial cable or radio-relay system over FDM and digital transmissioor subamrine coaxial cables add upto 4- 6 micro seconds of delay per km.
Simillarly even the optical fibre cable using digital transmission added aroud 5 micro seceond per km delay which also accounts for the delay in repeaters and regenrators

On the other ahnd satelltie communicatio system varries the delay based on altitude ( propagation delay thorugh space abd between earth statiosn)
400 km above earths surfaec adds 12 ms delay ,
14000 km above earth adds 110 ms
and much higher 36000 km of altitude adds 260 ms

Devices
FDM modem adds upto 0.75 ms delay
Transmultiplexer – 1.5 ms delay
Exchanges ( analog , digital , transit ..) add 0.45 – 0.825 ms delay
Echo cancellers 0.5 ms
DCME ( Circui manjipulation, signal compression) – 30 ms to 200 ms

Round Trip Time

Time taken for data to travel to the target destination and back . In terms of SIP calls it is the time for a transaction to complete between calleer/client and callee/server . It is calculated as when the packet was sent and when acknowledgment for it was received.

Measured in milliseconds (ms), high RTT indicates a poor network quality and would result in the audio lag issue. The media stream especially audio must not suffer a delay higher than 150 ms including all the processing delays at intermediate nodes and network latency . Any valye above it is poor quality.

RTT can represent full path network latency experienced by the packets and can do away with frequent ICMP ping/echo requests/probes to check network health . although it should be noted that while pings happen in lower transport layers protocol , RTT happens at high up application layer .

They are used to calculates RTO ( Request transmission timeouts )in TCP transmission ie how much time the sender should wait before retrying to send an unacknowledged packet.

Factors affecting RTT can include delays in propagation , processing , queuing and/or encoding delay.

Porpogation delay can correlate to the

  • physical distance ( inter country/continents or intra ) ,
  • mediaum of tramsission ( copper cables , fiber , wireless)
  • bandwidth available

Simillarly propagation delay can occur due to large num of network hops like routers / servers . It should be noted that server respose time also plays a critical role in RTT as it depends on server’s processing caapcity and nature of request.

Star based network topology like MCU , SFU or TURN servers can introduce processing delays too for activities such as mixing, encdoing , NATing etc .

Network congestion can amplify the RTT the most.Traffic level must be monitored when RTT spikes such as during DDos attacks

Overcoming large RTT can be achieved by

  • identifying the choke points of network
  • ditributing the load evenly
  • ensuring scalaibility of the server side resources
  • ensuring points of presence(PoP) into geographic regions where caller/ callee is present and routing through it rather than unreliable open public network

Note : avg RTT of the session is misleading denotaion of latency as there maybe be assymetrically RTT between the two legs of the call

Calculation of RTT

EffectiveLatency = ( AverageLatency + Jitter * 2 + 10 )

In RTPengine
int eff_rtt = ssb->rtt / 1000 + ssb->jitter * 2 + 10;

Thus for RTT = 11338 and jitter =0
eff_RTT = 11338/1000 + 0*2 +10
= 11.651 + 10 = 21.651 , which is a good score as it is way below 150ms of latency

But for RTT = 129209 and jitter =7
eff_RTT = 129209/1000 + 7*2 +10
= 153.209 , which is a bad score > 150 ms

Packet Loss

When packet does not successfully make it to the destination , it is a lost packet.

It could happen due to multiple reasons such as

  • network bandwidth unavailable or network congestion
  • overloading of the buffer such that they do not have enough space to queue the packets or high priority preferences
  • intentionally configuring ACL or firewalls to drop the packets or discarding packets above rate limit by internet service provider
  • CPU unable to cope up with high security networks encryption and decryption speed requirements
  • Low battery on device may cause cause underworking of devices and hence lead to packet loss
  • limitation on physical device like softphone , hardphone or bluetooth headsets or if the hardware is broken at router , switch or cabling
  • for bluetooth headsets distance range could also be problem for weak signals and consequently packets drops
  • network errors as shown under Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) issues like FCS Errors, Alignment Errors, Frame Too Longs, MAC Receive Errors, Symbol Errors, Collisions, Carrier Sense Errors, Outbound Errors, Outbound Discards, Inbound Discards, Inbound Errors, and Unknown Protocol errors.
  • radio frequency interference from high voltage systems or microwaves can also cause packet drop in wireless networks

such that the packet can either not arrive or arrive late and be dropped out by the codec . To the listener it would appear like chopped voice or complete dropout for moments .

Obtaining packet loss details

  • Packet loss percentage is performed as per RFC 3550 using RTP header sequence numbers. If packets are missing sequence the media stream monitors flags that as lost packet.
  • It can also be concluded from the difference between total packets and received packets from CDR
  • RTP-XR (RFC-3611) records report real-time drops

Jitter

The variation in the delay of received packets in a flow, measured by comparing the interval when RTP packets were sent to the interval at which they were received.
For instance, if packet #1 and packet #2 leave 30 milliseconds apart and arrive 50 milliseconds apart, then the jitter is 20 milliseconds or if packets transmitted every 15ms and reach destination at every 15ms then there is no variability and the jitter is 0.

Causes jitter

  • Frame bigger than jitter buffer size
  • algorithms to back-of collision by introducing delays in packet transmission in half duplex interfaces
  • even small jitter can get exponentially worse on slow or congestion links
  • jitter can be introduced due to bottlenecks near router buffer, rerouting / parallel routes to the same destination, load-sharing, or route tables changing the path

Handling jitter :

Jitter below 30ms is manageable with the help of jitter buffers in codecs however above that the codec starts to drop the late arrived packets and cannot reassemble / splice up the packets for a smooth media stream effectively, hence causing media quality issues like clipped audio

detecting jitter:

  • looking at inter packet gap in the direction of RTP stream in wireshark
  • RTP-XR (RFC-3611 & RFC-7005) for real-time jitter buffer usage and drops.
  • software based detection : Network sniffers wireshark , path analyser, Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Tools , CDR analyser , Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) Collector
MetricGoodAverageBad
Jitter<= 10ms10ms – 30ms>=30ms
Packet Loss< 0.5%0.5% – 0.9%>= 0.9%
Audio Level>-40dB-80dB to -40dB< -80dB
RTT< 200ms200ms – 300ms> 300ms
Range for good bad attributes for calculating mos score

Ref : ITU P.800.1 : Mean opinion score (MOS) terminology 

Methods for objective and subjective assessment of speech and video quality.

Scheduling for low bandwidth networks

The ability of the end application or the RTP proxy to deal with packet loss or delays depends on its processing techniques , particularly with encoding and buffering techniquee to deal with high pac ket loss rate .

Mapping R-value to calculate MOS

To map MOS from R value using above defined metrics , a standard formula is used. First the latency and jitter are added and defined value for computation time is also added , resulting in effective latency 

effectiveLatency = latency + jitter * latencyImpact + compTime

Subtracting effective latency from defined R

R = 93 – (effectiveLatency / factorLatencyBased)

Calculate percentage of packet loss 

 R = R – (lostPackets * impact)
 MOS = ( (R - 60) * (100 – R) * 0.000007R) + 0.035R + 1)

Media Stats and MOS on RTP engine Kamailio

Minimum edge Values

mos_min_pv
minimum encountered MOS value for the call.
range – 1.0 to 5.0.

mos_min_at_pv
timestamp of when the minimum MOS value was encountered during the call

mos_min_packetloss_pv
amount of packetloss in percent at the time the minimum MOS value was encountered

mos_min_roundtrip_pv
packet round-trip time in milliseconds at the time the minimum MOS value was encountered

mos_min_jitter_pv
amount of jitter in milliseconds at the time the minimum MOS value was encountered

Maximum edge Values

mos_max_pv
maximum encountered MOS value for the call.

mos_max_at_pv
timestamp of when the maximum MOS value was encountered during the cal

mos_max_packetloss_pv
amount of packetloss in percent at maximum MOS moment

mos_max_roundtrip_pv
packet round-trip time in milliseconds at maximum MOS moment

mos_max_jitter_pv
amount of jitter in milliseconds at maximum moment

Average Values

mos_average_pv
average (median) MOS value for the call.
Range – 1.0 through 5.0.

mos_average_packetloss_pv
average (median) amount of packetloss in percent present throughout the call.

mos_average_jitter_pv
average (median) amount of jitter in milliseconds present throughout the call.

mos_average_roundtrip_pv

mos_average_samples_pv
number of samples used to determine the other “average” MOS data points.

Labels

mos_A_label_pv
custom label used in rtpengine signalling.
If set, all the statistics pseudovariables with the A suffix will be filled in with statistics only from the call legs that match the label given in this variable.

A label’s min
mos_min_A_pv
mos_min_at_A_pv
mos_min_packetloss_A_pv
mos_min_jitter_A_pv
mos_min_roundtrip_A_pv

A label’s max
mos_max_A_pv
mos_max_at_A_pv
mos_max_packetloss_A_pv
mos_max_jitter_A_pv
mos_max_roundtrip_A_pv

A label’s average
mos_average_A_pv
mos_average_packetloss_A_pv
mos_average_jitter_A_pv
mos_average_roundtrip_A_pv
mos_average_samples_A_pv

B labels’s min
mos_B_label_pv
mos_min_B_pv
mos_min_at_B_pv
mos_min_packetloss_B_pv
mos_min_jitter_B_pv
mos_min_roundtrip_B_pv

B label’s max
mos_max_B_pv
mos_max_at_B_pv
mos_max_packetloss_B_pv
mos_max_jitter_B_pv
mos_max_roundtrip_B_pv

B label’s average
mos_average_B_pv
mos_average_packetloss_B_pv
mos_average_jitter_B_pv
mos_average_roundtrip_B_pv
mos_average_samples_B_pv

Setting MOS collection on kamailio

set the kamailio config rtpengine params for names the variable the hold specific mos values 

modparam("rtpengine", "mos_max_pv", "$avp(mos_max)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_average_pv", "$avp(mos_average)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_min_pv", "$avp(mos_min)")

modparam("rtpengine", "mos_average_packetloss_pv", "$avp(mos_average_packetloss)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_average_jitter_pv", "$avp(mos_average_jitter)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_average_roundtrip_pv", "$avp(mos_average_roundtrip)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_average_samples_pv", "$avp(mos_average_samples)")

modparam("rtpengine", "mos_min_pv", "$avp(mos_min)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_min_at_pv", "$avp(mos_min_at)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_min_packetloss_pv", "$avp(mos_min_packetloss)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_min_jitter_pv", "$avp(mos_min_jitter)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_min_roundtrip_pv", "$avp(mos_min_roundtrip)")

modparam("rtpengine", "mos_max_pv", "$avp(mos_max)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_max_at_pv", "$avp(mos_max_at)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_max_packetloss_pv", "$avp(mos_max_packetloss)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_max_jitter_pv", "$avp(mos_max_jitter)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_max_roundtrip_pv", "$avp(mos_max_roundtrip)")

modparam("rtpengine", "mos_A_label_pv", "$avp(mos_A_label)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_average_packetloss_A_pv", "$avp(mos_average_packetloss_A)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_average_jitter_A_pv", "$avp(mos_average_jitter_A)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_average_roundtrip_A_pv", "$avp(mos_average_roundtrip_A)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_average_A_pv", "$avp(mos_average_A)")

modparam("rtpengine", "mos_B_label_pv", "$avp(mos_B_label)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_average_packetloss_B_pv", "$avp(mos_average_packetloss_B)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_average_jitter_B_pv", "$avp(mos_average_jitter_B)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_average_roundtrip_B_pv", "$avp(mos_average_roundtrip_B)")
modparam("rtpengine", "mos_average_B_pv", "$avp(mos_average_B)")

For individual leg labbeling fill up the lables

KSR.pv.sets("$avp(mos_A_label)","Aleg_label")
KSR.pv.sets("$avp(mos_B_label)","Bleg_label")

Gather the mos stats from the code . Given exmaple is in Lua.
The values are filled in after invoking“rtpengine_delete”, “rtpengine_query”, or “rtpengine_manage” if the command resulted in a deletion of the call (or call branch).

