A supplier of test, monitoring and analysis equipment for TDM, wireless, IP and VoIP networks, GL Communications (News - Alert) has released its latest product, MAPS SIP-I, an advanced protocol simulator/tester for SIP-ISUP simulation over IP, a useful tool in least cost routing.

GL’s test platforms differ from conventional test equipment by providing visualization, capture, storage, and other features like portability, remotability, and scripting. GL Communications  sources explained that this new product can simulate SIP signaling with encapsulated ITU/ANSI/ETSI (News - Alert) ISUP messages.

Karthik Ramalingam, project manager at GL, said in a release, “VoIP networks predominantly use SIP to setup and tear down voice calls and increasingly for video and multimedia calls. PSTN networks predominantly use SS7 to do the same. PSTN SS7 signaling is quite different from SIP signaling and in many cases PSTN SS7 signaling may be richer than SIP. There may be no one-to-one correspondence between SIP signaling messages and SS7 signaling messages. Also, it may not be possible to enhance SIP to accommodate the additional features of SS7, and vice-a-versa.”

The ingress gateway, the IP Network, and the egress gateway provide a bridge for the SS7 signaling and traffic. The SIP-I enables a framework for the integration of ISUP within SIP. At the point of interconnection the ingress and egress gateways deliver the SS7 ISUP message encapsulation and vice a versa. RTP is used to carry voice traffic as usual within the SIP network from gateway to gateway, pointed out Ramalingam.

GL’s Message Automation and Protocol Simulation (MAPS) product with SIP-I offers the IP side of the gateway at both ingress and/or egress based on the situation. MAPS serves as an optimized protocol test platform as it supports many protocols including TDM, IP, and wireless infrastructure protocols.

The other features of MAPS SIP-I encompass simulation of signaling gateway, Softswitch as UAC, UAS, in the network; handling of retransmissions and remote retransmissions and support for both UDP (News - Alert) and TCP.

The new product generates and processes SIP-I valid and invalid messages; provides a fully integrated, complete test environment for SIP-I besides supporting complete customization of call flow and messages.

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