The Sonus Difference

The Sonus SBC 1000/2000 series Session Border Controllers (SBCs) are extremely flexible fax gateway solutions that many of our enterprise customers use in conjunction with RightFax. They are capable of simultaneously connecting to legacy TDM PBXs and the PSTN through multiple T1/E1 digital ports. As SBCs, they also enable interoperability with existing SIP and Unified Communications infrastructure inside your enterprise or from a telephony service provider. Remote port expansion can be performed without interruption of service, meaning future infrastructure can be accommodated with a simple license. This eliminates the need for hardware replacement and an on-site technician.

The Sonus SBC1000/2000 series provides a consistent management interface on all models, reducing complexity and overhead costs. They can be configured with as many as eight fax enabled PRI ports and more than 300 channels of SIP to SIP communication. In only one unit of rack space, the SBC1000 and SBC2000 can provide interoperability solutions for almost any fax server deployment.

How does Fax over IP (FoIP) work?

RightFax communicates via FoIP through Dialogic Brooktrout SR140 software which is included on a RightFax FoIP enabled channel. Once the call is set up, the fax payload is transmitted via T.38 (recommended) between the fax server, the communication device, and the end point. The end point may be a fax server or a classic fax machine. In the case of a media gateway, the gateway is responsible for connecting the call to the traditional Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and completing the path to the receiving device. Typically these devices are part of a larger VoIP/FoIP infrastructure providing voice, fax, email, and messaging.

Key Benefits of FoIP:

• Leverage your existing VoIP network
• Eliminate the need for physical servers and fax boards
• Can reduce fax telephony costs
• Fits seamlessly into unified messaging and communication strategies
• Simplify redundancy and disaster recovery

SIP Trunking

SIP Trunking can help organizations lower their operating expenses by allowing them to remove costly PSTN connections, including analog lines and T1 / PRI / TDM circuits that have been traditionally reserved exclusively for fax. SIP Trunking allows fax traffic to be routed over an organizations existing IP network using either the T.38 or G.711 protocol. The endpoint for these RightFax SIP Trunks can be the organization’s VoIP PBX, a Fax Gateway or a cloud fax service provider where the fax will be delivered over the PTSN.

RightFax Supports SIP Trunking from most major providers.

Sonus Session Border Controllers (SBCs)

The session border controllers from Sonus allow customers to configure and deploy reliable, secure, and fully virtualized IP-based fax server systems — no expensive fax boards! They are affordable, easy to maintain, reliable, and easy to support.

They are also verified and compatible with a variety of popular PBX manufacturers: Cisco, Alcatel, Avaya, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Mitel, NEC, Nortel, and Siemens. Because of the robustness, flexibility, and capability of their products, Sonus has been a key element of the transformation of some of the world’s most mission-critical voice and fax networks, including deployments in Fortune 500 firms.

Interoperability with Legacy TDM/H.323 Systems

Sonus SBCs support both TDM and IP traffic in the same device, with hot-swappable circuit- and packet-switched processors that allow enterprises to migrate from TDM-IP to all-IP traffic at their own pace. Sonus SBCs also provide legacy PBX interworking with simultaneous support for TDM, H.323 and SIP PBXs.

Robust SIP Interoperability

SIP interoperability is a requirement for enterprises that need to interconnect different IP PBX boxes, multivendor VoIP switching equipment, SIP trunking services, IP-based Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems, etc. Sonus SBCs provide robust SIP interworking, offering both dynamic and static SIP normalization between a multitude of enterprise IP devices.

IPv4/IPv6 Interoperability

With the imminent exhaustion of IPv4 addresses, the world will soon transition to IPv6, creating the need for IPv4 and IPv6 devices to communicate with one another. Sonus SBCs provide flexible IPv4-to-IPv6 interoperability so legacy devices and new IPv6-enabled devices can communicate seamlessly.

High Availability/Disaster Recovery

Enterprise communications require 99.999% availability and reliable disaster recovery provisions. Sonus SBCs are engineered to provide ultra-high reliability through a redundant active/standby architecture that ensures the system has no single point of failure. Sonus SBCs also demonstrate rapid recovery after power outages. In a recent Miercom test, the Sonus SBC 5200™ re-registered IAD endpoints after a simulated system outage 8x faster than the leading competitor.