KSR.log("info", " mos avg " .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_average)"))
KSR.log("info", " mos max " .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_max)"))
KSR.log("info", " mos min " .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_min)"))

KSR.log("info", "mos_average_packetloss_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_average_packetloss)"))
KSR.log("info", "mos_average_jitter_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_average_jitter)"))
KSR.log("info", "mos_average_roundtrip_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_average_roundtrip)"))
KSR.log("info", "mos_average_samples_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_average_samples)"))

KSR.log("info", "mos_min_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_min)"))
KSR.log("info", "mos_min_at_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_min_at)"))
KSR.log("info", "mos_min_packetloss_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_min_packetloss)"))
KSR.log("info", "mos_min_jitter_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_min_jitter)"))
KSR.log("info", "mos_min_roundtrip_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_min_roundtrip)"))

KSR.log("info", "mos_max_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_max)"))
KSR.log("info", "mos_max_at_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_max_at)"))
KSR.log("info", "mos_max_packetloss_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_max_packetloss)"))
KSR.log("info", "mos_max_jitter_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_max_jitter)"))
KSR.log("info", "mos_max_roundtrip_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_max_roundtrip)"))

local mos_A_label = KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_A_label)")
if not (mos_A_label == nil) then
    KSR.log("info", "mos_average_packetloss_A_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_average_packetloss_A)"))
    KSR.log("info", "mos_average_jitter_A_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_average_jitter_A)"))
    KSR.log("info", "mos_average_roundtrip_A_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_average_roundtrip_A)"))
    KSR.log("info", "mos_average_A_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_average_A)"))
end

local mos_B_label = KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_B_label)")
if not (mos_B_label == nil) then
    KSR.log("info", "mos_average_packetloss_B_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_average_packetloss_B)"))
    KSR.log("info", "mos_average_jitter_B_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_average_jitter_B)"))
    KSR.log("info", "mos_average_roundtrip_B_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_average_roundtrip_B)"))
    KSR.log("info", "mos_average_B_pv" .. KSR.pv.get("$avp(mos_average_B)"))
end

Sample obtained result for one leg

      "average MOS": {
        "MOS": 43,
        "round-trip time": 13430,
        "jitter": 0,
        "packet loss": 0,
        "samples": 4
      },
      "lowest MOS": {
        "MOS": 43,
        "round-trip time": 24184,
        "jitter": 0,
        "packet loss": 0,
        "reported at": 1590498085
      },
      "highest MOS": {
        "MOS": 44,
        "round-trip time": 8218,
        "jitter": 0,
        "packet loss": 0,
        "reported at": 1590498089
      },

CDR with MOS on freeswitch 

<?xmlversion="1.0"?>
					
<cdr core-uuid="[UUID]" switchname="freeswitch">
<channel_data>
	<state>
	<direction>
	<state_number>
	<flags>	
	<caps>
</channel_data>
					
<call-stats>			
	<audio>	
		<inbound>
			<raw_bytes>	
			<media_bytes>
			<packet_count>
			<media_packet_count>		
			<skip_packet_count>
			<jitter_packet_count>
			<dtmf_packet_count>	
			<cng_packet_count>		
			<flush_packet_count>
			<largest_jb_size>
			<jitter_min_variance>
			<jitter_max_variance>
			<jitter_loss_rate>
			<jitter_burst_rate>
			<mean_interval>
			<flaw_total>
			<quality_percentage>
			<mos>
		</inbound>				
		<outbound>
			<raw_bytes>
			<media_bytes>
			<packet_count>
			<media_packet_count>
			<skip_packet_count>
			<dtmf_packet_count>
			<cng_packet_count>
			<rtcp_packet_count>
			<rtcp_octet_count>
		</outbound>	
</audio>
				
<video>	
	<inbound>
		<raw_bytes>
		<media_bytes>
		<packet_count>
		<media_packet_count>
		<skip_packet_count>
		<jitter_packet_count>
		<dtmf_packet_count>
		<cng_packet_count>
		<flush_packet_count>
		<largest_jb_size>
		<jitter_min_variance>
		<jitter_max_variance>
		<jitter_loss_rate>
		<jitter_burst_rate>
		<mean_interval>
		<flaw_total>
		<quality_percentage>
		<mos>
	</inbound>	
	<outbound>
		<raw_bytes>
		<media_bytes>
		<packet_count>
		<media_packet_count>
		<skip_packet_count>
		<dtmf_packet_count>
		<cng_packet_count>
		<rtcp_packet_count>
		<rtcp_octet_count>	
	</outbound>
</video>
</call-stats>
				
<variables>		
<is_outbound>
<uuid><session_id><text_media_flow>
<direction>
<ep_codec_string>
<channel_name>
<secondary_recovery_module>
<verto_dvar_email><verto_dvar_avatar><jsock_uuid_str>
<verto_user><presence_id>
<verto_client_address><chat_proto>
<verto_host><event_channel_cookie>
<verto_profile_name>
<record_stereo><default_areacode><transfer_fallback_extension>
<toll_allow><accountcode><user_context><effective_caller_id_name><effective_caller_id_number>
<outbound_caller_id_name><outbound_caller_id_number><callgroup><user_name><domain_name>
<Event-Name>
<Core-UUID>
<FreeSWITCH-Hostname><FreeSWITCH-Switchname><FreeSWITCH-IPv4><FreeSWITCH-IPv6><Event-Date-Local><Event-Date-GMT><Event-Date-Timestamp>
<Event-Calling-File>
<Event-Calling-Function>
<Event-Calling-Line-Number>
<Event-Sequence>
<verto_remote_caller_id_name><verto_remote_caller_id_number>
<switch_r_sdp>

<call_uuid><open>
<rtp_secure_media>
<export_vars><conference_enter_sound>
<conference_exit_sound><video_banner_text>
<rtp_use_codec_string><remote_audio_media_flow>
<audio_media_flow>
<rtp_audio_recv_pt>
<rtp_use_codec_name> 
<rtp_use_codec_fmtp>
<rtp_use_codec_rate>
<rtp_use_codec_ptime>
<rtp_use_codec_channels>
<rtp_last_audio_codec_string>
<original_read_codec>
<original_read_rate>
<write_codec><write_rate>
<remote_audio_ip>
<remote_audio_port>
<remote_audio_rtcp_ip>
<remote_audio_rtcp_port>
<dtmf_type>
<remote_video_media_flow>
<video_media_flow>
<video_possible>
<rtp_video_pt>
<rtp_video_recv_pt>
<video_read_codec>
<video_read_rate><video_write_codec><video_write_rate><rtp_last_video_codec_string>
<rtp_use_video_codec_name>
<rtp_use_video_codec_rate>
<rtp_use_video_codec_ptime>
<remote_video_ip><remote_video_port>
<remote_video_rtcp_ip><remote_video_rtcp_port>
<local_media_ip><local_media_port>
<advertised_media_ip>
<rtp_use_timer_name><rtp_use_pt>
<rtp_use_ssrc><rtp_2833_send_payload>
<rtp_2833_recv_payload><remote_media_ip>
<remote_media_port><local_video_ip>
<local_video_port><rtp_use_video_pt><rtp_use_video_ssrc><rtp_local_sdp_str><current_application_data><current_application><send_silence_when_idle><rtp_has_crypto><endpoint_disposition><conference_name><conference_member_id><conference_moderator><conference_ghost><conference_uuid><video_width><video_height><video_fps><verto_hangup_disposition><read_codec><read_rate><hangup_cause><hangup_cause_q850>
<digits_dialed>
<start_stamp><profile_start_stamp><answer_stamp><progress_media_stamp><end_stamp>
<start_epoch><start_uepoch>
<profile_start_epoch><profile_start_uepoch>
<answer_epoch><answer_uepoch
><bridge_epoch><bridge_uepoch>
<last_hold_epoch><last_hold_uepoch>
<hold_accum_seconds><hold_accum_usec><hold_accum_ms><resurrect_epoch><resurrect_uepoch>
<progress_epoch><progress_uepoch><progress_media_epoch><progress_media_uepoch>
<end_epoch><end_uepoch>
<last_app><last_arg><caller_id><duration><billsec><progresssec><answersec><waitsec><progress_mediasec>

<flow_billsec>
<mduration><billmsec><progressmsec><answermsec><waitmsec><progress_mediamsec><flow_billmsec><uduration><billusec><progressusec><answerusec><waitusec><progress_mediausec>
<flow_billusec>

<rtp_audio_in_raw_bytes>
<rtp_audio_in_media_bytes>
<rtp_audio_in_packet_count>
<rtp_audio_in_media_packet_count>
<rtp_audio_in_skip_packet_count><rtp_audio_in_jitter_packet_count><rtp_audio_in_dtmf_packet_count>
<rtp_audio_in_cng_packet_count>
<rtp_audio_in_flush_packet_count>
<rtp_audio_in_largest_jb_size>
<rtp_audio_in_jitter_min_variance><rtp_audio_in_jitter_max_variance>
<rtp_audio_in_jitter_loss_rate>
<rtp_audio_in_jitter_burst_rate>
<rtp_audio_in_mean_interval>
<rtp_audio_in_flaw_total>
<rtp_audio_in_quality_percentage>
<rtp_audio_in_mos>
<rtp_audio_out_raw_bytes>
<rtp_audio_out_media_bytes>
<rtp_audio_out_packet_count>
<rtp_audio_out_media_packet_count><rtp_audio_out_skip_packet_count><rtp_audio_out_dtmf_packet_count>
<rtp_audio_out_cng_packet_count>
<rtp_audio_rtcp_packet_count>
<rtp_audio_rtcp_octet_count>
<rtp_video_in_raw_bytes>
<rtp_video_in_media_bytes>
<rtp_video_in_packet_count>
<rtp_video_in_media_packet_count>
<rtp_video_in_skip_packet_count><rtp_video_in_jitter_packet_count><rtp_video_in_dtmf_packet_count>
<rtp_video_in_cng_packet_count>
<rtp_video_in_flush_packet_count>
<rtp_video_in_largest_jb_size>
<rtp_video_in_jitter_min_variance><rtp_video_in_jitter_max_variance>
<rtp_video_in_jitter_loss_rate>
<rtp_video_in_jitter_burst_rate>
<rtp_video_in_mean_interval
><rtp_video_in_flaw_total>
<rtp_video_in_quality_percentage>
<rtp_video_in_mos>
<rtp_video_out_raw_bytes>
<rtp_video_out_media_bytes>
<rtp_video_out_packet_count>
<rtp_video_out_media_packet_count><rtp_video_out_skip_packet_count><rtp_video_out_dtmf_packet_count>
<rtp_video_out_cng_packet_count>
<rtp_video_rtcp_packet_count>
<rtp_video_rtcp_octet_count>

</variables>

<app_log>			
	<application app_name="..."app_data="...">
	<application app_name="..."app_data="...">
</app_log>
				
<callflow dialplan="XML" unique-id="[UUID]" profile_index="1">
	
	<extension name="myconference" number="3500">		
		<application app_name="..." app_data="...">
	</extension>	
	<caller_profile>
		<username>
		<dialplan>
		<caller_id_name>
		<caller_id_number>
		<callee_id_name>
		<callee_id_number>
		<ani>
		<aniii>
		<network_addr>
		<rdnis>
		<destination_number>
		<uuid>
		<source>
		<context>
		<chan_name>
	</caller_profile>
				
			
	<times>
		<created_time>
		<profile_created_time>
		<progress_time>	
		<progress_media_time>
		<answered_time>
		<bridged_time>
		<last_hold_time>	
		<hold_accum_time>
		<hangup_time>
		<resurrect_time>	
		<transfer_time>	
	</times>
</callflow>
				
</cdr>

As the techinolgy for packet switching matured, the voice quality between circuit switched and packet switched network is mostly indistinguishable . However the flaws in VoIP communication system reappear under low network conditions and bad architecturing. Especially with applciation that are greedy for network bandwidth such as large scale conferencing or HD streaming , the need for monitoring and quality control are very high , which can be only meet by above described QoS parameters

References

  • CDR on freeswitch
  • ITU-T G.114 TELECOMMUNICATION STANDARDIZATION SECTOR OF ITU (05/2003) SERIES G: TRANSMISSION SYSTEMS AND MEDIA, DIGITAL SYSTEMS AND NETWORKS , International telephone connections and circuits – General Recommendations on the transmission qua
  • Kamailio RTP engine https://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/devel/modules/rtpengine.html

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 , send other SIP requests and wait for reponses based on dafult of custom xml scenario files.

