Patton-BroadSoft Auto-Provisioning Solution for SIPTrunks Serving Customer-Chosen IP PBX

Split configuration domain on enterprise SBC

enables touchless turn-up of SIP trunks with remote

management all the way to the customer premise

Authored by

Ramon FelderBurton A. Patton

W. Glendon Flowers

Copyright © 2014,Patton Electronics Company.

All rights reserved.

Printed in the USA.

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Contents

Introduction: The Problem of Profitability ....................3

Solution Overview........................................................3

Business Partnerships .................................................4

Who Owns the Business Customer? ........................4

Vendor Loyalty and Market Share.............................4

Working Together ......................................................5

Operational Challenges................................................5

Vendor Multiplication.................................................5

Management Headaches and Liabilities ...................5

Problems with Direct SIP ..........................................5

Where’s the Demarc? ...............................................5

The Patton Solution: SmartNode Enterprise Session Border Router (ESBR) ....................................6

How it Works: the Big Picture......................................7

How it Works: Step-by-Step Provisioning Flow ..........8

Touchless Automated-Provisioning Process Overview ........................................................8

Touchless Auto-Provisioning Steps............................8

Subscriber Side Configuration: The WEB Wizard .....10

Conclusion .................................................................10

Introduction: The Problemof Profitability For carrier-providers in today’s multi-vendor, IP-cen-tric communications landscape, the age-old chal-lenge of achieving profitability comes with a newtwist: Telecom operators must continuously offernew, faster IP-based services to replace their sub-scribers’ outmoded TDM connections while leverag-ing new Unified Communications (UC) technology toentice new business customers.

When provisioning SIP-trunking services, a key chal-lenge for the provider is the cost and complexity ofensuring interoperability with the customer-selectedIP PBX or UC platform. The current business-com-munications market is crowded. Myriad vendorsoffer countless software and hardware options forsmall-to-medium business customers to choosefrom. In terms of effort and cost, testing and trouble-shooting the vast number of possible CPE choices isa daunting prospect. For carrier-providers, tacklingsuch a time-consuming task erodes service prof-itability.

Patton has partnered with BroadSoft to address thiscrucial challenge. Working in collaboration withBroadSoft, Patton has created an integrated, touch-less automated-provisioning solution for Swisscom,a national incumbent carrier in Europe. The solutionenables Swisscom to provision each SIP-trunk sub-scriber remotely (avoiding the dreaded costly truckroll), while ensuring interoperability with just aboutany IP PBX or unified communications platform onthe market.

By integrating BroadSoft’s cloud-based BroadWorksSIP service and Device Management (DM) withPatton’s SmartNode Enterprise Session BorderRouter (ESBR) installed as customer-premise equip-ment (CPE), the Patton-BroadSoft automated-provi-sioning solution addresses a number of key chal-

lenges for service providers, while delivering the fol-lowing benefits:

• Competitive advantage in subscriber acquisition:customers can keep and use their chosen IP-PBX or UC system

• Cost-savings: streamlined service provisioningand subscriber turn-up with no truck roll

• Ensured interoperability of network elementsfrom multiple vendors. These elements mayinclude softswitch, core/edge session bordercontrollers (SBC), customer-premise SBC, PBX,phones, faxes, and so on…

• Ensured service quality

• Simplified CPE management

• Clearly defined SIP service demarcation point

• Secure separation between carrier WAN andcustomer LAN

By enabling the carrier-provider to manage, control,and troubleshoot the BroadSoft SIP trunk all theway to the CPE (service demarcation point), thissolution eliminates risks and finger pointing,reduces debugging time, improves customer satis-faction and reduces churn—thus increasing higheraverage revenue per user (ARPU) and profits.

Solution OverviewFrom the cloud, BroadSoft provides the BroadWorksVoIP applications platform to Swisscom (the carrier).A carrier-class edge SIP session border controller(SBC) provides SIP-to-SIP normalization at theshared network edge. Swisscom delivers VoIP serv-ice–along with WAN access—to the enterprise sub-scriber over a fiber-optic trunk (or any other broad-band technology). The Swisscom network terminateson the subscriber premise within the PattonSmartNode 5300 Enterprise Session Border Router(ESBR)—or another SmartNode ESBR model)—

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which provides the LAN connection to the customer-selected IP-PBX, as shown in the figure below.