Centralized Policy Management

When it comes to policy control, Sonus SBCs give enterprises a choice: a local embedded routing and policy engine for standalone deployments, or a centralized policy engine via the PSX™ server. Both configurations have their advantages: the Embedded PSX (E-PSX) can provide lower latency, while the centralized policy server provides multi-SBC deployments with tremendous cost and time savings through simplified provisioning management.

High Performance During Overload/Attack

While many SBCs perform well under ideal conditions, the Sonus SBC’s unique multiprocessor design demonstrates high performance even during overload/attack conditions.

A recent Miercom performance study found that the SBC 5200 performed 400% better than the leading competitor during overload conditions, and confirmed in a simulated spoofing attack that “there was no observed impairment of active calls sustained or failure to place new calls while under attack conditions.”

Built-In Media Transcoding

Transcoding between media codecs is increasingly important to enterprise communications, especially as more enterprises look to support a variety of high-definition (HD) voice codecs. Sonus SBCs have always featured built-in media transcoding, which results in better call quality and more efficient processing of calls that require codec translations between both HD and non-HD devices.

Near-Linear Scalability

Both the Sonus SBC 5200 and SBC 9000’” Session Border Controllers provide near-linear scalability to handle millions of subscriber sessions. This scalability stems from Sonus’ heritage in building network solutions for the world’s largest carriers, resulting in a Sonus architecture that is practically limitless.

High-Performance Encryption

Enterprise VoIP networks require strong security measures to protect both internal and customer communications and information. Sonus SBCs provide industry-leading security features, including TLS, SRTP and IPsec encryption, B2B User Agent functionality for topology hiding and much more. While many SBCs offer similar security features, Sonus SBCs have built-in encryption hardware and dedicated processors to encrypt media and signaling information, which results in very little impact on SBC performance even when 100% of calls are encrypted.

Rapid Deployment

The Sonus SBC 5200 delivers rapidly deployable plug-and-play functionality in a pure IP appliance form factor. An SBC 5200 can be installed in an enterprise network and “turned on” in less than two hours.

Sonus SBC 1000

Sonus Session Border Controllers (SBCs) help the world’s leading enterprises reduce communications costs, enable Unified Communications (UC), and protect their networks against Internet Protocol (IP)-based attacks. Now small businesses and branch offices can enjoy the same industry-leading SBC technology in a right-sized appliance designed specifically for their networks.

The SBC 1000 Session Border Controller is an advanced SBC independently verified for performance, delivering robust security features and interoperability between disparate networks. The SBC 1000 configurations are designed for smaller enterprise networks (from 5 to 500 employees) that delivers robust security, high availability, and interoperability with leading business solutions such as RightFax and Microsoft Skype for Business and Lync Servers.

Both session and port expansion can be remotely enabled via a simple license, eliminating the need for a truck-roll and an on-site technician. The Sonus SBC 1000 also features a wide range of I/O and call capacities as well as built-in survivability for Microsoft and BroadSoft, so calls go through even if the wide area network (WAN) goes down.

Sonus SBC 2000

Communications devices are growing smaller and smarter, so we made a session border controller (SBC) that was smaller and smarter, too. The Sonus SBC 2000 is an advanced SBC designed to help medium-sized enterprise networks safely and cost-effectively embrace the new world of SIP-based communications, such as Voice over IP (VoIP).

The SBC 2000 delivers all of the features you would expect from the Sonus family of SBCs, including robust security, high availability and proven interoperability with leading business solutions like Microsoft Lync Server. The Sonus SBC 2000 also does something you wouldn’t expect: It allows calls to go through even when your WAN goes down, through its unique Survivable Branch Appliance functionality.

The SBC 2000 configurations are designed to help larger enterprise networks (i.e., 50 to 5000 employees) safely and cost-effectively migrate to SIP-based communications. Session and T1/E1 port expansion is remotely enabled via a simple license, minimizing the need for a truck roll and on-site technician.