Plus factor is the dynamic display of statistics about running tests (call rate, round trip delay, and message statistics), periodic CSV statistics dumps, TCP and UDP over multiple sockets or multiplexed with retransmission management, regular expressions and variables in scenario files, and dynamically adjustable call rates.

sipp -sn uac -d 10000 -s 9876543210 127.0.0.1:5060  -l 10

It is widley used as aperformnace and load testing tool since it can test SIP equipements like SIP proxies, B2BUAs, SIP media servers, SIP/x gateways, and SIP PBXes and can also emulate thousands of user agents calling your SIP system.

More on SIPp scripts and various exmaples can be read from

https://github.com/altanai/kamailioexamples/tree/master/sipp

Installation

Pre-requisites to compile SIPp are:
– C++ Compiler
– curses or ncurses library
– For TLS support: OpenSSL >= 0.9.8
– For pcap play support: libpcap and libnet
– For SCTP support: lksctp-tools
– For distributed pauses: Gnu Scientific Libraries

sudo apt-get install dh-autoreconf ncurses-dev libssl-dev libpcap-dev libncurses5-dev libsctp-dev lksctp-tools

Either get source code from git 

git clone https://github.com/SIPp/sipp.git
cd sipp
cmake . -DUSE_SSL=1 -DUSE_SCTP=1 -DUSE_PCAP=1 -DUSE_GSL=1
make

or download readymade tar , then extract and build with options like 

tar -xvzf sipp-xxx.tar.gz
cd sipp
./configure --with-sctp --with-pcap --with-openssl
make

Building certs for TLS based sipp UAS server

make master dir for all certs

mkdir certs 
chmod 0700 certs
cd certs

Make CA folder, create cert and check

mkdir demoCA
cd demoCA
mkdir newcerts
echo '01' > serial
touch index.txt
openssl req -new -x509 -extensions v3_ca -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem -days 3650

Validation of the contents of certs ( optional )

openssl x509 -in cert.pem -noout -text
openssl x509 -in cert.pem -noout -dates
openssl x509 -in cert.pem -noout -purpose

Make domain folder and create the certs for the sip domain name from parent and check

cd ..
mkdir 10.10.10.10
openssl req -new -nodes -keyout key.pem -out req.pem
cd ..
openssl ca -days 730 -out 10.10.10.10/cert.pem -keyfile demoCA/key.pem -cert demoCA/cert.pem -infiles 10.10.10.10/req.pem

Verify the generated certificate for for SIP domain

openssl x509 -in 10.10.10.10/cert.pem -noout -text

Run sipp

sipp -sn uas -p 5077 -t l1 -tls_key /home/ubuntu/certs/10.10.10.10/key.pem  -tls_cert /home/ubuntu/certs/10.10.10.10/cert.pem  -i 10.10.10.10

Verify installation

Run sipp with embedded server (uas) scenario:

sipp -sn uas

On the same host, run sipp with embedded client (uac) scenario:

sipp -sn uac 127.0.0.1 -trace_msg -trace_err
output for server 

 # sipp -sn uas

------------------------------ Scenario Screen -------- [1-9]: Change Screen --

  Port   Total-time  Total-calls  Transport
  5060      32.95 s           61  UDP
0 new calls during 0.874 s period      1 ms scheduler resolution
  19 calls                               Peak was 41 calls, after 28 s
  0 Running, 63 Paused, 12 Woken up
  0 dead call msg (discarded)          
  3 open sockets                        
                             Messages  Retrans   Timeout   Unexpected-Msg

----------> INVITE             61        0         0         0 
<---------- 180                61        0                               <---------- 200                61        0         0                     ----------> ACK         E-RTD1 61        0         0         0               

----------> BYE                61        0         0         0        
   <---------- 200                61        0                            
   [   4000ms] Pause              61                            0        
 ------------------------------ Test Terminated --------------------------------
----------------------------- Statistics Screen ------- [1-9]: Change Screen --

  Start Time             | 2019-02-04    13:04:32.108663 1549265672.108663         
  Last Reset Time        | 2019-02-04    13:05:04.189720 1549265704.189720         
  Current Time           | 2019-02-04    13:05:05.065119 1549265705.065119         
-------------------------+---------------------------+--------------------------
  Counter Name           | Periodic value            | Cumulative value
-------------------------+---------------------------+--------------------------
  Elapsed Time           | 00:00:00:875000           | 00:00:32:956000          
  Call Rate              |    0.000 cps              |    1.851 cps             
-------------------------+---------------------------+--------------------------

  Incoming call created  |        0                  |       61                 

  OutGoi traceings

———————————————– 2019-02-04 13:08:13.939148
UDP message sent (530 bytes):

INVITE sip:service@127.0.0.1:5060 SIP/2.0
 Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 192.x.x.x:5061;branch=z9hG4bK-52422-25-0
 From: sipp ;tag=52422SIPpTag0025
 To: service 
 Call-ID: 25-52422@192.x.x.x
 CSeq: 1 INVITE
 Contact: sip:sipp@192.x.x.x:5061
 Max-Forwards: 70
 Subject: Performance Test
 Content-Type: application/sdp
 Content-Length:   135
v=0
o=user1 53655765 2353687637 IN IP4 192.x.x.x
s=-
c=IN IP4 192.x.x.x
t=0 0
m=audio 6004 RTP/AVP 0
a=rtpmap:0 PCMU/8000

———————————————– 2019-02-04 13:08:13.939310
UDP message received [321] bytes :

SIP/2.0 180 Ringing
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 192.x.x.x:5061;branch=z9hG4bK-52422-1-0
From: sipp ;tag=52422SIPpTag001
To: service ;tag=52416SIPpTag011
Call-ID: 1-52422@192.x.x.x
CSeq: 1 INVITE
Contact: 
Content-Length: 0

———————————————– 2019-02-04 13:08:13.939905
UDP message received [486] bytes :

SIP/2.0 200 OK
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 192.x.x.x:5061;branch=z9hG4bK-52422-1-0
From: sipp ;tag=52422SIPpTag001
To: service ;tag=52416SIPpTag011
Call-ID: 1-52422@192.x.x.x
CSeq: 1 INVITE
Contact: 
Content-Type: application/sdp
Content-Length:   135
v=0
o=user1 53655765 2353687637 IN IP4 192.x.x.x
s=-
c=IN IP4 192.x.x.x
t=0 0
m=audio 6000 RTP/AVP 0
a=rtpmap:0 PCMU/8000

———————————————– 2019-02-04 13:08:13.940159
UDP message sent (371 bytes):

ACK sip:service@127.0.0.1:5060 SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 192.x.x.x:5061;branch=z9hG4bK-52422-1-5
From: sipp ;tag=52422SIPpTag001
To: service ;tag=52416SIPpTag011
Call-ID: 1-52422@192.x.x.x
CSeq: 1 ACK
Contact: sip:sipp@192.x.x.x:5061
Max-Forwards: 70
Subject: Performance Test
Content-Length: 0

~ RTP

———————————————– 2019-02-04 13:08:13.941658
UDP message sent (371 bytes):

BYE sip:service@127.0.0.1:5060 SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 192.x.x.x:5061;branch=z9hG4bK-52422-1-7
From: sipp ;tag=52422SIPpTag001
To: service ;tag=52416SIPpTag011
Call-ID: 1-52422@192.x.x.x
CSeq: 2 BYE
Contact: sip:sipp@192.x.x.x:5061
Max-Forwards: 70
Subject: Performance Test
Content-Length: 0

———————————————– 2019-02-04 13:08:13.952888
UDP message received [313] bytes :

SIP/2.0 200 OK
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 192.x.x.x:5061;branch=z9hG4bK-52422-1-7
From: sipp ;tag=52422SIPpTag001
To: service ;tag=52416SIPpTag011
Call-ID: 1-52422@192.x.x.x
CSeq: 2 BYE
Contact: 
Content-Length: 0

Time 

---------------------------- Repartition Screen ------- [1-9]: Change Screen --

  Average Response Time Repartition 1                                           

           0 ms <= n <        10 ms :        293                                
          10 ms <= n <        20 ms :          9                                
          20 ms <= n <        30 ms :          0                                
          30 ms <= n <        40 ms :          0                                
          40 ms <= n <        50 ms :          0                                
          50 ms <= n <       100 ms :          0                                
         100 ms <= n <       150 ms :          0                                
         150 ms <= n <       200 ms :          0                                
                   n >=      200 ms :          0                                

  Average Call Length Repartition                                               

           0 ms <= n <        10 ms :          0                                
          10 ms <= n <        50 ms :          0                                
          50 ms <= n <       100 ms :          0                                
         100 ms <= n <       500 ms :          0                                
         500 ms <= n <      1000 ms :          0                                
        1000 ms <= n <      5000 ms :        262                                
        5000 ms <= n <     10000 ms :          0                                
                   n >=    10000 ms :          0                                

------------------------------ Sipp Server Mode -------------------------------

Output for client 

uac.xml
 
SIPp UAC Remote
 |(1) INVITE |
 |------------------>|
 |(2) 100 (optional) |
 |<------------------| 
 |(3) 180 (optional) | 
  |<------------------| 
|(4) 200             | 
|<------------------| 
|(5) ACK             | 
|------------------>|
 |                     |
 |(6) PAUSE             |
 |                     |
 |(7) BYE             |
 |------------------>|
 |(8) 200             |
 |<------------------|

sipp -sn uac 127.0.0.1 -trace_msg -trace_err
Resolving remote host ‘127.0.0.1’… Done.
—————————— Scenario Screen ——– [1-9]: Change Screen —
Call-rate(length) Port Total-time Total-calls Remote-host
10.0(0 ms)/1.000s 5061 17.32 s 98 127.0.0.1:5060(UDP)

3 new calls during 0.286 s period 1 ms scheduler resolution
0 calls (limit 30) Peak was 25 calls, after 10 s
0 Running, 101 Paused, 7 Woken up
0 dead call msg (discarded) 0 out-of-call msg (discarded)
3 open sockets 

                             Messages  Retrans   Timeout   Unexpected-Msg
  INVITE ---------->         98        0         0                  
     100 <----------         0         0         0         0        
     180 <----------         98        0         0         0        
     183 <----------         0         0         0         0        
     200          98        0                            
   Pause [      0ms]         98                            0        
     BYE ---------->         98        0         0                  
     200 <----------         98        0         0         0

—————————— Test Terminated ——————————–

----------------------------- Statistics Screen ------- [1-9]: Change Screen --

  Start Time             | 2019-02-04    13:08:03.908208 1549265883.908208         
  Last Reset Time        | 2019-02-04    13:08:20.954289 1549265900.954289         
  Current Time           | 2019-02-04    13:08:21.241152 1549265901.241152         

-------------------------+---------------------------+--------------------------
  Counter Name           | Periodic value            | Cumulative value

-------------------------+---------------------------+--------------------------
  Elapsed Time           | 00:00:00:286000           | 00:00:17:332000          

  Call Rate

Tracings

———————————————– 2019-02-04 13:08:13.934840
UDP message received [527] bytes :

