Tag: Single sign-on

WebRTC SIP / IMS solution

We started in winters on 2012 with Webrtc . At time time it just looked like a new tech jargon that might fade away when new ones comes . In many many WebRTC’s buzz has died down since its massive adoption. But i nevertheless still see a lot of potential and development around it.

What really is WebRTC ? I made an entry on it  here .

Around nov – dec 2012 , team and I spend the time learning the nitty-grities of HTML5 based media operation and Javascript sip stack of SIPML. I remember toward the end of the year ie before Christmas , We were done with the explanation and education aspects of WebRTC , a technology that will revolutionise communication in ages to come , at-least so says the numerous other blogs ,  and documents i read so far .

Usecases for WebRTC range across a wide variety , of them the most revenue generating ones are around video conferencing with realtime HD audio-video-data streams ,

To bridge the flow between a webrtc client to a PSTN endpoint via IMS , interworking between webrtc media standards and codecs with that of gateways in IMS is critical . For instance WebRTC mandates secure RTP ( SRTP) the media engine / gateway should be able to support and connect with RTP from PSTN endpoints.

client BOB -> webrtc2sip Gateway -> SIP server -> client Alice

can be  understood with the callflow of a simple SIP Invite initiated from one html page towards another which passes through the configuration of gateway to IMS world ,  SIP Telecom Application server , Database , nodes of IMS environment etc.

For the purpose of a simple Explanation a simplified call flow ca be depicted as ,

webrtccallflow

A very high level architecture of solution deployment in IMS world could be

solution arch2

As the solution matures into a full fleshed project . The alpha version has been released with the following feature set . The WebRTC platform Suite offers a easily deploy-able solution to enable communication

Alpha Release WebRTC platform Suite

  • Single Sign On
  • Login with id and password to access all services
  • Audio / Video Call
    • Call Hold / Call Transfer
  • Messaging:
    • SIP Instant Messaging
    • Message to Facebook Messenger
    • Message delivered as Email
  • Chatroom
    • group chat between multiple users . Room is created for set of users .
  • Video Conferencing
    • video chat between multiple parties . Room is created for set of users .
  • File Transfer
    • Sharing of files from local to remote , in peer-to-peer and broadcasting fashion .
  • Third party Webservices
    • Widgets like calendar , weather , stocks , twitter are embedded.
  • Visual Voice Mail
    • Record and deliver voice message to recipients voice mail inbox which can be accessed/ played from web client .
  • Phonebook
    • cloud integration
    • add new entries
    • add photos to contacts identity
    • import contacts from google account
  • Click to Call :
    • Drop down list of contacts form mail call console
    • 2 step Click to call from Phonebook
  • Presence :
    • Publish online / offline status
    • Use Subscribe / notify requests of SIP
  • Web Ssocket to SIP Gateway
    • Conversion between the signal coming from the WebRTC and SIP client to the IMS core
    • Conversion of “voice/video ” media between sRTP and RTP
    • Conversion of other media (data channel) towards MSRP and Transcoding.
    • Support of ICE procedure
    • Implementation of a STUN server
  • QoS Support

Beta Release WEBRTC PLATFORM SUITE

  • Logs
    • calls logs
    • Message logs
  • User Profile
    • user details like address , email and social networking accounts
    • Phonenumber for GSM integration through SMS
    • User’s Media storage like Pictures , profile picture , Audio , video
    • File sharing documents storage for future access in the same format
  • Real Time and Offline Analytics
  • service usage with graphical and tabular history trends
  • Session Management
    • Single Sign-on
    • Forgot password regeneration using secure question
    • Registration of new user account
    • Logout and clearance of session parameters
  • Security
    • No redirection to any page through url entry without valid session
    • No going back to home page after logout by back button on browser
    • No data vulnerability
    • Multiple login through different devices handled
  • OAuth
    • Login via IMAP / token through facebook and Google
  • Phonebook with Presence functionality inbuilt
  • Directory Service based on country / region
  • Geolocation of approximate location detection of device logged in and visibility to others
webrtc solution
WebRTC client deployment view , accessible devices , network elements
WebRTC deploymenet overview and inetraction with other network elemets such as gateway , cloud storage , sipserver , IMS
WebRTC deploymenet overview and inetraction with other network elemets such as gateway , cloud storage , sipserver , IMS

