Cisco Multiservice IP-to-IP Gateway

One of the latest buzzwords in Voice over IP (VoIP) infrastructure deployments is Session Border Controller (SBC). As VoIP deployments move from individual islands of voice networks to end-to-end voice solutions, SBCs become a crucial infrastructure device that sits on the border of two networks handling real-time voice and video sessions. Before SBCs, service providers implemented back-to-back time-division multiplexing (TDM) gateways when interconnecting with other service providers. They were able to create points of demarcations between the networks, but because of the involvement of the digital signal processors (DSP), not only was delay being introduced, but also degradation in the voice/fax quality because of the additional decoding and encoding of the voice/fax packets. Apart from creating points of demarcations, various other challenges arise when you interconnect two VoIP/video networks.

To benefit from low long-distance telephony charges, many enterprises have also started using IP interconnect services from service providers. SBCs are used between the two networks to handle their real-time communication needs. Cisco Multiservice IP-to-IP gateway (IPIPGW) is the Cisco Session Border Controller product that provides a toolkit of Cisco IOS features to resolve various interconnect problems.

This chapter helps you do the following:

• Understand the IPIPGW architecture
• Configure an IPIPGW
• Understand Voice Infrastructure and Application (VIA) zones
• Understand the features that are available on IPIPGWs
• Use show and debug commands