We are encountering more and more uses of soft switches by LECs and CLECs. We are beginning to find that when they provide PRI circuits directly to the end-user, they have all kinds of incompatibility issues. It appears that it may have something to do with name delivery on the calls.

Since we are used to working with 5E's, DMS's and occasional Siemens switches in the CO, we don't normally have any trouble. Shouldn't they have to follow the normal NI2 protocols? Anybody else having these issues?

The ones I've installed that are using the "soft switches" that are set to NI-2 I've had almost no problems. The ones where I've had to use other settings such as AT&T Custom (for Legend/Magix) I've had about 50% success. Some customers are happy as can be, others have had caller id issues, random lost calls (with no error reported), misc d-channel errors, you name it.

How about defining 'soft switch' for yours truly, and any one else that needs to 'CATCH UP'. John C. (Not Garand)

A switch that runs in software on a computer. A Software Switch.

I guess you could loosely think of it as VoIP at the CO Level.

Wikipedia - Softswitch Page

There's a wikipedia explanation.

Asterisk is one form of a softswitch technically, although it's simultaneous call capability somewhat limits it from using it in that purpose.

I've only had to use NI2 around here and dont have many PRI problems. The only problems I can complain about is that different switches dont necessarily give the same code for the same fault. Makes figuring out why a call hung up interesting.

Thanks for the edification! John C. (Not Garand)

I also have run into problems with soft switches. Caller ID isnt the only issue, I've also had issues with modems, predominantly but not limited to faxes. This is of course running on an analog port off of a PBX which in-turn is calling out over a PRI connected to a soft switch.

that seems to be the trend which isnt going to change. everyone is switching over from these monster type switches that took up an entire room to these smaller soft switches that take up half a rack.

The avaya Legend requires AT&T custom protocol and USLec's Santera softswitch would not work. They had to Put the PRI on a real 5ESS.

Is this a bad dream? LECs and CLECs installing a CO switch on a PC?

What are they thinking?

What has happened to my industry!?!


Sam

I just left the carrier side of the house. We were migrating to all Soft Switchs. Santera's, which got bought out by some other company about 1 year after they came out. The soft switch has a ton of issues, especially on dynamic T1 and dynamic PRI. They emulate the different protocols for L2 PRI. The main reason Carriers are migrating is cost and space saving. Avg 5e expansion is hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a SM takes up quite a lot of space. You can feed the same amount of circuits out of a soft switch in one rack space equivalent to I believe 4 SMs for about 300K, versus 2 million for 4 SMs.

Where exactly are these soft switches located? I mean if a regular hardware switch is in a CO, is the soft switch on a PC in the CO as well?

This is a good topic. Please add something if you have any information that can help.

There are three CLECS in town that are all using "Soft switches" and we are having problems with modem and fax traffic too.

We are going to be installing a PRI from a softswitch in about a month or so---and don't feel real comfortable about it.

Any information that we can gather would be very useful.

Well, I spoke with an installation coordinator for Paetec, who we are in the process of switching over to. He asked me if there will be any fax or modem traffic over our PRI to which I responded with a resounding "YES!". He then informed me that they will either need to provide our fax and modem lines over POTS lines or they would need to send us our circuit out of their 5ESS. They are going to go ahead and change us to the 5E. That should be enough of a sign right there that the Santera soft switch has issues. Since it's using VOIP, and this type of traffic doesn't like VOIP, that's going to be a huge problem for them.

I agree---but it irritates me that a company would sell a product like that---knowing that people still use modems, have faxes, and have credit card machines.

They should take that into account, like your coordinator of Paetec did---but also put into POLICY that every line that is going to be used for those activities. has to be off that type of switch.

It's doesn't seem to be a big problem for them---or else they would have a "Plan B" for these very common scenarios. The problem is ours, it seems like. We have had to talk for hour upon hour to their techs to try and solve this problem---and it seems like there IS no solution that their techs can provide.

Our CLEC is doing a major "upgrade" next month. I wonder if this problem will be addressed?? Time will tell.

We also are having major problems with cordless phones, The phone are normal when calling another station, but when talking on an outside line---the transmission acts like a really bad cell phone call.