Commercial release features specs for WebRTC over IMS

  • Integration with new age CSP deployments like VoLTE, ViLTE, VoWiFi
  • Multi vendor support
  • Interactive webrtc services
  • Media Services
    • Automated Natural language Speech recognition
    • Semantic processing via ML
    • Enhanced incall services replacing IVR ( touch -tone)
    • VQE (voice Quality Enhancements)
    • Encoding and Decoding – Multiple Codec Support
    • Transcoding
    • Silence Suppression
  • Security via TLS, encryption and AAA
  • Http, NFS caching
  • NAT using Xirsys TURN
  • Recording, playback and media file compression
  • active frame selection
  • DTMF (Dual Tone Multi Frequency)
    • SIP info messages (out-of-band)
    • SIP notify messages (out-of-band)
    • Inband DTMF not supported yet
  • Audio
    • mixing
    • announcements ( VXML, MSML )
    • filters
    • gain control ( AGC using webrtc stack)
    • noise suppresesion ( webrtc stack)
    • speakers notification
    • Narrowband, Wideband, and Super Wideband
    • dynamic sample rate
  • Video
    • continuous presence ( Face detetion )
    • floor control
    • video lipsync (sync)
    • speaker tile selection
  • VQE (Voice Quality Enhancement )
    • Acoustic Echo Cancelation
    • noise reduction
    • noise line detection
    • noise gating
    • Packet Loss concealment
  • Call analyics
    • progress analysis
    • MOS , R-factor ( derived from latency , jitter , packet loss )
  • CDR (Call detail records ) and accounting
  • Lawful interception

Updating this article 2019

There was a long journey from traditional telecom architectures to NFV cloud based architectures ( like openstack). supported over web , 4G , LTE or other upcoming networks. Many OTT providers prefer using the public cloud over a NFV data centre.

Multinode / Multiedge computing platforms like Media Resource Function are expected to meet the need for quick delivery with additional features like hardware accelerated media , algorithms for optimised data flow (packetization, decongesting , security ) etc . With th decomposed architecture they can better utilise the

  • CPU – contains couple of cores optimised for sequential serial processing such as   graphics or video processing
  • GPU – contains many smaller cores to accelerate creation of images for computer display . Can include texture mapping, image rotation, translation, shading or more enhanced features like motion compensation, calculation of inverse DCT, etc. for accelerated video decoding.
  • DSP- processing data representing analog signals

Although IMS based solutions are more suited to telephony applications and CSPs ( Communication service providers like telecom companies ) but similar or same architectures are widely finding their into newer developed cloud communications solutions supporting tens of millions of subscribers and hyper scale deployment . It could be around applications such as

  • HD (High Definition ) calls
  • UCC ( conf , draw-board, speech recognition , realtime streaming)
  • immersive experiences ( Augmented reality , virtual reality , face recognition , tracking )
  • contextual communication ( transcription etc)
  • video content delivery with deep media analytics

Demand these says is for a decentralised system of pool of servers ( media and signalling ) that can scale independently to match up to peak traffic at any moment , with ofcourse carrier class performance . Not only these flexible solutions reduce complexity but also OpEX .

Ref:

Unified Communicator and Collaborator for Enterprise

Modular enterprise communicator solution for enterprise based communication and collaboration . Use sipml5 client side library to provide webRTC based media stream capture and propagation from client side without external plugins.

Github Repo – https://github.com/altanai/unifiedCommunicator

Unified Communications and Collaborations ( UC&C ) – https://telecom.altanai.com/2013/07/12/unified-communication/