Aaron’s Worthless Words

Technical : Aaron Conaway

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Aaron Conaway

Aaron Conaway is a Network Architect with Morris Communications in Augusta, GA. He has 10 years of experience with designing, implementing, and supporting all aspects of the network from switches to routers to firewalls to load balancers. Aaron is also a Cisco Certified Network Associate and GIAC Systems & Network Auditor. Prior to working with Morris Communications, Aaron was a Network Engineer with Verisign where he worked with the corporate and telecommunications networks at Verisign properties around the world.

ONT Notes – VOIP Networks

Here are some of the notes I’ve been taking while reading over the ONT book. I hope it benefits somebody. Feel free to correct any stupid mistakes as a paraphrase to avoid a lawsuit.

There’s way too much info here. I’ll refine the process a little better for the next topics.

Benefits of Packet Telephony Networks

• More efficient use of bandwidth and equipment – Packet telephony networks don’t dedicate channels or a static bandwidth to a call; it’s just another network application.
• Consolidate network expense – The common infrastructure (IP-based networks) keeps you from having to support another distinct network for voice like in traditional PBX implementations.
• Improved employee productivity – The phone can be used for more than just phone calls by utilizing the XML interface to run applications or provide content from the network.
• Access to new communications devices – IP phones can communicate with computers, network gear, PDAs, etc., and not just the PBX.

Packet Telephony Components

• Phones – These include analog phone, digital phones, IP phones, softphones, etc.
• Gateways – These devices connect the different devices that cannot access the IP network. For example, making a 911 call from your IP phone requires a gateway that switches and converts your VOIP conversation to the PSTN.
• Gatekeepers – These are devices that handle call routing (resolving an IP to an extension/phone number) and call admission control (CAC, grants permission to make the call).
• Multipoint control units (MCUs) – These are conference bridges that connect a bunch of streams together and present it to all participants. Some can do video as well.
• Call agents – These are devices used in a centralized model that handle the call routing, address translation, call setup, call maintenance, and call termination.
• Application and database servers – These provide required and optional services to the packet telephony network and include TFTP servers for configuration and OS download and XML servers for application use.
• Digital signal processors (DSPs) – These guys converts signals from one form to another. They convert analog to digital signals, digital to packetized data in the form of a codec, from codec to codec, etc.

Analog Interfaces

• Foreign Exchange Office (FXO) – These are interfaces that expect to connect to a CO or equivalent. You connect these to your wall jack to get access to the PSTN.
• Foreign Exchange Station (FXS) – You connect your analog devices (phones, modems, faxes, etc.) to these guys to get dial tone.
• Ear and Mouth (E&M) – These are the old-school way to connect PBXes together.

Digital Interfaces

• Basic Rate ISDN (BRI) – These give you 2 64kbps channels (bearer channels) to run voice over. It also includes a 16kbps D (delta) channel with 48kbps of framing overhead to give you 192kbps.
• T1 (North America) – This is a channelized T1 or a Primary Rate ISDN (PRI).
  Common Channel Signaling (CCS) – The D channel is dedicated to signaling, giving you 23 64kbps channels.
  Channel Associated Signaling (CAS) – There is no D channel, but every bearer channel dedicates a few data bits for its own signaling.
  
• E1 (North America) – This is a channelized E1 or a Primary Rate ISDN (PRI).
  Common Channel Signaling (CCS) – The D channel is dedicated to signaling, giving you 30 64kbps channels.
  Channel Associated Signaling (CAS) – There is still a dedicated D channel, so you still have 30 64kbps channels to use.
  

VOIP Signaling

• H323. – ITU Standard that uses a whole mess of RFCs; distributed model
• Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) – IETF RFC 3435; centralized model
• Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) – IETF standard; distributed model

Phone Call Stages

• Call setup – connects the call between the endpoints
  Call routing – figures out where the call is going
  CAC (optional) – Do you have enough resources (i.e., an available channel or bandwidth) to make the call?
  Call negotiation – negotiates the source and destination IPs, source and destination UDP ports, and codec.
• Call maintenance – collects call statistics for on-demand or historical use
• Call teardown – hanging up and terminating the connection

Digitizing Analog Signals

• Sampling – Periodic capturing and recording of voice resulting in a pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) signal
• Quantization – Assigning numerical values to the PAM signal
• Encoding – Converting the quantization to binary
• Compression (optional) – compressing the binary stream
• Pulse code modulation (PCM) converts analog to digital, but it doesn’t use compression. It takes 8000 samples per second and converts each sample to an 8-bit number, giving 64kbps of capacity.

Digital to Analog

• Decompression (optional)
• Decoding and filtering – binary is converted back to a PAM signal; filtering removes any noise from the conversion
• Reconstructing the analog signal

The Nyquist Theorem

• The number of samples required to accurately encode (and decode) a signal is twice the highest frequency of the signal.
• Since telephone lines can only transmit up to 3400 Hz (4000 Hz for simplicity), the sample rate should be 8000 samples/second.