Deployed as customer-premise equipment (CPE),the Patton SN5300 is a business-class SessionBorder Controller (SBC) that provides a number ofkey functions, which mutually benefit the carrierand subscriber:

• Interoperability with the customer-selectedIP PBX

• Touchless, automated provisioning of SIP trunk-ing service via BroadWorks DM

• Remote management of Patton CPE viaBroadWorks DM

• Secure WAN-LAN separation

• Secure, clearly defined SIP service demarcation

• SIP normalization between subscriber andprovider network elements

• QoS traffic-shaping for assured voice quality andWAN optimization

• Testing and protocol analysis point on the sub-scriber premises

• SmartNode split configuration domain definesand separates carrier-managed from customer-managed parameters

• Patton’s SmartNode Trinity WEB Wizard allowsthe Swisscom installation partner or subscriber’sIT staff to quickly and easily get the SmartNode

ESBR up and running by simply launching theWizard and entering the customer credentials.

Business PartnershipsMake Love, Not War!

Who Owns the BusinessCustomer?The answer depends on the details of the scenario.Is the customer loyal to a certain IP-PBX vendor?In this case the service provider would have tosupport and interoperate with the customer’s pre-ferred vendor in order to win their business. Is thebusiness bound in a carrier or service-providercontract? If so, the carrier's interoperability capa-bilities may limit the business customer's choice ofCPE elements: IP-PBX, UC platform, VoIP Gatewayor SBC. The suppliers of those products mayrequire carrier certification before they could sell tosuch customers. Is the business committed to acertain UC platform, such as Microsoft Lync orLotus Sametime? That decision may define or limittheir choice of phones, access-router, ITSP, etc, tothose that are Lync or Sametime certified.

Vendor Loyalty and Market ShareEach player in the business communication mar-ket—service providers, software vendors, hardwarevendors—works hard to win customer loyalty andmarket share. Everyone is defensive and protectiveof their hard-won slice of the pie, whatever its size.

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Working TogetherThe Patton-BroadSoft solution offers a way for thevarious players to share business customers by work-ing together. Rather than carriers competing againstIP-PBX vendors and/or UC suppliers for a given cus-tomer, the Patton SBC provides ensured interoperabil-ity so the suppliers can approach the customertogether with a joint solution. Patton provides the glueto cement such win-win business partnerships.

Operational ChallengesAlthough the Patton-BroadSoft automated-provi-sioning solution is fully capable of supporting touch-less provisioning for hosted PBX services, the solu-tion presented in this paper is not a hosted-PBX orpublic-cloud scenario. The service-provider businessmodel presented here allows SMB customers theflexibility to choose and use any IP-based PBX orUnified Communication software and hardware theyprefer. Swisscom delivers SIP-trunking service to thecustomer-premise iPBX. In order to implement sucha business model, numerous operational challengesmust be resolved.

Vendor MultiplicationThere are dozens of vendors with iPBX products inthe field. Similarly, a few very large vendors offerdozens of products. Vendors vary widely in how theyimplement certain details of the SIP “standard.”Variations may include terminal registration behavior,number presentation, added or omitted features,authentication procedures, and others. WhileBroadSoft has verified a few iPBX products in formalinteroperability testing, many have not been verified.

In many cases the provider will use an edge SBC tonormalize and secure the interface to applicationservers. However, since such edge SBCs residewithin the core network, they cannot be easily con-figured to support the dozens or hundreds of differ-ent CPE profiles.

Management Headaches andLiabilitiesManaging a service delivered to a customer-selected(and owned) PBX also presents some issues:

• Control—Since the iPBX is installed, configuredand managed by the customer’s IT staff—orSwisscom integration partners—the service-provider cannot configure or manage the cus-tomer side of the service connection.

• Set-Up—Without an automated-provisioningprocess, setting up and activating the customerside of the SIP trunk will likely be inconsistentand error-prone.

• Troubleshooting—The access network betweenthe subscriber’s IP PBX or UC system and thecarrier’s edge SBC is often complex, comprisingmany such elements as routers, firewalls,modems, and so on. Identifying the source of aproblem along this path is often time consumingand costly

Problems with Direct SIPDirectly connecting a SIP trunk to a customer’s iPBXinvolves a number of difficulties for the carrier:

• Divergent Customer Profiles—The SBC withinthe carrier WAN would have to be configuredwith a different SIP profile for each and everyiPBX in the field. The enormous scale and opera-tional complexity of such a task is prohibitive.

• Lost Opportunities—A substantial segment ofthe subscriber market—businesses with PBXproducts that are not interoperable or validatedwith BroadWorks—would be eliminated.

Where’s the Demarc? With the SIP trunk terminating at the customer iPBX,the SIP service demarcation point is not clearlydefined. Such lack of clarity leads to confusion andpotential disputes about who is legally responsible ifproblems arise in the customer LAN that impair ordisrupt SIP traffic flow thus degrading performanceof the carrier-provided service.

