Hi Terry,
I do quite a bit of CUBE, and have done a bit of Acme as well.
There were some recent partner sessions that talk about some interesting things
coming for CUBE, so it’s worth making sure you are getting latest roadmap info.
My main comparison points..
# HA
In enterprise there was HA on CUBE, and it was improving in each release (but
there are caveats with it)
Have found Acme HA to be seamless and rock solid.
# Deployment
Cisco has some great interop guides – if you go with a carrier that has spent
the money, a lot of the hard work has been done for you in terms of testing (as
you know SIP can be implemented and configured in many different ways – if
someone hasn’t done a lot of testing up front, you do sometimes end up adding
SIP profiles and tweaks as you discover issues)
Acme has some very thorough guides – I’m not sure if they have interop testing
with carriers – given they are in SP’s a lot, there is a good chance they do.
I’d look into it that with the Acme SE. Talk to prospective ITSP’s about their
testing, and supported SBC’s.
# Ops
CUBE enterprise is great, IOS, most people are familiar. You will most likely
need to train people on Acme
I find troubleshooting a bit of a let down with CUBE. Basically log to buffer,
copy to file, or packet captures. Wireshark with ladders or TranslatorX are
great, but it’s getting the files there that bugs me.
Alternatively, there did seem to be a few 3rd party tools out there, but you
are probably looking at $$$
Acme has web interface, list of calls and then ability to drill down with
ladder diagrams, messaging capture etc. You should see this before making
decision.
Some good knowledge on Acme forums
Acme has very flexible manipulation – CUBE is quite good too (and they have
great profile testing tool) – plus you can also use CUCM LUA on the SIP trunk
# On your other notes
Centralised – this is great for flexibility DR etc, standard stuff be aware of
the call volumes over the WAN, caller ID considerations for emergency and local
pizza shop type services
WAN – we terminate on existing equipment, and Acme is in a VLAN, I think this
is most flexible.. you have a very flexible set up in Acme in regard to
networking, lots of zones, interface options etc.
Transcoding – I think you could still utilise CUCM registered transcoders for
the ASR scenario..
Virtual - We use virtual Acme, it had some teething problems in very first
versions (and a clunky license on USB stick thing going on) but it seems to be
good now
We don’t have transcoding / media resources in the virtual
edition
Flow through / around – a lot of designs the carrier doesn’t have connectivity
into the rest of the network, so flow through is quite typical.
However, we do have carriers here that have SBC’s on your WAN,
so flow through can be nice here – it also then makes CUBE HA less important,
i.e. if call is set up, media is from end point to carrier SBC already (if no
xcoding involved)
So I won’t say one way or the other, just my thoughts on things you can
consider.
I like both, and will continue to work on both!
Cheers,
Tim
From: cisco-voip [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Terry
Cheema
Sent: Wednesday, 11 March 2015 1:10 PM
To: cisco-voip voyp list
Subject: [cisco-voip] SBC/SIP Trunk Design queries
Hi List,
I am working on to finalize the SBC vendor for one of our environments. I have
a couple of queries related to the SIP Trunk design and SBC vendor
choices(basically CUBE vs Acme Packet). I would really appreciate if anyone
with SIP Trunking/SBC expertise (Cisco/Acme Packet) can provide some input on
the below queries:
1) CUBE vs Acme Packet: First of all Cisco has marked the CUBE SP Edition
product line for EoL, exiting the SBC Service Provider segment, so leaving only
SBC Enterprise as the option. Although at this stage we are looking for an
enterprise grade SBC but it will be a plus if it has the potential to step up
into a SP SBC in a multi-tenanted environment. I was comparing AP 3820 with the
CUBE Ent ASR1k-x:
CUBE provides no HA (though in some documents it says, came out from a meeting
with the Cisco SME informing HA is not available), No transcoding (due to lack
of DSP on ASR1K), No Multi-tenancy support with all of these features
supported in a 3820 SBC
Any feature better in CUBE that I may have overlooked? I am aware that CUBE
configuration etc. can be easy compared to Acme Packet but apart from that any
solid reason to choose CUBE over AP?
2) HA vs Non-HA: HA is obviously the preferred approach and looks like
only possible with AP. Can anyone confirm the HA works as claimed by AP? Due to
the costs involved in double the equipment – whats the common approach followed
here HA or non-HA?
3) Centralised Design: We are planning on a centralised SIP solution (with
SBCs at both the DCs), anything to be careful of?
4) Transcoding: CUBE ASR1K does not support transcoding (due to to lack of
DSPs on this platform). Normally we would have an agreement with the provider
on codecs, but still any scenarios when a SBC would need transcoding or
on-board DSPs ?
5) WAN link termination – If we are to provision new WAN links for the
this SIP service, what’s the preferred approach – terminating WAN links
directly on the SBC or on the existing routers, does Acme Packet supports WAN
link termination?
6) Media flow around vs flow thru – Any comments on which approach is
better? I am preferring flow through at this stage. Any suggestions?
7) Acme Packet Virtual SBC: I was looking into AP virtual SBC although it
has a limited scalability at this stage, but would like to hear any input if
anyone is using this.
Thanks in advance.
Terry
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