INVITE sip:service@127.0.0.1:5060 SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 192.x.x.x:5061;branch=z9hG4bK-52422-1-0
From: sipp ;tag=52422SIPpTag001
To: service 
Call-ID: 1-52422@192.x.x.x
CSeq: 1 INVITE
Contact: sip:sipp@192.x.x.x:5061
Max-Forwards: 70
Subject: Performance Test
Content-Type: application/sdp
Content-Length:   135
v=0
o=user1 53655765 2353687637 IN IP4 192.x.x.x
s=-
c=IN IP4 192.x.x.x
t=0 0
m=audio 6004 RTP/AVP 0
a=rtpmap:0 PCMU/8000

———————————————– 2019-02-04 13:08:13.936616
UDP message sent (321 bytes):

SIP/2.0 180 Ringing
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 192.x.x.x:5061;branch=z9hG4bK-52422-1-0
From: sipp ;tag=52422SIPpTag001
To: service ;tag=52416SIPpTag011
Call-ID: 1-52422@192.x.x.x
CSeq: 1 INVITE
Contact: 
Content-Length: 0

———————————————– 2019-02-04 13:08:13.937003
UDP message sent (486 bytes):

SIP/2.0 200 OK
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 192.x.x.x:5061;branch=z9hG4bK-52422-1-0
From: sipp ;tag=52422SIPpTag001
To: service ;tag=52416SIPpTag011
Call-ID: 1-52422@192.x.x.x
CSeq: 1 INVITE
Contact: 
Content-Type: application/sdp
Content-Length:   135
v=0
o=user1 53655765 2353687637 IN IP4 192.x.x.x
s=-
c=IN IP4 192.x.x.x
t=0 0
m=audio 6000 RTP/AVP 0
a=rtpmap:0 PCMU/8000

———————————————– 2019-02-04 13:08:13.948679
UDP message received [371] bytes :

ACK sip:service@127.0.0.1:5060 SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 192.x.x.x:5061;branch=z9hG4bK-52422-1-5
From: sipp ;tag=52422SIPpTag001
To: service ;tag=52416SIPpTag011
Call-ID: 1-52422@192.x.x.x
CSeq: 1 ACK
Contact: sip:sipp@192.x.x.x:5061
Max-Forwards: 70
Subject: Performance Test
Content-Length: 0

~ RTP

———————————————– 2019-02-04 13:08:13.949168
UDP message received [371] bytes :

BYE sip:service@127.0.0.1:5060 SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 192.x.x.x:5061;branch=z9hG4bK-52422-1-7
From: sipp ;tag=52422SIPpTag001
To: service ;tag=52416SIPpTag011
Call-ID: 1-52422@192.x.x.x
CSeq: 2 BYE
Contact: sip:sipp@192.x.x.x:5061
Max-Forwards: 70
Subject: Performance Test
Content-Length: 0

———————————————– 2019-02-04 13:08:13.949245
UDP message sent (313 bytes):

SIP/2.0 200 OK
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 192.x.x.x:5061;branch=z9hG4bK-52422-1-7
From: sipp ;tag=52422SIPpTag001
To: service ;tag=52416SIPpTag011
Call-ID: 1-52422@192.x.x.x
CSeq: 2 BYE
Contact: 
Content-Length: 0

time 

---------------------------- Repartition Screen ------- [1-9]: Change Screen --

  Average Response Time Repartition 1                                           

           0 ms <= n <        10 ms :        657                                
          10 ms <= n <        20 ms :         20                                
          20 ms <= n <        30 ms :          0                                
          30 ms <= n <        40 ms :          0                                
          40 ms <= n <        50 ms :          0                                
          50 ms <= n <       100 ms :          0                                
         100 ms <= n <       150 ms :          0                                
         150 ms <= n <       200 ms :          0                                
                   n >=      200 ms :          0                                

  Average Call Length Repartition                                               

           0 ms <= n <        10 ms :        649                                
          10 ms <= n <        50 ms :         28                                
          50 ms <= n <       100 ms :          0                                
         100 ms <= n <       500 ms :          0                                
         500 ms <= n <      1000 ms :          0                                
        1000 ms <= n <      5000 ms :          0                                
        5000 ms <= n <     10000 ms :          0                                
                   n >=    10000 ms :          0                                

------ [+|-|*|/]: Adjust rate ---- [q]: Soft exit ---- [p]: Pause traffic -----

Last Error: Overload warning: the major watchdog timer 3000ms has been t…

UAC with Media

SIPp UAC            Remote
    |(1) INVITE         |
    |------------------>|
    |(2) 100 (optional) |
    |<------------------|
    |(3) 180 (optional) |
    |<------------------|
    |(4) 200            |
    |<------------------|
    |(5) ACK            |
    |------------------>|
    |                   |
    |(6) RTP send (8s)  |
    |==================>|
    |                   |
    |(7) RFC2833 DIGIT 1|
    |==================>|
    |                   |
    |(8) BYE            |
    |------------------>|
    |(9) 200            |
    |<------------------|

sipp Usage:

sipp remote_host[:remote_port] [options]

Run SIPp with embedded server (uas) scenario: ./sipp -sn uas On the same host, run SIPp with embedded client (uac) scenario: ./sipp -sn uac 127.0.0.1

Scenario file options:

  • -sd : Dumps a default scenario (embedded in the SIPp executable)
  • -sf : Loads an alternate XML scenario file. To learn more about XML scenario syntax, use the -sd option to dump embedded scenarios. They contain all the necessary help.
  • -oocsf : Load out-of-call scenario.
  • -oocsn : Load out-of-call scenario.
  • -sn : Use a default scenario (embedded in the SIPp executable). If this option is omitted, the Standard SipStone UAC scenario is loaded. Available values in this version: 
    • ‘uac’ : Standard SipStone UAC (default).
    • ‘uas’ : Simple UAS responder.
    • ‘regexp’ : Standard SipStone UAC – with regexp and variables.
    • ‘branchc’ : Branching and conditional branching in scenarios – client.
    • ‘branchs’ : Branching and conditional branching in scenarios – server.
    Default 3pcc scenarios (see -3pcc option):
    • ‘3pcc-C-A’ : Controller A side (must be started after all other 3pcc scenarios)
    • ‘3pcc-C-B’ : Controller B side.
    • ‘3pcc-A’ : A side.
    • ‘3pcc-B’ : B side.

IP, port and protocol options

  • -t : Set the transport mode:
    • u1: UDP with one socket (default),
    • un: UDP with one socket per call,
    • ui: UDP with one socket per IP address. The IP addresses must be defined in the injection file.
    • t1: TCP with one socket,
    • tn: TCP with one socket per call,
    • l1: TLS with one socket,
    • ln: TLS with one socket per call,
    • c1: u1 + compression (only if compression plugin loaded),
    • cn: un + compression (only if compression plugin loaded). This plugin is not provided with SIPp.
  • -i : Set the local IP address for ‘Contact:’,’Via:’, and ‘From:’ headers. Default is primary host IP address.
  • -p : Set the local port number. Default is a random free port chosen by the system 
  • -bind_local : Bind socket to local IP address, i.e. the local IP address is used as the source IP address. If SIPp runs in server mode it will only listen on the local IP address instead of all IP addresses.
  • -ci : Set the local control IP address
  • -cp : Set the local control port number. Default is 8888.
  • -max_socket : Set the max number of sockets to open simultaneously. This option is significant if you use one socket per call. Once this limit is reached, traffic is distributed over the sockets already opened. Default value is 50000
  • -max_reconnect : Set the the maximum number of reconnection.
  • -reconnect_close : Should calls be closed on reconnect?
  • -reconnect_sleep : How long (in milliseconds) to sleep between the close and reconnect?
  • -rsa : Set the remote sending address to host:port for sending the messages.
  • -tls_cert : Set the name for TLS Certificate file. Default is ‘cacert.pem
  • -tls_key : Set the name for TLS Private Key file. Default is ‘cakey.pem’
  • -tls_ca : Set the name for TLS CA file. If not specified, X509 verification is not activated.
  • -tls_crl : Set the name for Certificate Revocation List file. If not specified, X509 CRL is not activated.
  • -tls_version : Set the TLS protocol version to use (1.0, 1.1, 1.2) — default is autonegotiate

SIPp overall behavior options:

  • -v : Display version and copyright information.
  • -bg : Launch SIPp in background mode.
  • -nostdin : Disable stdin.
  • -plugin : Load a plugin.
  • -sleep : How long to sleep for at startup. Default unit is seconds.
  • -skip_rlimit : Do not perform rlimit tuning of file descriptor limits. Default: false.
  • -buff_size : Set the send and receive buffer size.
  • -sendbuffer_warn : Produce warnings instead of errors on SendBuffer failures.
  • -lost : Set the number of packets to lose by default (scenario specifications override this value).
  • -key : keyword value Set the generic parameter named “keyword” to “value”.
  • -set : variable value Set the global variable parameter named “variable” to “value”.
  • -tdmmap : Generate and handle a table of TDM circuits. A circuit must be available for the call to be placed. Format: -tdmmap {0-3}{99}{5-8}{1-31}
  • -dynamicStart : variable value Set the start offset of dynamic_id variable
  • -dynamicMax : variable value Set the maximum of dynamic_id variable 
  • -dynamicStep : variable value Set the increment of dynamic_id variable

Call behavior options:

  • -aa : Enable automatic 200 OK answer for INFO, NOTIFY, OPTIONS and UPDATE.
  • -base_cseq : Start value of [cseq] for each call.
  • -cid_str : Call ID string (default %u-%p@%s). %u=call_number, %s=ip_address, %p=process_number, %%=% (in any order).
  • -d : Controls the length of calls. More precisely, this controls the duration of ‘pause’ instructions in the scenario, if they do not have a ‘milliseconds’ section. Default value is 0 and default unit is milliseconds.
  • -deadcall_wait : How long the Call-ID and final status of calls should be kept to improve message and error logs (default unit is ms).
  • -auth_uri : Force the value of the URI for authentication. By default, the URI is composed of remote_ip:remote_port.
  • -au : Set authorization username for authentication challenges. Default is taken from -s argument
  • -ap : Set the password for authentication challenges. Default is ‘password’
  • -s : Set the username part of the request URI. Default is ‘service’.
  • -default_behaviors: Set the default behaviors that SIPp will use. Possible values are:
    • all Use all default behaviors
    • none Use no default behaviors
    • bye Send byes for aborted calls
    • abortunexp Abort calls on unexpected messages
    • pingreply Reply to ping requests If a behavior is prefaced with a -, then it is turned off. Example: all,-bye
  • -nd : No Default. Disable all default behavior of SIPp which are the following:
  • On UDP retransmission timeout, abort the call by sending a BYE or a CANCEL
  • On receive timeout with no ontimeout attribute, abort the call by sending a BYE or a CANCEL
  • On unexpected BYE send a 200 OK and close the call
  • On unexpected CANCEL send a 200 OK and close the call
  • On unexpected PING send a 200 OK and continue the call
  • On any other unexpected message, abort the call by sending a BYE or a CANCEL
  • -pause_msg_ign : Ignore the messages received during a pause defined in the scenario 
  • -callid_slash_ign: Don’t treat a triple-slash in Call-IDs as indicating an extra SIPp prefix.

Injection file options:

  • -inf : Inject values from an external CSV file during calls into the scenarios. First line of this file say whether the data is to be read in sequence (SEQUENTIAL), random (RANDOM), or user (USER) order. Each line corresponds to one call and has one or more ‘;’ delimited data fields. Those fields can be referred as [field0], [field1], … in the xml scenario file. Several CSV files can be used simultaneously (syntax: -inf f1.csv -inf f2.csv …)
  • -infindex : file field Create an index of file using field. For example -inf ../path/to/users.csv -infindex users.csv 0 creates an index on the first key.
  • -ip_field : Set which field from the injection file contains the IP address from which the client will send its messages. If this option is omitted and the ‘-t ui’ option is present, then field 0 is assumed. Use this option together with ‘-t ui’

RTP behaviour options:

  • -mi : Set the local media IP address (default: local primary host IP address)
  • -rtp_echo : Enable RTP echo. RTP/UDP packets received on port defined by -mp are echoed to their sender. RTP/UDP packets coming on this port + 2 are also echoed to their sender (used for sound and video echo).
  • -mb : Set the RTP echo buffer size (default: 2048).
  • -mp : Set the local RTP echo port number. Default is 6000.
  • -rtp_payload : RTP default payload type.
  • -rtp_threadtasks : RTP number of playback tasks per thread.
  • -rtp_buffsize : Set the rtp socket send/receive buffer size.

