Packetrino CoreAccess

Packetrino CoreAccess Server
Scaling the Access Edge

Packetrino CoreAccess is a high-performance solution for scaling out the access edge. Combining a general-purpose SIP load-balancing engine and a SIP registrar, a single CoreAccess system can handle over half a million subscribers, while simultaneously performing NAT traversal on all of them.

Load Balancing

CoreAccess allows mutliple load balancing servers to be configured inside a single CoreAccess system. Each server can listen on different IPv4 and IPv6 endpoints, as well as have different transport types (UDP, TCP, TLS) configured. CoreAccess can process over 3000 call attempts per second and handle over a half a million concurrent calls.

In addition to basic weight-based balancing, CoreAccess can balance calls based on:

SDP Balancing

SDP balancing takes load balancing to the next level. With it, target server decisions can be made on the type of media requested in the SIP invite. SDP balancing allows more efficient use of limited transcoding resources.

Registrar Capabilities

Packetrino CoreAccess has several SIP registrar capabilities. SIP registrations can be one of the heaviest things to deal with in a SIP network. CoreAccess eliminates the need for Class 5 switches and IP PBXes to maintain registration information.

The need to keep NAT mappings alive means most clients will re-register every minute. This can quickly mean thousands of REGISTER requests per second. CoreAccess can manage registrations for over half a million subscribers, while processing new call requests both to and from hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

Passthrough Registrar

CoreAccess can act as a passthrough registrar. The CoreAccess load balancing engine automatically deals with NAT issues without need for STUN or TURN. This NAT traversal and load balancing enables transparent registration functionality for seamless integration with existing network elements.

When operating in Passthrough Registrar mode, CoreAccess can also keep track of registrations itself. This fixes scenarios where separate nodes initiate calls to subscribers. Due to NAT traversal issues, these other nodes cannot normally initiate calls to subscribers. With CoreAccess, calls can be originated from any trusted node and seamlessly bypass NAT issues.

Central Registrar

CoreAccess can maintain subscriber information, allowing registrations to be entirely serviced by the CoreAccess platform. In addition to using its own internal store, CoreAccess can authenticate against:

This wide variety of authentication options allows providers to integrate CoreAccess without modifying their existing infrastructure.

Security

All Packetrino software prevents common exploits by using an advanced software stack with strict runtime integrity checks. Security vulnerabilities, such as buffer overruns and integer overflows, plague other vendors, but simply cannot happen with Packetrino software. 

Because CoreAccess deeply inspects and reformats every packet, adding CoreAccess will make your entire SIP network more secure, automatically. CoreAccess can normalize all SIP and SDP messages, ensuring safety.

CoreAccess provides a configurable level of DoS attack prevention. Using dynamic blacklisting, new threats are quickly identified and blocked on a low level, ensuring resources can still be given to processing legitimate requests.

Protocol Conversion

CoreAccess provides seamless support for IPv4, IPv6, UDP, TCP, and TLS. Enabling protocol conversion is as simple as configuring the endpoints and transports you desire. CoreAccess handles everything else, automatically.

Hardware

Packetrino CoreAccess comes on a pair of redundant, 1U servers. Aside from redundant disks, memory and power, CoreAccess offers stateful failover, ensuring that a failure in one node has a minimal (under 10 seconds) impact on call processing. CoreAccess ensures top performance by using mutliple 64-bit Intel processors with 24MB of cache.

CoreAccess provides four Gigabit Ethernet (copper) connections. One for failover, one for management, and two for load balancing interfaces.

Other specifications:

1RU chassis: 77.2cm (30.4") D x 42.6cm (16.7") W x 4.26cm (1.67") H
Weight: 14.7 kg (32.3 lbs)
Operating Temperature: 10º C to 35º C (50º F to 95º F)
Certifications: FCC (U.S. only) Class B, ICES (Canada) Class B, CE Mark (EN 55022 Class B, EN55024, EN61000-3-2, EN61000-3-3), UL 60950, CAN/CSA C22.2 No. 60950, EN 60950 -1, IEC 60950 -1

Pricing and Availability

Introductory Pricing for this redundant and failover system, complete with an unlimited license for use on these servers is $26,800 for orders placed until February 28, 2008. After March 1, 2008, $29,950 FOB from Denver, Colorado, USA.