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The Patton Solution: SmartNodeEnterprise Session BorderRouter (ESBR)BroadSoft has tested and verified SmartNode VoIPCPE for interoperability with the BroadWorks VoIPplatform. The solution presented here employs anEnterprise Session Border Controller (E-SBC) fromPatton Electronics: the SmartNode Model 5300Enterprise Session Border Router (ESBR). Deployingthe SmartNode ESBR at each customer site providesthe following solutions and value-added benefits:

• Standardized Customer Interface—SmartNodeVoIP CPE have been tested by BroadSoft andverified for interoperability with the BroadWorksVoIP platform. Employing the SmartNode ESBRfor each customer ensures a reliable and interop-erable carrier-facing SIP interface with pre-dictable, uniform characteristics and behaviors.The single, unified CPE interface greatly simplifiesservice provisioning. The carrier need not test andtrouble-shoot the vast number of IP PBX productswith the service. Since Patton maintains its owninteroperability program, the ESBR provides acustomer-facing SIP interface, which Patton hastested and validated with a large and growing listof IP PBX vendors. The ESBR’s SIP-normalizationfunction resolves any discrepancies between theBroadWorks and the customer PBX implementa-tions of the SIP standard.

• Touchless Automated Provisioning—SmartNodeProducts come with Patton’s free SmartNodeRedirection Service. When the device first powersup it contacts the redirection server over theInternet to find, download and activate the correctconfiguration file from the carrier’s configurationserver. Patton’s re-direction service enables zero-

touch deployment with automated SIP-trunk serv-ice provisioning using SmartNode products.

• Secure, Remote Management—BroadSoft hasverified SmartNode for interoperability withBroadWorks Device Management (DM). Thismeans service providers can use the integratedBroadWorks DM to securely and remotely provi-sion the subscriber side of the SIP trunk fromwithin BroadWorks. The SmartNode configura-tion file is encrypted and securely delivered overthe public network to the ESBR at the customersite. Login credentials are encrypted accordingto Digest Access Authentication (RFC 2617), pro-tecting the remote CPE against any unauthorizedaccess.

• QoS and Traffic Management—The SmartNodeESBR employs upstream QoS combined withPatton’s advanced DownStreamQoS to ensureoptimum voice quality within the customer LAN.SmartNode voice and data traffic managementcapabilities combined with CODEC transcodingenable WAN optimization on the SIP trunk.

• Split Management Domain—SmartNode pro-vides a valuable feature called “SplitManagement Domain” that separates the cus-tomer-facing configuration from the carrier-facingconfiguration. This feature allows the serviceprovider to manage the WAN-facing configura-tion while only the customer (and/or the integra-tion partner that provides installation services)can manage the LAN/iPBX-facing configuration.The carrier-provider defines which SmartNodeparameters may be configured by thecustomer/installer and which parameters areaccessible only to the service-provider.

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Split Management Domain also addresses securi-

ty concerns on both sides of the service demarca-

tion point. The customer’s LAN-facing configura-

tion is protected against unwanted access over

the WAN, while the provider’s WAN-facing config-

uration is protected from (perhaps inadvertent)

meddling from the subscriber.

So the SmartNode ESBR standardizes the trunk

side of the configuration and enables automated

provisioning via Patton’s Redirection Service

together with the BroadWorks DM, while providing

for management of the LAN/IPBX side of the

configuration by the customer or Swisscom instal-

lation partners.

How it Works: the Big PictureThe drawing below provides a high-level overview ofthe Patton-BroadSoft automated-provisioning solu-tion. Note that provisioning and management of thecarrier-supplied SIP trunk service is managed by thecarrier-provider in the cloud via the BroadWorks DM.The Patton SmartNode SBC, located on the cus-tomer premise, provides a split configurationdomain. Within the SBC, the WAN-trunk side of theconfiguration (managed by the carrier), is separatedfrom the LAN side (managed on the customer prem-ise using Patton’s configuration Web wizard).Patton’s SBC provides ensured interoperabilitybetween the customer-selected IP PBX or UC sys-tem and the carrier-provider’s SIP trunk service,edge router/SBC and softswitch.

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How it Works: Step-by-StepProvisioning Flow

Touchless Automated-ProvisioningProcess OverviewThe drawing below shows the step-by-step processfor touchless automated provisioning of the PattonSmartNode ESBR. The process integrates elementsand actions involving three parties: Patton, BroadSoft,and the Carrier-Provider.

The solid arrows in the above drawing indicate an ini-tiating step (poll), while the dashed arrows indicate asubsequent action (response). The following sectiondescribes the steps are described in detail.