Call rate options:

  • -r : Set the call rate (in calls per seconds). This value can bechanged during test by pressing ‘+’, ‘_’, ‘*’ or ‘/’. Default is 10.
    • pressing ‘+’ key to increase call rate by 1 * rate_scale,
    • pressing ‘-‘ key to decrease call rate by 1 * rate_scale,
    • pressing ‘*’ key to increase call rate by 10 * rate_scale,
    • pressing ‘/’ key to decrease call rate by 10 * rate_scale.
  • -rp : Specify the rate period for the call rate. Default is 1 second and default unit is milliseconds. This allows you to have n calls every m milliseconds(by using -r n -rp m). Example: -r 7 -rp 2000 ==> 7 calls every 2 seconds. -r 10 -rp 5s => 10 calls every 5 seconds.
  • -rate_scale : Control the units for the ‘+’, ‘-‘, ‘*’, and ‘/’ keys.
  • -rate_increase : Specify the rate increase every -rate_interval units (default is seconds). This allows you to increase the load for each independent logging period. Example: -rate_increase 10 -rate_interval 10s ==> increase calls by 10 every 10 seconds.
  • -rate_max : 

If -rate_increase is set, then quit after the rate reaches this value. Example: -rate_increase 10 -rate_max 100 ==> increase calls by 10 until 100 cps is hit.

  • -rate_interval : Set the interval by which the call rate is increased. Defaults to the value of -fd.
  • -no_rate_quit : If -rate_increase is set, do not quit after the rate reaches -rate_max.
  • -l :  Set the maximum number of simultaneous calls. Once this limit is reached, traffic is decreased until the number of open calls goes down. Default: (3 * call_duration (s) * rate).
  • -m : Stop the test and exit when ‘calls’ calls are processed
  • -users : Instead of starting calls at a fixed rate, begin ‘users’ calls at startup, and keep the number of calls constant.

Retransmission and timeout options:

  • -recv_timeout : Global receive timeout. Default unit is milliseconds. If the expected message is not received, the call times out and is aborted.
  • -send_timeout : Global send timeout. Default unit is milliseconds. If a message is not sent (due to congestion), the call times out and is aborted.
  • -timeout : Global timeout. Default unit is seconds. If this option is set, SIPp quits after nb units (-timeout 20s quits after 20 seconds).
  • -timeout_error : SIPp fails if the global timeout is reached is set (-timeout option required).
  • -max_retrans : Maximum number of UDP retransmissions before call ends on timeout. Default is 5 for INVITE transactions and 7 for others.
  • -max_invite_retrans: Maximum number of UDP retransmissions for invite transactions before call ends on timeout.
  • -max_non_invite_retrans: Maximum number of UDP retransmissions for non-invite transactions before call ends on timeout.
  • -nr : Disable retransmission in UDP mode.
  • -rtcheck : Select the retransmission detection method: full (default) or loose.
  • -T2 : Global T2-timer in milli seconds

Third-party call control options:

  • -3pcc : Launch the tool in 3pcc mode (“Third Party call control”). The passed IP address depends on the 3PCC role.
    • When the first twin command is ‘sendCmd’ then this is the address of the remote twin socket. SIPp will try to connect to this address:port to send the twin command (This instance must be started after all other 3PCC scenarios). Example: 3PCC-C-A scenario.
    • When the first twin command is ‘recvCmd’ then this is the address of the local twin socket. SIPp will open this address:port to listen for twin command. Example: 3PCC-C-B scenario.
  • -master : 3pcc extended mode: indicates the master number
  • -slave : 3pcc extended mode: indicates the slave number
  • -slave_cfg : 3pcc extended mode: indicates the file where the master and slave addresses are stored

Performance and watchdog options:

  • -timer_resol
    Set the timer resolution. Default unit is milliseconds. This option has an impact on timers precision.Small values allow more precise scheduling but impacts CPU usage.If the compression is on, the value is set to 50ms. The default value is 10ms.
  • -max_recv_loops Set the maximum number of messages received read per cycle. Increase this value for high traffic level. The default value is 1000.
  • -max_sched_loops Set the maximum number of calls run per event loop. Increase this value for high traffic level. The default value is 1000.
  • -watchdog_interval : Set gap between watchdog timer firings. Default is 400.
  • -watchdog_reset : If the watchdog timer has not fired in more than this time period, then reset the max triggers counters. Default is 10 minutes.
  • -watchdog_minor_threshold: If it has been longer than this period between watchdog executions count a minor trip. Default is 500.
  • -watchdog_major_threshold: If it has been longer than this period between watchdog executions count a major trip. Default is 3000.
  • -watchdog_major_maxtriggers : How many times the major watchdog timer can be tripped before the test is terminated. Default is 10.
  • -watchdog_minor_maxtriggers: How many times the minor watchdog timer can be tripped before the test is terminated. Default is 120.

Tracing, logging and statistics options:

  • -f : Set the statistics report frequency on screen. Default is 1 and default unit is seconds.
  • -trace_stat : Dumps all statistics in <scenario_name>_.csv file. Use the ‘-h stat’ option for a detailed description of the statistics file content.
  • -stat_delimiter : Set the delimiter for the statistics file
  • -stf : Set the file name to use to dump statistics
  • -fd : Set the statistics dump log report frequency. Default is 60 and default unit is seconds.
  • -periodic_rtd : Reset response time partition counters each logging interval.
  • -trace_msg : Displays sent and received SIP messages in __messages.log
  • -message_file : Set the name of the message log file.
  • -message_overwrite: Overwrite the message log file (default true).
  • -trace_shortmsg : Displays sent and received SIP messages as CSV in <scenario file name>__shortmessages.log
  • -shortmessage_file: Set the name of the short message log file.
  • -shortmessage_overwrite: Overwrite the short message log file (default true).
  • -trace_counts : Dumps individual message counts in a CSV file.
  • -trace_err : Trace all unexpected messages in __errors.log.
  • -error_file : Set the name of the error log file.
  • -error_overwrite : Overwrite the error log file (default true).
  • -trace_error_codes: Dumps the SIP response codes of unexpected messages to <scenario file name>__error_codes.log.
  • -trace_calldebug : Dumps debugging information about aborted calls to <scenario_name>__calldebug.log file.
  • -calldebug_file : Set the name of the call debug file.
  • -calldebug_overwrite: Overwrite the call debug file (default true).
  • -trace_screen : Dump statistic screens in the <scenario_name>__screens.log file when quitting SIPp. Useful to get a final status report in background mode (-bg option).
  • -screen_file : Set the name of the screen file.
  • -screen_overwrite: Overwrite the screen file (default true).
  • -trace_rtt : Allow tracing of all response times in __rtt.csv.
  • -rtt_freq : freq is mandatory. Dump response times every freq calls in the log file defined by -trace_rtt. Default value is 200.
  • -trace_logs : Allow tracing of actions in __logs.log.
  • -log_file : Set the name of the log actions log file.
  • -log_overwrite : Overwrite the log actions log file (default true).
  • -ringbuffer_files: How many error, message, shortmessage and calldebug files should be kept after rotation?
  • -ringbuffer_size : How large should error, message, shortmessage and calldebug files be before they get rotated?
  • -max_log_size : What is the limit for error, message, shortmessage and calldebug file sizes.

Signal handling:

SIPp can be controlled using POSIX signals. The following signals are handled: USR1: Similar to pressing the ‘q’ key. It triggers a soft exit of SIPp. No more new calls are placed and all ongoing calls are finished before SIPp exits. Example: kill -SIGUSR1 732 USR2: Triggers a dump of all statistics screens in <scenario_name>__screens.log file. Especially useful in background mode to know what the current status is. Example: kill -SIGUSR2 732

Exit codes:

Upon exit (on fatal error or when the number of asked calls (-m option) is reached, SIPp exits with one of the following exit code: 0: All calls were successful 1: At least one call failed 97: Exit on internal command. Calls may have been processed 99: Normal exit without calls processed -1: Fatal error -2: Fatal error binding a socket

Debugging

Issue1  The commonName field needed to be supplied and was missing 

Solution Given the common name while generating the certs

Issue2 If cmake error appears such as “command not found: cmake” then 

solutionsudo apt-get install build-essential cmake

References :

Gstreamer

GStreamer ( LGPL )ia a media handling library written in C for applicatioan such as streaming , recording, playback , mixing and editing attributes etc. Even enhnaced applicaiosn such as tsrancoding , media ormat conversion , streaming servers for embeeded devices ( read more about Gstreamer in RPi in my srticle here).
It encompases various codecs, filters and is modular with plugins developement to enhance its capabilities. Media Streaming application developers use it as part of their framework at either the broadcaster’s end or as media player.

gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc ! videoconvert ! autovideosink

More detailed reading :

GStreamer-1.8.1 rtsp server and client on ubuntu – Install and configuration for a RTSP Streaming server and Client https://telecom.altanai.com/2016/05/20/gstreamer-1-8-1-rtsp-server-and-client-on-ubuntu/

crtmpserver + ffmpeg –

https://telecom.altanai.com/2016/06/19/crtmpserver-ffmpeg

Streaming / broadcasting Live Video call to non webrtc supported browsers and media players

 attempts of streaming / broadcasting Live Video WebRTC call to non WebRTC supported browsers and media players such as VLC , ffplay , default video player in Linux etc .

https://telecom.altanai.com/2015/02/17/streaming-broadcasting-live-video-call-to-non-webrtc-supported-browsers-and-media-players/

continue : Streaming / broadcasting Live Video call to non webrtc supported browsers and media players

httontinuation to the attempts / outcomes and problems in building a WebRTC to RTP media framework that successfully stream / broadcast WebRTC content to non webrtc supported browsers ( safari / IE ) / media players ( VLC )

https://telecom.altanai.com/2015/02/26/continue-streaming-broadcasting-live-video-call-to-non-webrtc-supported-browsers-and-media-players/

