Are you offering services based on SIP and/or WebRTC devices?
What kind of services would that be, you may ask? Examples of SIP-based services could be any kind of communication service that relies on an IP-based communications infrastructure, such as voice and video services (VoIP), digital alarm services or media services, e.g., Integrated Voice Response (IVR) or Unified Communications (UC).
If you are in the process of assessing the most cost efficient, reliable and future proof approach to SIP-based (IP) communication for your existing or planned services, this blog is for you! Below is a list of questions that you should take into consideration when assessing the communications platform – the SIP infrastructure – on which to implement your SIP-based services.
But before we head into the list, let’s just briefly mention some SIP devices, very short explain what a SIP infrastructure does, and what role it plays in your offerings’ end quality.
What is a SIP device?
SIP devices might be any device that supports the SIP standard. Examples are soft phones, SIP-based elevator terminals, door intercom systems, cameras, drones, digital alarm devices, IoT devices or WebRTC clients. WebRTC is the technology framework used in web-browsers for real-time communication.
What is a SIP infrastructure?
Since this is not a deep technical blog outlining the architecture of a SIP infrastructure, let’s just agree that a SIP infrastructure provides the essential functionalities needed in the end-to-end communication between SIP devices. The glue that ties it all together. A key part in a SIP infrastructure is the SIP server, by some also referred to as the VoIP server.
The functionalities provided by the SIP infrastructure (or server) enable the devices mentioned above to register and communicate with each other or with external parties such as surveillance centers, contact centers, alarm centers or similar. Regardless of what the devices communicate with, the SIP infrastructure plays a significant role in the value delivered to your customers. Simply put, the SIP infrastructure must not go down!
7 things to take into consideration when assessing a SIP infrastructure
Each “thing” is followed by a short explanation of why addressing it is important.
1. Setting up and maintaining a SIP infrastructure can be complex – do you have the experience?
The SIP infrastructure includes many components, e.g., SIP registrars, user databases, SIP proxies, media relays and NAT traversal. Setting up, maintaining and provisioning a complete SIP infrastructure can be a complex take-on and your devices must be correctly registered and authenticated for flawless end-to-end connectivity.
2. Is the time it takes to get your service offering up and running a key factor for you?
As stated above the initial set-up procedure can be complex unless your in-house resources have the competence required. Consequently, the time it takes to get your devices up and running and ready to communicate might be un-necessary long. This comes with an associated delay in revenue streams.
3. Is scalability important to you? Do you foresee growth in terms of # of devices and/or geography?
Many SIP-based service offerings are becoming global which means that communication into local PSTN networks is needed with associated trunk integrations. Also, as your service grows, you may want to add devices in an easy and effortless way.
4. Do you want your devices to connect between the public internet and an internal network? Asked differently; do you need SBC functionality?
There are several use cases where you might want to enable communication between different IP networks. One such use case would be if SIP device located on the public internet should be able to communicate with an internal communication infrastructure. For such a use case to work, you would need a Session Border Controller (SBC) to hide the internal communication network from internet, while still allowing your SIP devices to connect from internet to the internal network services.
5. Is monitoring your SIP devices’ state and activity important for your offering?
Monitoring SIP device status and activities might give valuable insights into the usage of your offerings. In mission-critical scenarios you need to assure that the devices – for example SIP-enabled elevators – are always connected and ready should a critical scenario occur. Learning that a device is not connected when the accident has happened is too late!
6. Do you have an existing SIP trunk that your devices should be connected to?
If you have an existing carrier network provider you want to connect your devices to, does the SIP infrastructure support that in an easy way? Can you bring your own SIP trunk?
7. Are you worried about security or GDPR compliance?
Security is always a key issue regardless of deployment option; hardware-based or serverless. Eavesdropping or manipulation of SIP or media traffic are other challenges that must be addressed, as well as GDPR compliance.
Are any of the above relevant for you? Our serverless SIP Server as a Service might be what you’re looking for!
iotcomms.io’s proven experience and competence in handling the complexity of a SIP infrastructure has allowed us to develop a number of APIs that make life easier for you. With our cloud native serverless SIP Server as a Service you simply integrate towards our REST APIs and we will set up and run the SIP infrastructure for you. All while you can focus on your own service and deliver the best possible quality to your customers.
The serverless SIP Server as a Service will:
→ Take care of all the initial provisioning of your SIP (and WebRTC) devices and you can have them sending and receiving SIP and media traffic within minutes.
→ Ensure a reliable and secure end-to-end communication including setting-up and maintaining SIP Registrars, user databases, SIP Proxies, media relays and NAT traversal mechanisms.
→ Connect to your local trunk line vendor and allow calls to be connected to the local PSTN.
→ Host SBC functionality to ensure your services are delivered end to end between the public internet and an internal communication network.
→ Monitor service usage data allowing a predictable pay-as-you-go business model.
→ Transcode between codecs to avoid any codec mismatching between device and network.
→ Provide a geographically redundant infrastructure that can scale in many dimensions, ensure the highest security standards are met and process personal data in compliance with GDPR.
We have packaged the complexity in easy-to-use APIs – you simply just need to integrate to them to get your service up and running – today!
Read more about how our SIP Server can be used in a variety of voice & video use cases, or contact us today so we can discuss how to help!
iotcomms.io SIP Server
Offer reliable mission critical voice and video communication services and benefit from our ready-to-use SIP Server as a Service. Avoid the complexity of setting up your own SIP infrastructure – just integrate to our API.
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