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VoIP REVENUE ASSURANCE | Switchblade
Overview
A carrier class Revenue Assurance platform for real-time network monitoring, enabling carriers to monitor VoIP Signaling Traffic, increase their revenues and improve VoIP network quality by immediately identifying and correcting network shortfalls and service operational issues.
The Switchblade’s network probe extracts VoIP Signaling Traffic from the network and generates VoIP Call Detail Records (CDRs) to a secure database. The CDRs are accessible to a client PC with a web browser.
- VoIP Revenue Assurance web application for analyzing CDRs.
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 24/7 operation.
- Enterprise database.
- VoIP CDRs generated.
- VoIP network probes with 1 Gigabit link capacity.
- Real-time display of VoIP calls-in-progress.
- User freindly interface for Fraud Monitoring, Statistics, Billing and Channel Usage.
- Rapid Return on Investment.
Key System Functionality
Revenue Assurance
- Fraud Monitoring.
- Increased Revenue by Stopping Fraud.
- Checking the accurancy of settlements between International Carriers.
- VoIP Billing Verification: Collection and Reconciliation / Verification of VoIP CDRs.
- Billing for VoIP use, e.g. VoIP services for other Carriers.
- Customer Care: Preventing Churn.
- Customer Care: Identification of VoIP calling patterns for major customers.
- Growth in VoIP traffic.
Performance & Maintenance Management
- VoIP Call Performance Statistics ASR (Answer/Seize Ratio), BSR (Busy/Seize
Ratio)
and PDD (Post Dialing Delay). - Optimization of network and route planning.
- Real-time Call Tracing.
- Trouble Shooting.
- Identification of Faulty Routes and misconfigured routers.
- Identification of Network Congestion.
VoIP Network Probe
The VoIP Network Probe connects to Internet at a country's International gateway, where VoIP signaling traffic is monitored. The VoIP Network Probe consists of two parts; the first part is a Cisco Enterprise Switch configured to pass TCP/IP traffic transparently and also to pass VoIP signaling traffic data onto a monitoring port (port mirroring). The second part is an Ethernet port (in the Switchblade server) connected to the monitoring port on the Cisco Switch. This port is configured to receive all network traffic and then to filter signaling traffic out of all the packets received. This two-part monitoring configuration allows fully non-intrusive monitoring of the VoIP signaling traffic data.
The VoIP signaling traffic data is streamed to the Switchblade server, where it is decoded and VoIP CDRs generated. The VoIP CDRs are written to the database for storage and analysis.
Switchblade Server
The Switchblade server hosts an Enterprise Database Server and also operates as a web-server running the VoIP Revenue Assurance application. The database stores the VoIP CDRs and executes SQL queries from VoIP Revenue Asurance application running on the web browser on the client PCs.
The Switchblade server typically is a rack mounted Dual CPU Server with a 500 to 1000 GByte Hard Disk running Enterprise Linux and uses DDR2 ECC memory for reliability. The Enterprise Linux operating system and the Database Server are multi-user.
Switchblade PCs
The Client PCs run the VoIP Revenue Assurance application in a web browser and connect to the Switchblade Server over an Ethernet LAN. The Switchblade web-server is used for accessing the CDR database and for the real-time display of VoIP calls-in-progress.
A comprehensive set of search queries can be executed on the web-server via the client PC, the queries extract and display call statistics including accumulated minutes.
Useful examples include:
- Identification of major VoIP users.
- Identification of network busy periods.
- Identification of Call Release codes.
- Identification and prediction of the VoIP traffic growth.
Revenue Assurance Manager
The investigation of revenue loss varies from over-declared minutes through to fraudulent operation. The Switchblade offers the Carrier detection facilities for a wide range of fraud and access to VoIP CDRs to identify the parties involved. The Revenue Assurance Manager can applying action trees to identify the patterns used for these fraudulent calls and by responding appropriately can restore the revenue streams.
The VoIP CDR data provided is detailed and includes the time of call, the duration and status, i.e. Answered, A Number, B Number, IP Addresses and additional information including Calling Party Category (CPC), Post Dialing Delay (PDD), Release Code (RC), etc.
Network Manager
The displays provide snap-shots of the usage of the VoIP Calls over the internet. The processing of the collected VoIP CDR data allows the Network Manager to identify traffic peak demand and to specify the most cost effective methods for transit, overflow and alternative traffic routes.
Comparison of monthly total incoming route traffic against declared traffic may be used to ensure correct proportionate return traffic in multi-carrier situations. Comparison of the volume of VoIP to traditional PSTN voice calls allows the prediction in VoIP traffic growth.