TO continue with basics of gstreamer keep reading

To list all packages of Gstreamer

pkg-config --list-all | grep gstreamer
  • gstreamer-gl-1.0 GStreamer OpenGL Plugins Libraries – Streaming media framework, OpenGL plugins libraries
  • gstreamer-bad-video-1.0GStreamer bad video library – Bad video library for GStreamer elements
  • gstreamer-tag-1.0 GStreamer Tag Library – Tag base classes and helper functions
  • gstreamer-bad-base-1.0 GStreamer bad base classes – Bad base classes for GStreamer elements
  • gstreamer-net-1.0GStreamer networking library – Network-enabled GStreamer plug-ins and clocking
  • gstreamer-sdp-1.0 GStreamer SDP Library – SDP helper functions
  • gstreamer-1.0 GStreamer – Streaming media framework
  • gstreamer-bad-audio-1.0 GStreamer bad audio library, uninstalled – Bad audio library for GStreamer elements, Not Installedgstreamer-allocators-1.0 GStreamer Allocators Library – Allocators implementation
  • gstreamer-player-1.0 GStreamer Player – GStreamer Player convenience library
  • gstreamer-insertbin-1.0 GStreamer Insert Bin – Bin to automatically and insertally link elements
  • gstreamer-plugins-base-1.0 GStreamer Base Plugins Libraries – Streaming media framework, base plugins libraries
  • gstreamer-vaapi-glx-1.0 GStreamer VA-API (GLX) Plugins Libraries – Streaming media framework, VA-API (GLX) plugins librariesgstreamer-codecparsers-1.0 GStreamer codec parsers – Bitstream parsers for GStreamer elementsgstreamer-base-1.0 GStreamer base classes – Base classes for GStreamer elements
  • gstreamer-app-1.0 GStreamer Application Library – Helper functions and base classes for application integration
  • gstreamer-vaapi-drm-1.0 GStreamer VA-API (DRM) Plugins Libraries – Streaming media framework, VA-API (DRM) plugins librariesgstreamer-check-1.0 GStreamer check unit testing – Unit testing helper library for GStreamer modules
  • gstreamer-vaapi-1.0 GStreamer VA-API Plugins Libraries – Streaming media framework, VA-API plugins libraries
  • gstreamer-controller-1.0 GStreamer controller – Dynamic parameter control for GStreamer elements
  • gstreamer-video-1.0 GStreamer Video Library – Video base classes and helper functions
  • gstreamer-vaapi-wayland-1.0 GStreamer VA-API (Wayland) Plugins Libraries – Streaming media framework, VA-API (Wayland) plugins libraries
  • gstreamer-fft-1.0 GStreamer FFT Library – FFT implementation
  • gstreamer-mpegts-1.0 GStreamer MPEG-TS – GStreamer MPEG-TS support
  • gstreamer-pbutils-1.0 GStreamer Base Utils Library – General utility functions
  • gstreamer-vaapi-x11-1.0 GStreamer VA-API (X11) Plugins Libraries – Streaming media framework, VA-API (X11) plugins libraries
  • gstreamer-rtp-1.0 GStreamer RTP Library – RTP base classes and helper functions
  • gstreamer-rtsp-1.0 GStreamer RTSP Library – RTSP base classes and helper functions
  • gstreamer-riff-1.0 GStreamer RIFF Library – RIFF helper functions
  • gstreamer-audio-1.0 GStreamer Audio library – Audio helper functions and base classes
  • gstreamer-plugins-bad-1.0 GStreamer Bad Plugin libraries – Streaming media framework, bad plugins libraries
  • gstreamer-rtsp-server-1.0 gst-rtsp-server – GStreamer based RTSP server

At the time of writing this article Gstreamer an much early version in 1.X , which was newer than its then stable version 0.x. Since then the library has updated many fold. summarising release highlights for major versions as the blog was updated over time .

Project : Making and IP survillance system using gstreamer and Janus

To build a turn-key easily deployable surveillance solution 

Features :

  1. Paring of Android Mobile with box
  2. Live streaming from Box to Android
  3. Video Recording inside the  box
  4. Auto parsing of recorded video around motion detection 
  5. Event listeners 
  6. 2 way audio
  7. Inbuild Media Control Unit
  8. Efficient use of bandwidth 
  9. Secure session while live-streaming

Modules

  1. Authentication ( OTP / username- password)
  2. Livestreaming on Opus / vp8 
  3. Session Security and keepalives for live-streaming sessions
  4. Sync local videos to cloud storage 
  5. Record and playback with timeline and events 
  6. Parsing and restructuring video ( transcoding may also be required ) 
  7. Coturn server for NAT and ICE
  8. Web platform on box ( user interface )+ NoSQL
  9. Web platform on Cloud server ( Admin interface )+ NoSQL
  10.  REST APIs for third party add-ons ( Node based )
  11. Android demo app for receiving the live stream and feeds

Varrying experiments and working gstreamer commands

Local Network Stream 

To create /dev/video0

modprobe bcm2835-v4l2

To stream on rtspserver using rpicamsrc using h264 parse

./gst-rtsp-server-1.4.4/examples/test-launch --gst-debug=2 '(rpicamsrc num-buffers=5000 ! 'video/x-h264,width=1080,height=720,framerate=30/1' ! h264parse ! rtph264pay name=pay0 pt=96 )'

./test-launch “( tcpclientsrc host=127.0.0.1 port=5000 ! gdpdepay ! rtph264pay name=pay0 pt=96 )”

pipe raspivid to tcpserversink 

raspivid -t 0 -w 800 -h 600 -fps 25 -g 5 -b 4000000 -vf -n -o - | gst-launch-1.0 -v fdsrc ! h264parse ! gdppay ! tcpserversink host=127.0.0.1 port=5000;

Stream Video over local Network with 15 fps

raspivid -n -ih -t 0 -rot 0 -w 1280 -h 720 -fps 15 -b 1000000 -o - | nc -l -p 5001

streaming video over local network with 30FPS and higher bitrate 

raspivid -n -t 0 -rot 0 -w 1920 -h 1080 -fps 30 -b 5000000 -o - | nc -l -p 5001

Recording

Audio record to file
Using arecord :

arecord -D plughw:1 -c1 -r 48000 -f S16_LE -t wav -v file.wav;

Using pulse :
pulseAudio -D

gst-launch-1.0 -v pulsesrc device=hw:1 volume=8.0 ! audio/x-raw,format=S16LE ! audioconvert ! voaacenc bitrate=48000 ! aacparse ! flvmux ! filesink location = "testaudio.flv";

Video record to file ( mpg)

gst-launch-1.0 -e rpicamsrc bitrate=500000 ! 'video/x-h264,width=640,height=480’ ! mux. avimux name=mux ! filesink location=testvideo2.mpg;

Video record to file ( flv )

gst-launch-1.0 -e rpicamsrc bitrate=500000 ! video/x-h264,width=320,height=240,framerate=10/1 ! h264parse ! flvmux ! filesink location="testvieo.flv";

Video record to file ( h264)
gst-launch-1.0 -e rpicamsrc bitrate=500000 ! filesink location=”raw3.h264″;

Video record to file ( mp4)

gst-launch-1.0 -e rpicamsrc bitrate=500000 ! video/x-h264,width=320,height=240,framerate=10/1 ! h264parse ! mp4mux ! filesink location=video.mp4;

Audio + Video record to file ( flv)

gst-launch-1.0 -e /
rpicamsrc bitrate=500000 ! /
video/x-h264,width=320,height=240,framerate=10/1 ! h264parse ! muxout. /
pulsesrc volume=8.0 ! /
queue ! audioconvert ! voaacenc bitrate=65536 ! aacparse ! muxout. /
flvmux name=muxout streamable=true ! filesink location ='test44.flv';

Audio + Video record to file ( flv) using pulsesrc

gst-launch-1.0 -v --gst-debug-level=3 pulsesrc device="alsa_input.platform-asoc-simple-card.0.analog-stereo" volume=5.0 mute=FALSE ! audio/x-raw,format=S16LE,rate=48000,channels=1 ! audioresample ! audioconvert ! voaacenc ! aacparse ! flvmux ! filesink location="voicetest.flv";

Audio + Video record to file (mp4)

gst-launch-1.0 -e /
rpicamsrc bitrate=500000 ! /
video/x-h264,width=320,height=240,framerate=10/1 !s h264parse ! muxout. /
pulsesrc volume=4.0 ! /
queue ! audioconvert ! voaacenc ! muxout. /
flvmux name=muxout streamable=true ! filesink location = 'test224.mp4';

Streaming

stream raw Audio over RTMP to srtmpsink

gst-launch-1.0 pulsesrc device=hw:1 volume=8.0 ! /
audio/x-raw,format=S24LE ! audioconvert ! voaacenc bitrate=48000 ! aacparse ! flvmux ! rtmpsink location = “rtmp://192.168.0.3:1935/live/test”;

stream AACpparse Audio over RTMP to srtmpsink

gst-launch-1.0 -v --gst-debug-level=3 pulsesrc device="alsa_input.platform-asoc-simple-card.0.analog-stereo" volume=5.0 mute=FALSE ! audio/x-raw,format=S16LE,rate=48000,channels=1 ! audioresample ! audioconvert ! voaacenc ! aacparse ! flvmux ! rtmpsink location="rtmp://www.altani.com:1935/voice/1/test";

stream Video over RTMP

gst-launch-1.0 -e rpicamsrc bitrate=500000 ! /
video/x-h264,width=320,height=240,framerate=6/1 ! h264parse ! /
flvmux ! rtmpsink location = ‘rtmp://52.66.125.31:1935/live/test live=1’;

stream Audio + video over RTMP from rpicamsrc , framerate 10

gst-launch-1.0 rpicamsrc bitrate=500000 ! video/x-h264,width=320,height=240,framerate=10/1 ! h264parse ! muxout. pulsesrc volume=8.0 ! queue ! audioconvert ! voaacenc bitrate=65536 ! aacparse ! muxout. flvmux name=muxout streamable=true ! rtmpsink location ='rtmp://www.altanai.com/live/test44';

stream Audio + video over RTMP from rpicamsrc , framerate 30

gst-launch-1.0 rpicamsrc bitrate=500000 ! video/x-h264,width=1280,height=720,framerate=30/1 ! h264parse ! muxout. pulsesrc ! queue ! audioconvert ! voaacenc bitrate=65536 ! aacparse ! muxout. flvmux name=muxout ! queue ! rtmpsink location ='rtmp://www.altanai.com/live/test44';

VOD ( video On Demand )

Stream h264 file over RTMP

gst-launch-1.0 -e filesrc location="raw3.h264" ! video/x-h264 ! h264p
arse ! flvmux ! rtmpsink location = 'rtmp://www.altanai.com/live/test';

Stream flv file over RTMP

gst-launch-1.0 -e filesrc location=”testvieo.flv” ! /
video/x-h264,width=320,height=240,framerate=10/1 ! h264parse ! /
flvmux ! rtmpsink location = 'rtmp://192.168.0.3:1935/live/test';

Github Repo for Livestreaming

https://github.com/altanai/Livestreaming

Contains code for Android and ios Publishers , players on various platforms including HLS and Flash , streamings servers , Wowza playing mosules , webrtc broadcast

Gstreamer 1.8.0 – 24 March 2016

Features Hardware-accelerated zero-copy video decoding on Android

New video capture source for Android using the android.hardware.Camera API

Windows Media reverse playback support (ASF/WMV/WMA)

tracing system provides support for more sophisticated debugging tools

high-level GstPlayer playback convenience API

Initial support for the new Vulkan API

Improved Opus audio codec support: Support for more than two channels; MPEG-TS demuxer/muxer can handle Opus; sample-accurate encoding/decoding/transmuxing with Ogg, Matroska, ISOBMFF (Quicktime/MP4), and MPEG-TS as container; new codec utility functions for Opus header and caps handling in pbutils library. The Opus encoder/decoder elements were also moved to gst-plugins-base (from -bad), and the opus RTP depayloader/payloader to -good.

Asset proxy support in the GStreamer Editing Services

GStreamer 1.16.0 – 19 April 2019.

GStreamer WebRTC stack gained support for data channels for peer-to-peer communication based on SCTP, BUNDLE support, as well as support for multiple TURN servers.

AV1 video codec support for Matroska and QuickTime/MP4 containers and more configuration options and supported input formats for the AOMedia AV1 encoder

Closed Captions and other Ancillary Data in video

planar (non-interleaved) raw audio

GstVideoAggregator, compositor and OpenGL mixer elements are now in -base

New alternate fields interlace mode where each buffer carries a single field

WebM and Matroska ContentEncryption support in the Matroska demuxer

new WebKit WPE-based web browser source element

Video4Linux: HEVC encoding and decoding, JPEG encoding, and improved dmabuf import/export

Hardware-accelerated Nvidia video decoder gained support for VP8/VP9 decoding, whilst the encoder gained support for H.265/HEVC encoding.

Improvements to the Intel Media SDK based hardware-accelerated video decoder and encoder plugin (msdk): dmabuf import/export for zero-copy integration with other components; VP9 decoding; 10-bit HEVC encoding; video post-processing (vpp) support including deinterlacing; and the video decoder now handles dynamic resolution changes.

ASS/SSA subtitle overlay renderer can now handle multiple subtitles that overlap in time and will show them on screen simultaneously

Meson build feature-complete (with the exception of plugin docs) and it is now the recommended build system on all platforms. The Autotools build is scheduled to be removed in the next cycle.

GStreamer Rust bindings and Rust plugins module

GStreamer Editing Services allows directly playing back serialized edit list with playbin or (uri)decodebin

References :

https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org

OTT ( Over the Top ) Communication applications

Market trends are really not in favor of Telecom Service /providers with increasing use of OTT ( Over The Top ) application like watsapp , Facebook messenger , Google hangouts , skype  , viber , etc .

