H.248 / BICC in the Circuit Swiched Core Network

This book addresses the needs of engineers and technicians who are involved in the operation, optimization and troubleshooting to get familiar with 3GPP Rel. 4 circuit switched networks and above.
The combination of theoretical protocol knowledge and practical hands-on exercises will provide a thorough understanding for everyone who needs to tune circuit switched 3GPP networks.
The book starts with an overview of the Mobile Network Architecture Evolution from 3GPP Rel.99 to Rel.4 and beyond with the particular focus on the CS-CN, the new interfaces Nc, Nb and Mc and the reasons for the introduction of split control and user plane entities.
We will introduce the operation of Soft Switches and the operation of Gateway Control entities and Media Gateways in both ATM and IP transport environments with practical exercises for the students to fully understand the differences and commonalities for these use cases.
The second part of the book will explain the call setup protocols ISUP and BICC in very detail and will deepen that knowledge with practical analysis of log files and possible error cases using trace tools such as Wireshark.
Similarly, we will analyze the transport of higher layer CCS7 protocols over IP, known as SIGTRAN and review the major SIGTRAN protocol elements, their purpose and the functionality of that system in a circuit switched environment with gateway functionality towards IP infrastructures.
At the very heart of the book, we will focus on H.248 / MEGACO protocol and analyze the allocation of contexts, creation, addition and movement of terminations, handling of codec’s and studying both message flow and data flow. We will review the RTP / SRTP / RTCP protocol family and discuss Nb Frame Part.
As an alternative and possible future migration of SIGTRAN we will then introduce the All-IP view with SIP / SDP as session control and IMS as new core network entity. SIP-I and SIP-T will be introduced for bridging IP networks for PSTN originated calls. The students will analyze the message flows in practical exercises and determine the differences to legacy call handling.
Finally, the students will analyze end to end call scenarios with PSTN originated calls to VoIP terminals and vice versa and experience the requirements for protocol translations in the Media Gateway Controllers and the provision of terminations in a Media Gateway.