It's enough to drive you to drink!!

los415's comment about a switch no longer taking up 'a whole room' triggered a chuckle. You might like to know that the old XY/STEPPER/CROSSBAR switches took up entire LARGE floors. Or BUILDINGS! John C. (Not Garand)

Because of problems our company is having, who has actually had 'for sure' PRI problems out of soft switches. What brand if you know. And what LEC. Rather than bad mouth lecs/clecs & manufacturers on the board, I suppose you should PM me. And yes Ed and Mike, I finally cleared out my PM box. If anyone really wants a results list, I can tally up responses. But, again, I'll PM you. I'm not interested in getting into legal tangles. John C. (Not Garand)

from my working expierence the soft switches usally work fine for fax/modem/cc machines if you are going tdm all the way thru. what some lecs/clecs are now doing is since these soft switches are voip cabable they are starting to trunk calls out via sip and we all know modem type calls don't work via voip. there are ups and downs to both the cost of ip/ethernet to transport calls is much cheaper then your standard sonet type network to setup full tdm. down side is you loose your modem type calls. it basically comes down to picking your evil cheap transport and modem wont work or expensive transport/equipment and modem will work. i guess it comes down to the companys business plan.

Agreed. There are TDMOIP solutions that alleviate the VOIP problems, and give a reliable pathway to the packet switched network and back, especially the TDMOIP with circuit emulation, which is basically T1 over Ethernet. Again, it comes down to customers not understanding the trade-offs.

tdmoip is great except for the overhead atleast on the rad solution. i believe we where doing something like 15 megs to be able to transport 4x t1's. sph what tmdoip solutions have you used?

Yeah, I suppose RAD being the first with TDMoIP, have to recoup their R&D costs. Their products work as advertised though.
Recently, we were involved with a couple of customers who moved to TDMoIP using 2 different products from Actelis as the CPE. One was a straightforward T1-over-IP box, the other though was more interesting, it was acting basically as a remote LAN switch that could emulate all kinds of circuits at symmetric speeds of 45mb/second over regular copper wire at up to 3000 feet, or 50000 feet with repeaters (!). The "telco" has master layer 3 switches at the CO establishing point-to-point VLAN-based connections. This box can also establish "dynamic" T1 services, where the voice channels become data when not in use (and vice-versa). No PRI with dynamic T1 though.
The price blows "traditional" T1 out the water. The customer gets T1 speed and quality, and T1 SLAs from the provider. What do they care how the signal comes in?

[Edit: put in the correct distances]

I melt soft switches with my dialer. I have to make sure I have a 5E or DMS switch; Qwest told me yesterday they will only support our dialer on a DMS since we took down one of their Next Gen switches... again.

It is becoming a little frustrating with the CLEC's sales reps who want to sell the product with the highest commission, telling the customer "it will work" and I keep telling them it won't, let me order the circuit via my affiliate program.

I brought down a shelf by issuing an incorrectly formatted dial string before. Evidently dialing "w5551212" wasn't possible, and it really didn't like the idea. They have since updated their software version.

Usually we just get throttled, which is frustrating, because you get a normal return as a busy. When you call the LEC/CLEC all you get is "well the circuit is showing up". We have had to implement dialing rate controls in order to make it more CO friendly. What we have found is that calling around 10 calls per second is sustainable usually. Anything higher then that and you run a pretty good chance of the provider freaking out. Other issue is call surge. There is a surge in dialing every 2-3 seconds (waiting for ringtime on placed calls). That means that on a machine with 8 T1's in it, assuming this is a 5:1 dialing campaign, that every 2-3 seconds about 150 calls are beling placed ((8*23/5)*4). These 150 calls are in theory spread back out over 8 T1's, which gives a dial rate of around 18 calls per T1 every 2-3 seconds. That's a lot of dialing for most providers.

SIP Providers usually have even less capacity

If you look under the Comdial section for my "PRI Issues" thread - a majority of that was softswitch problems. We since switched to Verizon and had them put in writing we were going on a TDM switch (5ess)

Most of the problems went away, although I'm seeing a new occasional wierd problem that might be my DXP this time. (calls go extremely loud)

hey sph

how was the overhead on the Actelis was it as bad as the rad needing 15megs to be able to push 4x t1s?