OTT
OTT ( Over The Top ) Applications

What is an OTT ?

An Over The Top ( OTT ) application is one which provides communication services over Internet . Therefore these bypass the communication billing system setup by a Telecom Operator , resulting in no gain or loss of revenue to Telecom Operator who is providing the Internet service to user in first place .

Hence we see that OTT are major threat and concern for Telecom Operators whose traditional and obviously expensive ( when compared to OTTs free service ) billing models are facing disruption .

Telecom Regulatory bodies around the world

The telecom regulatory authorities in some of the countries are for example listed as :

  • Afghanistan Telecom Regulatory Authority (ATRA) – Afganistan
  • Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) – Australia
  • Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) – Bnagaladesh
  • Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) – Canada
  • Ministry of Information Industry (MII) – China
  • Autorité de Régulation des Communications Électroniques et des Postes (ARCEP) – France
  • Bundesnetzagentur (BNA) – Germany
  • Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) – India
  • Ministry for Communications and Informatization of the Russian Federation (Minsvyaz) – Russia
  • Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) – Singapore
  • Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) – south Africa
  • Federal Communications Commission (FCC) , National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (regulators of individual states) (NARUC) , CTIA – The Wireless Association (CTIA) – USA

Such telecom regulatory bodies get to decide whether to enforce differential price to end consumers for using OTT so that telecom service providers can benefit or keep the Internet fair and open by passing Net Neutrality Laws and Bills and amendments .

what is Net Neaurality ?

The fundamental principle of Net Neurality is that Telecom Operators should not block , slow down or charge consumers extra for using other services as their means of communication. This states that it is wrong to charge users above the regular data rates for using VOIP apps and other internet based communication services.

The following counteries have adopted principles of Net Neutrality by passing bills or making law .

  • Chile – Chile’s General Law of Telecommunications, “No [ISP] can block, interfere with, discriminate, hinder, nor restrict the right of any Internet user of using, send, receive, or offer any content, application, or legitimate service through the Internet, as well as any activity or legitimate use conducted through the Internet.”
  • Brazil – ” Internet Bill of Rights ” makes equal access to internet mandatory in Brazil .
  • Netherlands – Even European Union has adopted Netherlands’ Net Neutrality amendment which reads “traffic should be treated equally, without discrimination, restriction or interference, independent of the sender, receiver, type, content, device, service or application.”
  • USA – Citizens make ‘We the People’ platform to ‘Restore Net Neutrality By Directing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to Classify Internet Providers as ‘Common Carriers‘. Therefore not allowing them to either throttle speed by paid prioritization , discriminate in pricing or block any broadband access to legal content .  Above facts are from this tech.firstpost.com article.

Inspite of the fact that I Support Net Neutrality with all my heart , as a telecom engineer I understand the cost investment made by Telecom operators in providing am efficient communication network to its subscribers ( Access , Network and Application layers ). Therefor I do have my sympathies with the Telcos and to level out the wide ranging conflict between Telcos and  ISP ( Internet Service Providers ) , I pen down the following points which reflect the Telecom Operators Problems and also highlight the solutions that can be adopted to counteract the OTT threat .

Depleting revenue for Telco

  1. Messaging – OTT messaging cost operators $13.9 billion, or 9% of message revenue in 2013
  2. Voice – Voice services under threat from VOIP services like Skype, Viber
  3. OTT apps – Voice & Message apps have been the operator’s biggest headache. Its time Operator should launch its own OTT Services
  4. Data Traffic – The utilization is yet to reach its peak. Will face challenges from  WiFi access
  5. Critical Pain areas – Erosion of Operator’s revenue from voice and (especially) messaging

Telco’s OTT aPPLICATION

At this stage it is crucial for a telecom Service provider / Operator to enter the Apps market and bring forth a Messenger which is more powerful , interactive and awesome than a OTT application.  Fortunately the Operator can always couple this application with his background telecom infrastructure to provide the edge in performance and functionalists .

Road block while developing a OTT application for a Telecom Service Provider :

  • Investment in Data Network is not being utilized due to lack of service
  • Reuse of Existing business Logic and extending the service reach across devices and networks is tough
  • Operator already has full fledged network Infrastructure in Place
  • Desire for minimum CAPEX while investing in new technologies
  • compete with OTT players and open new revenue streams is a challenge

Next we find the way of solving the problems and integrating them together to form a Solution .

OTT Application for Telecom Service provider

  • Introduce new services to benefit from investment on Data Plans and Bandwidth
  • Expose REST API to enable 3trd party Integration with existing network Infrastructure
  • Partner with individual OTT players to make new services  that do not compete on core competencies like billing etc
  • Use protocols like SIP that reduce CAPEX and have goto market more quickly
  • Go for enriched service that lead to better user experience

This writeup outlines the process of creating a OTT application for a Telecom Service Provider . Components for the application include cloud Address Book , Video Chatting , Location share , Contact synchronization ,REST based thin  client , OS and device agnostic etc shown in the figure below

telco's OTT app
telco’s OTT app

The Application  is designed to close knit with Operator’s own infrastructure hence the crucial entities like Network Address Book , Location Service are synced and fetched from Backend Network .

OTT application Feature Overview

Smart Address Book

  • Automatic: Get contacts from Gmail, Facebook
  • Fast search by first, last name, frequently
  •   dialed number
  • Roadmap: View calendar events
  • Personal: Get image from Gmail and display in   contacts list

Geo Location

  • Share own location during chatting
  • Get map for calculating the distance between two chat users
  • Roadmap : Trigger device (say Switch on/off AC before reaching home) from a threshold distance away from home   location

Messaging

  • Ad-hoc Chat
  • Session Based Chat
  • Voice Input for texting
  • Presence information of contacts
  • RoadMap: Legacy message integration

Telephony

  • Voice call to mobile
  • Voice call to PSTN
  • Video call to other @imAll user
  • Share images during voice call to other

Device agnostic

  • Compatible with IOS, windows
  • Can run as native app on ipad
  • Can run as browser client on windows
  • RoadMap: native app for android, windows phone,blackberry10

Roadmap

  • To upgrade the application and provide enganced and enrich service support the I propose the following roadmap.
  • From plain vanilla voice and video calling ( supported by every other OTT application ) our application should progress towards  legacy telecom support whihc included PSTN , GSM , ISDN etc . This requires backbone of telecom network and a good setup for media codec conversion to suit various legacy media codecs .

Road Map  from Traditional to New age services 

  1. Voice and video calling
  2. Legacy services support like MMS and SMS
  3. Integration with 3rd party Vendors
  4. Give new enriched services like Multilingual support , file transfer , screen-sharing etc
  5. give facility to integrated web plugins for web calling

To keep the interest of customers it is essential that the application be supported on other popular OTT services like skype  , Gtalk . for exmaple a caller should be able to make call from Skype  / Gtalk to our application .Multilingual capabilities, support for larger protocol spectrum will just act like icing on the cake .

How does it benefit the Operator??

  1.  Saves on development cost and time
  2.  Device Agnostic OTT Applications
  3. Simplified Service deployment
  4. Saves licensing cost per client
  5. Reuses existing Messaging and   Address Book service logic.
  6. Open New Revenue Streams for operator
  7. No separate SIP stack required for the client
  8.  Faster Time to Market

Update : At the time of writing this post I did not anticipate the wave of change that bring focus on subjects like “net neutrality” , ” Save the internet” and “free internet” . However I see now that I had described this phenomenon way in advance for my time .

Business Challenges for a telecom service provider

With the fast pace of telecom evolution both towards the access network front ( ie GSM , UMTS , 3G , 4G , LTE , VOLTE ) to core network side ( ie application servers , registrar , proxies , gateway , media server etc ) a CSP ( content service provider ) is trying hard to keep up with the user expectation . The user expects a plethora of services , reduced cost and high speed bandwidth . If this was not enough a CSP also has competition  OTT (   Over The Top ) Players who provide communication and messaging for FREE .

You can read on how OTT’s players are disruption the revenue streams of traditional telecom operators and how can Telco’s develop  their own OTT app , integrated with their backend system to answer to that challenge  here – OTT ( Over the Top ) Communication applications

The following points outline the major business challenges faced by telecom operators today .

Technology Evolution Challenges

  •  The increased data speeds and further more increasing hunger for the data overwhelms the existing network infrastructures.
  • Ensure uniform service experience across the network technologies to check the customer churn.
  • Access / Radio Technology independent delivery of services.
  • Enhance Reuse for exiting investments.

Multiple Service Platform Challenges

  • Typical network constitutes of Multiple Service Platforms increasing network complexity and integration challenges many fold.
  • Heterogeneous multiple SDP Solutions typically deployed to cater to Multiple Types of Networks/ Standards/Variants
  • Service Islands makes introduction of seamless services a challenging task for the CSP

Transport Upgrade and Convergence of Wireless Wireline

  • Retain investments in copper wire systems while migrating towards next generation Fiber Optic systems.
  • Severe competition among wire-line and wireless operators to provide latest services to retain subscriber base.
  • Fixed Mobile Convergence leading to a diminishing gap among the revenue shares of various operators in the space, and leading to losses for wire-line only players.

VoIP/ OTT / Telecom Solution startup’s strategy for Building a scalable flexible SIP platform

I have been contemplating points that make for a successful developer  to develop solutions and services for a  Telecom Application Server.  The trend has shown many variations from pure IN programs like VPN , Prepaid billing logic to SIP servlets for call parking , call completion. From SIP servlets to JAISNLEE open standard based communication.

Read about Introduction to SIP : https://telecom.altanai.com/2013/07/13/sip-session-initiaion-protocol/

Scalable and Flexible SIP platform building

This section has been updated in 2020

Most importatnl things for a OTT provider who acts as a service provider between the SME ( SMall and Medium Enterprises ) and Large scale telco carrier , is to buid Scalable and Flexible platform . Lets go in depth to discuss how can one go about schieving scalibility in SIP platforms .

Multi geography Scaled via Universal Router

A typical semi multi geography scaled , read replica based / data sharding based Distributed VoIP system which is controlled by a router that distributes the tarfffic to various regions based on destination number prefix matching looks like

Cluster SIP telephony Server for High Availiability

Clusters of SIP server are great at provding High availiability and resilience however they also add a factor of lantency and management issues .

considerations for a cluster

  • memory requirements to store the state for a given session and the increasing overhead of having more than two replicas within a partition.
  • Co-hosted virtual machine add resource contenstion and delay call established due to multi node traversal .
  • Additionally incase of node failures or reboots, the traffic redirection needs careful planning and can add complications in network.
  • System should be reliable to not let a let node failure propagate and become root cause for entire system failure due to corrupted data .

Failure Recovery

A Clustered SIp platform is quickly recoverble with Containerized applications

Clear separation between stateless engine layer and session management or Data layer is crtical to enable auto reboot of failed nodes in engine layer .

It should be noted that unlike HTTP based platforms , dialog and transaction state varaibles are crtical to SIP platfroms for exmaple , call duration for CDR entry . Therefore for a mid call failure and auto reboot

Multi-tier cluster architecture

Symmetrical Multi-Processing (SMP) architectures have

  • stateless “Engine Tier” processes all traffic and
  • distributes all transaction and session state to a “Data Tier.”

A very good exmaple of this is Oracle Communications Converged Application Server Cluster (OCCAS) which is composed of 3 tiers

Message dipatcher , Communication engine stateless and last Datastore which is in-memory session store for the dialogs and ongoing transactions

An advantage of having statless servers is that is the application server crashes or reboots , the session sattes is not lost as new server can pick up the session ifnromation from exgternal session store .

