Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Using Mobicents with Legacy Network Elements (PSTN, SS7)

A frequently asked customer question is what kind of Mobicents resource adaptors are there for legacy networks - CAMEL, TCAP, INAP, ISUP and so on. Let me offer an updated view on this topic.

There are several open source Mobicents Resource Adaptors for legacy networks and there is an even bigger number of custom non-open source Resource Adaptors developed and tuned for specific customer needs. The JSLEE RA architecture has proven its value time and again.

There is a new phenomenon, which I would like to highlight here. Over the past few months, we often see discussions that refer to bridging new applications hosted on Mobicents with legacy networks by using Asterisk as a SIP gateway. These kind of discussions are initiated by developers at encumbent telecoms as well as new generation service providers.

This is turning into a trend lately, further validated by a growing number of VoIP service providers such as callwithus, future9, gafachi and others. The common delimiter between these providers in different parts of the world is that they are leveraging Asterisk for its broad set of supported legacy networks and its ability to act as SIP gateway.

Next time you are in a situation where you have to bridge Mobicents with a legacy network, you can either use a pre-built Resource Adaptor or write one yourself or maybe look at setting up Asterisk as a SIP gateway.

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