Measuring Compression Qualities

• Mean opinion score (MOS) – ITU standard technique for measuring quality of codec; subjective score from 1 to 5
• Perceptual speech quality measurement (PSQM) – Another ITU standard technique for measuring quality of codec; test equipment score from 0. to 6.5
• Perceptual analysis measurement system (PAMS) – Developed by BT; predictive system
• Perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) – Another ITU standard; combines PSQM and PAMS; objective measurement of factors including subjective values

Digital Signal Processors (DSPs)

• Provide 3 major services – voice termination, transcoding, conferencing
• Also performs compression (codec), echo cancellation, voice activity detection (VAD), comfort noise generation (CNG), and jitter handling
• Conferencing among participants with the same codec is called a single-mode conference.
• Conferencing among participants with different codecs is called a mixed-mode conference.

Protocols

• VOIP calls run over Real Time Protocol (RTP).
• RTP provides sequence reordering, time-stamping, and multiplexing
• Rides on UDP ports 16384-32767
• Voice does not need the reliability (retransmission) of TCP since retransmitted data is no longer useful (I already said that).
• VOIP packets headers:
  IP – 20 bytes
  UDP – 8 bytes
  RTP – 12 bytes
  L2 headers vary depending on technology (Ethernet = 12 bytes, MPLS, etc.)
• 2 10-ms packages are usually in one packet (20ms of voice)
• G.711 (64kbps) produces 160 bytes from 20 ms of voice.
• G.729 (8kbps) produces 20 bytes from 20 ms of voice.

cRTP

• Compressed RTP (cRTP) reduces the headers
• After the first packet lands, the IP, UDP, and RTP headers won’t change, so why send them again?
• The headers are reduced to a hash.
• cRTP reduces the headers to 4 bytes with a UDP checksum and 2 bytes without a UDP checksum.
• Slow links only
• Processing overhead
• Finite delay in packetization

Packet Size Effect on Bandwidth

• The size of a voice frame depends on:
  Packet rate and packetization size – rate is inversely proporational to size
  IP overhead – RTP, UDP, IP, cRTP overhead
  L2 overhead -
  Tunneling overhead – IPSec, GRP, MPLS, etc.
• Codecs have different bandwidth
  G.711 (PCM) – 8000 samples per second @ 8 bits per sample = 64 kbps
  G.726 (Adaptive Differencial PCM – ADPCM) – Variable bit rate of 32 kbps, 24 kbps, or 16 kbps
  G.722 (Wideband Speech Encoding) – 2 subbands using modified ADPCM of 64 kpbs, 56kbps, or 48 kbps
  G.728
  G.729 – 10 samples per 10-bit code = 8 kbps

Calculating Total Bandwidth

• Step 1 – Determine codec and packetization period: What does the codec require in bandwidth? How many samples per packet (usually 2)?
• Step 2 – Determine link-specific overhead: Encapsulation? cRTP?
• Step 3 – Calculate packetization size: Size of voice payload; codec bandwidth * packetization period / 8 = voice payload in bytes
• Step 4 – Calculate total frame size: IP + UDP + RTP + Tunneling + data link + packetization size
• Step 5 – Calculate packet rate: 1 / packetization period (ex., 20ms packetization period is 1/0.020 = 50 packets per second)
• Step 6 – Calculate total bandwidth: Total frame size * packet rate

VAD and Bandwidth

• Common for 1/3 of conversation to be silence
• VAD bandwidth savings depends on:
  Type of audio: regular phone call (two-way), conf call (one-way), music on hold (MOH)
  Background noise: noise may be detected as voice
  Other factors: language, culture may influence amount of silence

Enterprise VOIP Implementations

• Consists of gateways, gatekeepers, Cisco Unified CallManagers (CCM), Cisco IP Phones
• Routers can provide the voice gateway function by connecting the IP network to the WAN (and other gateways), PSTN, PBXes, etc.
• Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST) allows local calling and use of PSTN while services are down

Functions of CCM

• Call processing – routing, signaling, accounting
• Dial plan administration - call routing
• Signaling and device control – configuration and instruction in case of events
• Phone feature administration – button programming, profiles, etc.
• Directory and XML
• API for interface – allows custom programming for IP phones

Enterprise Deployment Models

• Single-site: You have one site, and everything is there.
• Multisite with centralized call processing: You have multiple sites, but the main site has the CCM cluster.
• Multisite with distributed call processing: You have multiple sites, and each site has its own CCM cluster.
• Clustering over WAN: You have multiple sites, and each site has a part of one big CCM cluster.

IOS Voice Commands

• QoS can guarantee bandwidth but can only reserve so much (say, for 2 simultaneous calls).
• CAC make sure that resources are available (denies a new call if 2 calls are already placed).
• Dropped packets affect every call – not just the new ones