Signaling System 7 (SS7) is a set of telecommunications signaling protocols defined
by the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU). SS7 is used in the support of such call services
as call establishment, billing, number translation, SMS, routing, and information-exchange
functions for both mobile and fixed calling.
SS7 is an integral technology utilized across Ulticom's entire
Signalware family of open, flexible, application-ready and network-ready
products:
Ulticom's Application-Ready
products provide the critical infrastructure for creation and deployment
of network services.
- Signalware SP or Signaling Services Platform - The industry benchmark in signaling
service platforms
- Signalware SF or Server Farm Suite - Pay-As-You-Grow with Signalware Server Farm
Technologies
Network-Ready products
from Ulticom provide the routing functions for SS7 and Sigtran/IP signaling networks.
These products are ready to deploy out of the box.
- Signalware SG or Signaling Gateway - Optimized IETF signaling gateways with virtual
STP functionality
- Signalware ES or Edge Signal Transfer Point - Reduces OPEX and increases revenues
at the edge of the network
- Signalware CS or Core Signal Transfer Point - The alternative to traditional STPs
- Signalware LB or Advanced Load Balancer - Leveraging the Power of Modern IT Architectures
Signalware products are designed
to adapt, optimize, and reduce the overall cost of your unique network solution.
In an analysis of SS7-enabling technologies, VDC Research identified Ulticom's
Signalware as #1 in SS7 signaling.
Ulticom's SS7 technology is a complete software development and deployment environment
based on the standard global telecommunications protocol. Our SS7 provides customers
with high performance, flexible SS7 capabilities for the development of these essential
and emerging revenue-generating services in the areas of Network Access and Core,
Enhanced Subscriber Services, and Service Creation, Management and Control. Ulticom's
SS7 design supports a wide variety of relevant SS7-related standards, including
those for ANSI, Telcordia, ITU-T, ETSI, TTC, Japan, and China, which include country-specific
variants of ISUP. Signalware is an integrated platform that provides carrier-class
high-availability, scalability fault-resilience, and network-proven out-of-the-box
interoperability.
According to Bob Johnson, VDC's Senior Telecom Analyst, "Ulticom's performance in
the Analysis confirms their status as a market leader and as a provider of key enabling
technologies for systems and service providers globally. As new solutions come to
market based on IMS, providers will want to choose trusted signaling partners such
as Ulticom that provide this essential technology."
Ulticom's Signalware solutions enable network operators to cost-effectively and
seamlessly transition their networks from SS7 to IP. As an integral part of the
Ulticom Signalware offer, telecommunications equipment manufacturers can now build
equipment with the capability to enable a graceful migration from SS7 to Sigtran.
This equipment can be deployed in a traditional SS7 architecture and then migrated
incrementally - link by link, device by device - to an IP transport based upon Sigtran.
Such a migration path - with zero down time - is a critical requirement for any
telecommunications equipment being deployed today. This solution developed by Ulticom,
is referred to as "Super Node."
Ulticom's SS7 delivers a complete SS7 stack, including:
Ulticom provides purpose-built boards to interconnect Signalware applications with
SS7 and ATM networks using T1/E1/J1 interfaces. Form factors supported include PCI,
PCI-Express, and AMC. All 300 series Signalware SS7 Boards utilize a consistent
HW/SW architecture and have field-upgradeable link densities, enabling low cost
deployments, which can be scaled over time to meet traffic demands. Together with
the Ulticom's Signalware host software, the boards form a complete, integrated solution
upon which applications can be developed and deployed.
In compliance with the European Union directive regarding the Restriction of the
Use of certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (RoHS),
Ulticom offers the following RoHS-compliant SS7 Boards:
AH0305 - AMC SS7 T1/E1/J1 Interface Board
- Available in compact, mid-height, and full-height form factors
- AMC.0 and AMC.1 compliant
- Four T1/E1/J1 interfaces field-expandable up to 124 Low-Speed Links at 48, 56, or
64 Kb/s or 4 High-Speed Links (HSLs) based on Q.703 Annex A or ATM
- Preventative Cyclic Retransmission (PCR) for satellite networks under ANSI, ITU,
and Chinese standards
XH0303 - PCI Express SS7 T1/E1/J1 Interface Board
- Low-profile (Full Height compatible) PCI-Express form
factor
- PCI-Express X1 lane
- Four T1/E1/J1 interfaces which are field-expandable up to 124 Low-Speed Links
at 48, 56, or 64 Kb/s or up to 4 High-Speed Links (HSLs) based on Q.703 Annex A
or ATM
- Preventative Cyclic Retransmission (PCR) for satellite networks under ANSI, ITU,
and Chinese standards
PH0301 - PCI Bus SS7 T1/E1/J1 Interface Board
- PCI version 2.3 compatible
- Two T1/E1/J1 interfaces field expandable up to 62 Low-Speed Links at 48, 56, or
64 Kb/s or two High-Speed Links (HSLs) based on Q.703 Annex A or ATM
- Preventative Cyclic Retransmission (PCR) for satellite networks
- 5V and 3.3V signaling levels, full bus master/slave, and DMA capability with buffer
chaining
- Auto-configure to 33Mhz/32-bit or 66Mhz/64-bit
Basic SS7 protocols determine
the ability to deploy applications worldwide. Read more on SS7.