Touchless Auto-ProvisioningSteps1. Carrier-Provider orders SmartNode CPE for a

given subscriber from a Patton Certified Channel.

2. Patton Certified Channel forwards the MACaddress of the just-ordered SmartNode to theCarrier-Provider.

3. Carrier-Provider sends a message to theBroadWorks Device Management Server thatincludes subscriber telephone number, pass-word, SmartNode MAC-address, and any otherrequired parameters.

4. Carrier-Provider sends a message to the PattonRedirection Server including the SmartNodeMAC address and the IP address of theBroadWorks Device Management Server.

5. Patton Certified Channel ships the SmartNode tothe subscriber premise.

6. SmartNode arrives at the subscriber premise.Subscriber’s IT staff—or a system integrator con-tracted by the carrier (installation partner)—installs the SmartNode on the subscriber prem-ise. When powered up, the SmartNode automat-ically sends a request to the Patton RedirectionServer.

7. Patton Redirection Server sends a response thatincludes the IP address of the BroadWorksDevice Management Server.

8. SmartNode sends a provisioning request to theBroadWorks Device Management Server.

9. BroadWorks sends the SmartNode configurationfile (and if necessary, the latest firmware revision)to the SmartNode.

10. SmartNode installs the configuration (andfirmware), thus activating the SIP trunk connec-tion to the carrier-provider.

The figure below presents an alternate visualizationof the step-by-step process for the Patton-BroadSoft automated-provisioning solution.

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Subscriber Side Configuration: TheWEB WizardFurther facilitating the SmartNode split managementdomain*, SmartNode ESBRs come with a configura-tion Web Wizard. Patton’s WEB Wizard makesinstallation faster and easier for Trinity-basedSmartNode models—and all Patton products thatrun the Trinity operating system. For a complete list-ing of all Trinity-based Patton products, go towww.patton.com/products/trinity.

In applications where configuration settings are sim-ilar from one installation to another, the WEB Wizardis a powerful time-saving tool for carriers, installers,and end customers. To quickly and easily get aTrinity-based device up and running, simply launchthe Wizard and enter the customer credentials.

For carrier installation partners and end-subscriber ITstaff, details on setting up and using the Wizard areprovided in the Patton publication Trinity WizardProgrammers Guide. The guide is available for down-load at www.patton.com/support/kb_art.asp?art=423.

To help new WEB Wizard users get started creatingtheir own wizard files, Patton has also published anexample configuration generator for the SN4970. TheTrinity Config Generator is available for download atwww.patton.com/support/kb_art.asp?art=424.

Further Value AddThe SmartNode product line, from Patton Electronicsalso offers carrier-providers the following value-added attributes:

• Digital & Analog Legacy Telephony Interfaces.The SmartNode portfolio offers a complete rangeof CPE devices with digital ISDNBRI and PRI inter-faces as well as POTS analog FXS/FXO interfacesavailable in flexible combinations supporting 2 to120 concurrent VoIP or fax calls. This means car-

riers can count on a single supplier for VoIP CPEwith all the same subscriber and management fea-tures for legacy PBXs in both ISDN and POTS cus-tomer voice-network environments.

• Free Support/Low TCO. Patton does not chargeseparately for support or maintenance. The com-pany provides free customer support (live humanemail and phone support) and free lifetime soft-ware upgrades with every product sold.Eliminating costly maintenance contracts or hourlysupport fees drives down total cost of ownership(TCO) for carriers that select this vendor. As if thiswriting, Patton is the only player in the E-SBC mar-ket that offers such a free support proposition.

ConclusionAgainst the backdrop of fierce competition for cus-tomers in the IP-based business communicationsmarket, Patton, in partnership with BroadSoft, offersa win-win technology solution that promotes cooper-ative partnerships among service providers andproduct suppliers—with profits for all.

Several technology innovations converge to enablethe Patton-BroadSoft automated-provisioning solu-tion, including the BroadWorks DM, the Patton redi-rection service, and the split configuration domainand configuration Web Wizard in Patton’sSmartNode SBC products.

Streamlined touchless, remote provisioning, trou-bleshooting, maintenance, and control of theBroadSoft SIP trunk from DM—all the way toPatton’s customer-premise SBC—provides asmooth and painless customer experience for thecustomer CEO and workforce when implementing anIP-based communications solution. The resultingfast, easy, low-cost service turn-up and delivery,offers carrier-providers lower churn, higher ARPUand more profitable delivery of SIP trunk services.

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* Split management domain enables standardized trunk-side configuration for automated provisioning, while allowing the customeror the carrier’s installation partners to manage the subscriber-side LAN/IPBX segment of the configuration.

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Document: 07M-APS-WP1