The Cisco® Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition is a highly-scalable, carrier-grade session border controller (SBC) that is integrated into Cisco routing platforms and optimized for the enterprise market. The Unified Border Element uses the common configuration commands of Cisco voice gateways and is easily integrated into any unified communications environment. The enterprise edition differs from the service provider edition in that it was designed from the beginning to be customer premises equipment (CPE) that is managed, configured, and located at the enterprise edge of a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunk solution. The Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition on the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers is based on the Cisco Unified Border Element (UBE) Version 1.2 that is available on the Cisco 2800 and 3800 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISRs) and the Cisco AS5000 Series Universal Gateways. The Cisco ASR version of this same code complements the solution by providing additional scale and redundancy that is optimized for the largest enterprise customers. The Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition provides a network-to-network demarcation interface for signaling interworking, media interworking, address and port translations, billing, security, quality of service (QoS), Cisco Call Admission Control (CAC), and bandwidth management and is designed as CPE for large enterprise unified communications deployments.
Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition allows enterprises to connect isolated voice and unified communications networks directly over an IP connection, avoiding public switched telephone networks (PSTNs). End-to-end IP enables services such as SIP trunking and unified communications application interconnects, enhances quality, increases scalability, lowers costs, and reduces network complexities.
An important element of the Cisco Unified Communications suite of products. Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition is designed to be managed and included in large-scale Cisco Unified Communications Manager installations.
Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition on the Cisco ASR 1000 Series builds on the continuous operation and service aggregation provided by the powerful and flexible Cisco ASR 1000 Series routers. With media forwarding performed on a Cisco ASR 1000 Series Embedded Services Processor (ESP) and control functions on a Cisco ASR 1000 Series Route Processor, the Cisco ASR 1000 Series delivers an extensible pay-as-you-grow SBC solution through modular ESPs and route processors. Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition on the Cisco ASR 1000 Series completely integrates with other Layer 2 and Layer 3 Cisco IOS® XE Software services without requiring additional application-specific hardware (service blades). Following are some benefits of Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition integration on the Cisco ASR 1000 Series:
• Total cost of ownership:
– Capital expenditures (CapEx) and operating expenses (OpEx) savings are achieved by eliminating overlay networks and additional interfaces on routers, and environmental benefits include lower power and cooling requirements.
• Scale:
– Cisco Unified Border Element can support more than 15,000 sessions and 150 calls per second in a single chassis, with only a single IP address.
• Pay-as-you-grow model:
– Chasses are available in 2-rack unit (2RU), 4RU, or 6RU configurations.
– The Cisco Unified Border Element achieves performance levels of 2.5, 5, 10, or 20 Gigabit Ethernet, with the option to upgrade as scalability needs grow.
– T1/E1 to 10 Gigabit Ethernet modular data interfaces are supported.
• Carrier-grade high availability:
– Redundancy is achieved with Stateful Switchover with media preservation of active calls.
• Integration and validation tested for large-scale unified communications deployments:
– The Cisco Unified Border Element is designed to work in conjunction with Cisco Unified Communications Manager (6.0, 7.0, and 8.0) for SIP trunking for PSTN access and between application clusters.
• Advanced services and support:
– The use of the same Cisco IOS Software commands and configurations of the widely deployed Cisco voice gateways and Cisco Unified Border Element on the integrated services router allows you to easily adopt this new technology without requiring additional staff training.
Applications
Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition supports SIP trunking for PSTN access and interconnection of unified communications applications within an enterprise.
• Managed and unmanaged enterprise large-scale SIP trunking solutions: Enterprise customers are expanding their use of centralization and concentration of SIP trunking at a very high scale. As the number of trunks in a single location increases beyond 2500, the Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition comes into play. This single device can terminate more than 15000 active calls while using the same configuration, management, debugging, and troubleshooting techniques that Cisco customers are familiar with. SIP messages can be manipulated and optimized for individual carriers while still maintaining connections to Cisco Unified Communications Manager clusters.
• Enterprise interapplication connections edge: The large scale, redundancy, and flexibility of the Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition makes it the ideal candidate for interconnection of the disparate unified communications devices within an enterprise, allowing smooth transitions and interconnects between these previously isolated voice-over-IP (VoIP) islands.
New Features in Cisco Unified Border Element Version 3.1
The new features provided as of Cisco Unified Border Element Version 3.1 include:
• SIP-SIP and SIP-H.323 Supplementary Services
• Refer, 302, ECS, call forward and transfer
• Webex call flows
• Tcl Support
– IVR prompt play
– TCL CVP survivability scripts
• Video
– TelePresence
– STUN/DTLS pass-through
– Traditional video (SIP-SIP)
• Media flow-around
– Audio and video
• RSVP call flows
– RSVP-RSVP and RSVP-NonRSVP (no HA)
• SNMP MIB Support
– DIAL-CONTROL-MIB
– CISCO-DIAL-CONTROL-MIB
– CISCO-VOICE-DIAL-CONTROL-MIB
– CISCO-SIP-UA-MIB
– CISCO-VOICE-COMMON-DIAL-CONTROL-MIB
• Voice Security
– TLS-TLS for SIP-SIP (no HA)
– TLS-IPSec for SIP-H.323 (no HA)
– SRTP Passthrough for SIP-SIP and SIP-H.323
• SIP Features
– History-Info
• SIP OOD Options Ping Support
• PI stripping for SIP-H323 calls
• RFC4040 Clear channel support
• Q-sig tunneling
• SIP Interoperability Features
– SIP/SDP Header and Content/MIME pass-through
– Payload Type Interworking
– Handling of 183 with no SDP
– Handling of 181 with and without SDP
– Expires Timer Reset on 183
– Multiple Registrar support
– Dial-peer level signaling and media bind (CUBE 8.5)
– Diversion header enhancements
• SIP (NTT NGN) Features
– REGISTER and INVITE with Random contact
– Registration
– Drop 183 Session-in-progress
– Reliable Response - PRACK
– sip: vs tel: URIs
– Route Support
– Record-Route and Service-Route
– Session Refresh using reINVITE
• SIP P-Header Support
– PPI (RFC3325), PAI (RFC3325), Privacy (RFC3323), P-Called Party Identity (RFC3455), P-Associated URI (RFC3455)
Features and Benefits
Table 1 lists the features and benefits of the Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition on the Cisco ASR 1000 Series.