Fault Resiliency
Prevents Revenue Lost to Downtime
Ulticom's Signalware technology offers proven fault-resilient operation with no
single point of failure at the network and process management levels. The distributed
architecture of our SS7 offering includes 2-4 Computer Element (CE) clustering,
load sharing, system redundancy, and dynamic or manual application failover.
- Minimizes the risk of service outage or loss of data by distributing loads across
multiple active host systems
- Allows traffic load sharing and fault resiliency while maintaining a single point
code
- Avoids service disruption caused by software faults that may be encountered with
other fault tolerant systems
High Performance Scalability
Sizes to Fit Applications
Signalware technology efficiently scales to add capacity to support high transaction
applications and increased service usage. Designed to handle the most demanding
applications with full utilization of all allocated links, Signalware's integrated
SS7 boards include PCI, AMC, and PCI-Express architectures;
T1/E1/J1, HSL, and ATM physical interfaces for total SS7 optimization.
- Maintains performance consistency as systems grow with new boards, additional CEs,
or are transitioned to more powerful Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) or multi-core systems
- Creates and deploys applications on a small scale with the ability to seamlessly
scale to larger systems
- Minimizes deployment costs by expanding network capacity as needed
- Allows up to 4,096 signaling links (1024 per CE)
Out-of-the-Box Interoperability
Accelerates Deployment; Recognize Revenues Sooner
Field-proven and hardened, Ulticom's SS7 offers a wide array of protocol variants
to meet global deployment requirements. Running on several carrier-class operating
systems, including Sun® SolarisTM and Linux®, the Signalware
family uses industry standard programming language interfaces (C/C++). Ulticom's
SS7 provides valuable benefits:
- Reduces costs by enabling the development of several service applications on the
same platform
- Streamlines the development cycle with an easy to use, open development environment
for creation and support of SS7 applications
- Deploys and easily migrates applications on a wide range of industry standard open
computing systems
- Increases return on investment by developing applications once and deploying globally
- Support for Solaris® 9, Solaris 10, Red Hat® Enterprise
Linux 3 and 4, SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server 9, and MontaVistaTM Linux Carrier
Grade Edition 3.1 and 4
Maintainability
Lowers Cost of Ownership
Ulticom offers a full SS7 middleware solution, not just a protocol stack. It contains
a rich set of management functions that can be extended to application components.
With Ulticom's SS7, customers can use APIs to manage their platform without building
any additional tools. Ulticom's SS7:
- Manages the platform itself: start/stop processes, monitoring, process recovery,
etc.
- Manages / provisions with MML, GUI, SNMP, and JOAM Detects and reports system events
as they occur with alarms and measurements
SS7 Features and Specs:
Lowers Cost of Ownership
Ulticom offers a full SS7 middleware solution, not just a protocol stack. It contains
a rich set of management functions that can be extended to application components.
With Ulticom's SS7, customers can use APIs to manage their platform without building
any additional tools. Ulticom's SS7:
- Manages the platform itself: start/stop processes, monitoring, process recovery,
etc.
- Manages / provisions with MML, GUI, SNMP, and JOAM Detects and reports system events
as they occur with alarms and measurements
TCAP
- Compliant with ITU-T specifi cations Q.771 - Q.775 and ANSI T1.114
- Dialogue handling, state event processing, and timing capabilities
- 32,000 simultaneous transactions per process
- Load distribution across multiple applications
- Hybrid TCAP Support
- TCAP Libraries (GSM MAP, TIA/EIA - 41 MAP, CAP, INAP, AIN)
ISUP
- Establishes, maintains, and releases calls and connections
- Detects and recovers from protocol and software errors
- Signalware offers a flexible ISUP feature providing the customer the ability to
define, in configuration files, the ISUP messages and parameters not implemented
by their call control application. Flexible ISUP functionality includes:
- Upgrades to the Signalware ISUP library to support the latest ANSI, ITU, and ETSI
standards
- Processing actions that can be customized for unsupported ISUP messages and parameters
- Ability to increase the number of CEs supported for ISUP to match the number of
CEs supported for TCAP
SCCP
- Compliant with ITU-T Q.711-Q.714, ANSI T1.112, and TTC Q.711-714 as indicated below:
- Class - 0 (basic connectionless class), Class - 1 (sequenced connectionless class),
Class
- 2 (basic connection oriented class)
- In-bound global title translations (200)/Out-bound global title translations (20,000)
- 253 subsystem numbers (SSN), 10,000 destination point codes
- Location Library (BSSAP-LE)
MTP
- Compliant with ITU-T specifi cations Q.703, ANSI T1.111.3, and J7 TTC 701-703, NTT
701-703. Compliant with test suite Q.781. Supported features include
- Preventative Cyclic Retransmission (PCR), basic error correction, local and remote
processor outage
- Normal and emergency alignment
- Support for 1 and 2 byte LSSUs
- Compliant to ITU-T Q.704, ANSI T1.111.4, J7 TTC JT-Q.704, NTT-Q.704, and CH7 GF
001-9001.
- MTP capacities: 1024 link sets, 4096 links, 1024 links per CE, 10,000 routesets,
8 possible routes per routeset, 16 links per link set, 8 combined link sets
- MTP restart