VOIP networks are being deployed and the network-based CDR generation is the answer to solve many of the inherent challenges that go beyond just making the technology work. Are you prepared to bill, verify your billing, know your call completion ratios, provide information for security, national defense and solve problems to keep your customers happy? Learn how to solve these issues.

Telephony carriers today are using advanced network management tools, like those at Tekno Telecom, to solve Revenue Assurance, Billing, CALEA, and Troubleshooting in the PSTN environment. The need to solve these issues does not go away when carriers migrate to VOIP environments. In actuality, the need for these capabilities increases.

Fundamentally carriers must attain revenue from their network and properly bill, verify bills and ideally generate the maximum profitablity from their network regardless of technology. Carriers must identify and solve any leakages that may be occurring to attain the knowledge they need. The best source of this knowledge as to what is truly happening, is from actual network data.

Just as important, the carriers' customers want their telephony to work and any substantial deviation from what they are used to in terms of quality of service that may cause them to seek out the carriers' competitors. So how are carriers going to make sure that they are offering a high quality of service and be able to prove it? The best source of troubleshooting data and being able to prove it both internally and externally is to use network derived data.

Realize that the dynamics of network elements (including switches) is changing. Network elements are not tested to the degree that previous network elements were tested even five years ago. Due

to the complex nature of IP protocols (SIP, Sigtran, etc.), the network is inherently more software-based than ever before. Meaning the issues of billing, inter-connect billing, revenue assurance, and troubleshooting are now more difficult than every before. Add the fact that standards, as we know them, have morphed to quasi-standards, and the need for network data to be analyzed becomes more than a need, it becomes a necessity.

Security issues actually increase with VOIP. It is imperative that carriers understand that the new networks are fraught with peril in the sense that they are tremendously easier to hack into and affect. The signaling network in a VOIP environment is in the same "cloud" as the bearer traffic. Meaning it is there to be manipulated. In the PSTN (SS7) environment the signaling network was hidden from the customer and there are very few cases of any hacking occurring in that environment. Again, network data analysis will be critical in protecting carriers.

Terrorism, crime, and network emergencies will continue and in the VOIP environment the tools necessary and embedded within today's PSTN network are not truly functional in a VOIP network. Network data analysis in real-time will be of significant help in these scenarios.

Network Data Analysis with Tekno Telecom's solutions means analyzing every packet that transitions the network from a signaling standpoint. Correlating them with other packets to generate extremely accurate Call and Transaction Detail Records for every leg of a call, or service, and using applications to quickly provide answers and knowledge to the stated issues. We have been very successful in implementing these technologies in MF, SS7, wireline, wireless (GSM & IS-41) and now VOIP environments including Sigtran (M2PA, M2UA, M3UA), SIP, SIP-T, BICC, MegaCo, and many more.

Sam Galler (Center)
Vice President of Sales & Marketing

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