Table 1. Features and Benefits
Feature
Benefit
Scale
• 15000 active calls
• 150 call setups per second (sustained rate)
Deployment models
• Unified signaling model
High availability
• Hardware (route processor and ESP) and software redundancy
• Stateful Switchover to preserve active media sessions
Network hiding
• Network Address Port Translation (NAPT)
• IP network privacy and topology hiding
Signaling support
• SIP (RFC 3261) voice call signaling
• H.323v4 voice call signaling
Media support
• Dual-tone multifrequency (DTMF) interworking between any of these methods: RFC 2833, SIP-info SIP-notify, and H.323
• Voice and video codecs
• Fax and modem pass-through and up-speed
Cisco CAC and QoS
• Dynamic codec configurations
• CAC policies based on dialed numbers, active sessions, CPU, and memory usage
• Voice and IP trunking configurations sharable between ISR and ASR hardware
Ordering Information
Ordering the Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition for the Cisco ASR 1000 Series involves three steps:
1. Select a router from the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers with the required route-processor and ESP modules.
2. Select a Cisco IOS XE Software image with Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition support.
3. Select the appropriate feature licenses.
To place an order, visit the Cisco Ordering homepage. Table 2 lists the feature licenses available for the Cisco Unified Border Element.
Table 2. Feature Licenses
Product Name
Part Number
CUBE(Ent) 100 Calls Perpetual Lic for ASR 1000 Series
FLASR1-CUBEE-100P
CUBE(Ent) 500 Calls Perpetual Lic for ASR 1000 Series
FLASR1-CUBEE-500P
CUBE(Ent) 1,000 Calls Perpetual Lic for ASR 1000 Series
FLASR1-CUBEE-1KP
CUBE(Ent) 4,000 Calls Perpetual Lic for ASR 1000 Series
FLASR1-CUBEE-4KP
Cisco Unified Border Element (Enterprise Edition) licenses authorize the use of only the enterprise-edition features; the enterprise edition is separate and cannot be used at the same time with the Cisco Unified Border Element (SP Edition).
When you order session licenses, note that an SBC session is a bidirectional media flow and the associated signaling. A session represents a complete voice call through the SBC: two call legs consisting of two media legs for a bidirectional media flow and associated signaling on both call legs. You can combine multiple session licenses for the session count desired.
To Download the Software
To download software, visit the Cisco Software Center. Table 2 lists Cisco IOS XE Software images with support for the Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition.
Table 3. Cisco ASR 1000 Series Software Images with Cisco Unified Border Element (Enterprise Edition) Support
Software Feature Set
Part Number
Cisco ASR 1000 Series RP1 ADVANCED IP SERVICES
SASR1R1-AISK9
Cisco ASR 1000 Series RP1 ADVANCED ENTERPRISE SERVICES
SASR1R1-AESK9
Cisco ASR 1000 Series RP1 ADVANCED IP SERVICES w/o CRYPTO
SASR1R1-AIS
Cisco ASR 1000 Series RP1 ADVANCED ENTERPRISE SERVICES w/o CRYPTO
SASR1R1-AES
Cisco ASR 1000 Series RP2 ADVANCED IP SERVICES
SASR1R2-AISK9
Cisco ASR 1000 Series RP2 ADVANCED ENTERPRISE SERVICES
SASR1R2-AESK9
Cisco ASR 1000 Series RP2 ADVANCED IP SERVICES w/o CRYPTO
SASR1R2-AIS
Cisco ASR 1000 Series RP2 ADVANCED ENTERPRISE SERVICES w/o CRYPTO
SASR1R2-AES
Cisco Services and Support
Cisco and our partners offer a broad portfolio of end-to-end services to accelerate customer success. These services are based on proven methodologies for deploying, operating, and optimizing IP communications solutions, and they successfully integrate Cisco Unified Communications, Cisco TelePresence™, security, and mobility technologies with bandwidth to support video, collaboration, and growth in alignment with your business goals. Planning and design services align technology with business goals and can increase the accuracy, speed, and efficiency of deployment. Technical services help maintain operational health, strengthen software application functions, solve performance problems, and lower expenses. Optimization services are designed to continually improve performance and help your team succeed with new technologies. For more information, please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/services.
For More Information
For more information about the Cisco ASR 1000 Series or the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Embedded Services Processors, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/asr1000 or contact your local Cisco account representative.
For more information about the Cisco Unified Border Element, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/cube or contact your local Cisco account representative.