Role Abstraction / Micro-Service based architecture

The compoenets for a well performing highly scalable SIP arachitecture are abstracted in their role and reponsibilities . We can have catagories like

Load Balancer / Message Dispatcher

routes tarffic based on algorithm (round robin , hasing , prioroity based scejduling , weight based scheduling ) among active and ready servers

Backend Dynamic Routing and REST API services

Services which the Aplication server calls during its callflow excution which may include tasks like IP address associated with caller , screened numbers associated with destination etc such as XML Remote Procedure Call (XML-RPC) or AVAPI Service in kamailio

OSS/BSS layer

This layer is reponsible for jobs relation to operations and billing and should take place in indpendant system without affacting the session call flow or causing a high RTT .

POS CRM ,Order Management , Loyality , feedback , ticketing
Post Paid Billing , Inter-carrier Billing
BPM and EAI
Provisioning & Mediation
Number Management
Inventory
ERP, SCM
Commissions
Directory Enquiry
Payments & Collections
BI
Fraud and RAS
Pre-Paid Billing
Document Management
EBPP, Self Care

There are other componets ina typical VoIP micro services architecture such as Heartbeat service , backend accounting servuce , security check service, REST API service , synmaic routing service , event notofication service etc which should be decoupled from each other leading to high parallel programing approach.

Distributed Event management and Event Driven architecture

Distributed event management , monitoring and working on Data stream instead of stored Database

Distributed Messaging using Data streaming instead of static stored database data

Containerization

To improve Flexibility w.r.t Infrastructure binding ,, all server compoenets including edge compoenets , proxies , enginies , emdia server must be containerized in form of images or docker for easy deployment via an infracstructure tool like kubernetics , terraform , chef cookbooks and be efficently controleed with an Identify manage tool and CICD ( continous integartion and Delivery ) tool like Travis or jenkins

Autoscalling Cloud Servers

Autoscalled server are provided by majority of Cloud Infrastrcture provicderd such as AWS ( Amazon Web Services ), Google Cloud platform which scale the capacitty based on traffic in realtime also called elasticity. Any VoIP developer would notice patterns in voice traffic such as less during holidays/night hours where servers can be freeed, whereas taffic peaks during days where server capacity needs to scale up.

Additionally traffic may pike when the setup is under DDos attacks , not an uncommon thing for SIP server , then the server need to identify and block malacious source points and prevent unnecessary up scaling .

There are 2 approaches to scaling

Scale UP / Vertical Scaling

Resusing the existing server to upgrade performance to match the load requirnments

Scale OUT / Horizontal scaling

Increasing the number of servers and adding their IP to Load balancer to manage traffic .

It should be noted that scalling up or down shouel be carried out incrementally to have better control on resource to requirnment ratio.

Other points points here that make for a successful startup   in logic building domain of telecom core network .

Security

It is crucial for any Voice traffic / media servcis provoder to have state of the art security in the content without disrupting data privacy norms.

SIP secure practises like Authentication , authorization ,Impersonating a Server , Temparing Message bodies , mid-session threats like tearing down session , Denial of Service and Amplification , Full encryption vs hop by hop encrption , Transport and Network Layer Security , HTTP Authentication , SIP URI, nonce and SIP over TLS flows , can be read at https://telecom.altanai.com/2020/04/12/sip-security/

While scaling out the infrastructure for extensing the Pop( point of presence ) accross the differnet geographies , define zones such as

  • red zone : public facing server like load balancers
  • dmz zone ( demilitarized zone ) interfacing servers betwee private and public network
  • green zone : provate and secure interal serer which communicate over private IPs snd should ne unrechable from outside .

To futher increase efficiency between communication and transmission between green zone server , setup private VPC ( Virtual provate cloud ) between them .

Follow Open standards and Data Privacy

To establish itself as a dependable Realtime communication provider , the product must follow stabdardised RFC’s and stacks such as SIP RFC 3261 and W3C drfat for Webrtc peer connection etc . It si also a good practise to be updated with all recommendation by ITU and IANA and keep with the implementation . For exmaple : STIR/SHAKEN –https://telecom.altanai.com/2020/01/08/cli-ncli-and-stir-shaken/

Adhere to Privacy and protection standards like GDPE , COPPA , HIPPA , CCPA. More details on VoIP certificates , compliances and security at https://telecom.altanai.com/2020/01/20/certificates-compliances-and-security-in-voip/

Product Innovation and Market Differentiator

In a crowded market of many SIP Service providers and platforms

Envisions a multiple network technologies, that provides ability to build over new innovative cutting edge technologies in the market. It should deliver platform to launch newer  services like WebRTC and RCS .

innovation
Innovation + Experiment + Oyt of Box Thinking

As a market differentiator following tools are advised

Easy to follow technical documentation and help and quick response to any technical question about platform posted on QnA sites (stackoverflow , Quora .. ) , tech forums ( Google groups , slack channels .. ) or else where ( facebook , twitter .. )

Data Visualization Tools – Show overall call quality insights , call flows , stats , probale issues , fixes , graphs , spending , saving , duaryion , negative positive margins , helathy unelathy calls , spams etc .

Graphical Event Timelines – time based events such as call setup , termination , codec negotiation , call rediection events

Drag and Drop Call Flow deisgner – As call routing logic beome more complicated with a large set of known and pre-defined operations ( parking , routing , voicemail , forking , rediercting etc) . The call routing can be easily composed from these preset operation as UI block attached to a call flow chain which results in calls being channels as predefined by this call flow logic . Leads to plenty of cutomaizibility and design flexibility to custoemrs to design their calls .

Competitive Pricing with Low or No Servicing cost

Cutting down the spiraling cost of Development of the new technologies platform with improvement in the usage of Data rather than voice by integrating new features like File sharing and MSRP messaging. An evolutionary architecture to reduce the effort and cost through high re-use of NGN Platform and Services.

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Use Opensource Products

Introduce uniform service experience across different platforms which helps CSP’s to reduce Time Cycles and Costs for handling enhancements requests and the annual OPEX appreciably.

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“Pay as you go ” Pricing model

Services which should be offered on a non chargable basis :

  • Round the clock technical support
  • Compensation for Downtime
  • CDRs per account
  • IP to IP calls
  • Security Certificates in TLS and SRTP calls
  • Autheticationa nd Authorization secure practises

Services that can be charges are Value added services

Carrier Integration – trunk , PRI

Toll Free Numbers – DID numbers

Virtual Private Network (VPN) : An Intelligent Network (IN) service, which offers the functions of a private telephone network. The basic idea behind this service is that business customers are offered the benefits of a (physical) private network, but spared from owning and maintaining it

Access Screening(ASC): An IN service, which gives the operators the possibility to screen (allow/barring) the incoming traffic and decide the call routing, especially when the subscribers choose an alternate route/carrier/access network (also called Equal Access) for long distance calls on a call by call basis or pre-selected.

Number Portability(NP) : An IN service allows subscribers to retain their subscriber number while changing their service provider, location, equipment or type of subscribed telephony service. Both geographic numbers and non-geographic numbers are supported by the NP service.

Flexibility for inter-working

Interworking among the services from  legacy IN solution and IMS /IT. Allow the Operators to extend their basic offering with added  services via low cost software and increases the ARPU for subscribers.

Next Gen 911

911 like emrgency services afre moving from tradiotional TDM networks to IP networks . However this poses some challenges such as detecting callers geolocation and routing the call to his/her nearest servicing station pr Public safety Answering Point ( PSAP)

Backward compatibility with existing legacy networks

PSTN-SIP gateways to interface bwteen SIP platform and SS7 siganlling platform also convert the RTP stream to Analog waveforms required byb PSTN endpoints

Internetworking with IMS

IMS is a IP telephony service archietcture developed by 3rd Generation Partnership Project ( 3GPP) ,global cellular network standards organization that also standardized Third Generation (3G) services and Long Term Evolution (LTE) services

More about IMS ( IP multimedia System )

Develop on Interactive and populator frameworks like webRTC

Agile Development and Service Priented Architecture (SOA) are proven methods of delievry quality and updated products and releases which can cater to eveolcing market demands . In short “Be Future ready while protecting the existing investments”

Make a WebRTC solution that offers a plug in free, device agnostic, network agnostic web based communication tool along with the server side implementation.

webrtc

Read More about WebRTC Communication as a platform Service – https://telecom.altanai.com/2019/07/04/webrtc-cpaas-communication-platform-as-a-service/

Operational Efficiencies

Log aggregation and Analytics.
PagerDuty Alerts
Daily and Weekly backups and VM snapshots.
Automated sanity Tests
Centralized alert management, monitoring and admin dashboards .
Deployment automation / CICD
Tools and workflows for diagnostics, software upgrades, OS patches etc.
Customer support portal , provisioning Web Application

Read about VoIP system DevOps, operations and Infrastructure management, Automation

Feedback and Proactive Issue Tracking

Media Stats can help us collect the call qulaity metrics which determins the overall USer experience . Some frequently encountered issues include

IssueCauseObservance
High Packet Loss 250 ms of audio suration lost in 5 secbroken audio
High Jitterjitter >= 30 ms in 5 secrobotic audio
Low Audio Levelaudio level < -80dBinaudible
High RTTRTT > 300 ms in 5 seclags

Pro-active Call Analysis

Call details even during a setup phase , continuation or reinvite /update phase can suggest the probably outcomes based on previous results such as bad call quality from certain geographic areas due to their known network or firewall isseus or high packet loss from certain handset device types . We can deduce well in advance what call quality stats will be generated from such calls .

Contains which can be identfied from calls setup details itself include :

  • geography and number – Call was made from which orignating location to which destination
  • SIP devices – device related details , Version of device (browser version etc..,)
  • Chronological aspects of call – Initiation, ring start, pick up and end time.
  • call direction – inbound ( coming from carrier towards our VoIP platform ) or outbound ( call directed to carrier from out VoIP platform )
  • Network type – network ssues and quality score across network type

Contarins which can be identfied during a ongoing call itself include :

  • Participants and their local time – ongoing RTCP from Legs, probability of long Conferences is low in off hours
  • Call events – DTMF, XML, API calls , quality issues

The minor issues identified during an ongoing calls RTCP packets such as increasing jitter or packet loss can extrapolate to human perceivable bad audio quality of call after a while . Thus any suspected issues should be identified as early as traced and corrective action should be put in place .

Predicting Low Audio / Call quality

Having a predictive engine can forecast bad call Quality such as 408 timeouts , high RTT , low audio level , Audio lag , one way audio , MOS < 2.5 out of 5 etc .

The predictive engine can use targeted notifications pointing towards specific issues that can comeup in a call relatine and assign a technical rep to overlook or manually intervene .
This can include scenario such as an agent warning a customer that his bad audio quality is due to him using an outdated SIP Device with slow codecs and suggest to upgrade it to lightweight codecs as per his bandwidth. This saves bad user experince of the customer and can happen without cusomer reporting the issues homself with feedback , RTP stats , PCAPS etc. Save a lot of trouble and effort in call debugging .

Social Media Platform Integration such as Skype for Business , Slack , WebEx

Integration of the services with social media/networking enables new monetizing benefits to CSPs especially in terms on advertising and gaining popularity , inviting new customers etc.

resources

Enterprises are looking forward to reach customers with ennoblement of Telco in their present landscape which was impossible to reach before. Telco not only plays an instrumental role in increasing the customers base which results into increase in enterprise’s revenue but also offers the value addition in their present product/service delivery model.  Hence it is high-time when developers can aggregate , use open-standard services / technologies ( GSMA , SIP , WebRTC )  and develop high end solutions for Telecom Domain .

Effienet Media Management – Media Streaming , conferencing , Recording and playback

CSP’s are looking into Long term growth and profitability from new online services media streaming services . Make use-cases around IPTV and VOD ( Video On Demand) . Also Voicemails , IVR , DTMF, TTS( text to speech ) , Speech recognition etc

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References :

What is OTT – https://telecom.altanai.com/2014/10/24/developing-a-ott-over-the-top-communication-application/

WebRTC Business benifits to OTT and telecom carrier – https://telecom.altanai.com/2013/08/02/webrtc-business-benefits/

jitter Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitter

What when how – http://what-when-how.com/voip-protocols/acceptability-of-a-phone-call-with-echo-and-delay-voip-protocols/