[VoiceOps] SS7 Landscape

[Mike Hammett]

My current vendor has a similar setup. One VPN endpoint and STP are in the same market. The other are 1k miles apart. No idea why they'd do that. It seems like it would introduce extra opportunities for failure. 




----- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 
http://www.ics-il.com 



Midwest Internet Exchange 
http://www.midwest-ix.com 



----- Original Message -----

From: "Mike Johnston" <mjohnston at wiktel.com> 
To: "Mike Hammett" <voiceops at ics-il.net>, "voiceops" <voiceops at voiceops.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2023 4:45:59 PM 
Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] SS7 Landscape 

On 2023-10-24 15:11, Mike Hammett wrote: 



Recommend\don't recommend? 
Anything to watch out for? 


The offer I got was attractive, but not everything that's attractive is what it seems. 






We used to have Onvoy/Inteliquent SS7 via TDM, which was reliable. Two A-Links, to two geographically diverse STPs. When faults did occur, it was almost always with a carrier in the middle (e.g., a fiber cut). 


We are trying to move away from T1s. But some telcos that we interconnect with have not yet realized the benefits of SIP. As such, we still need SS7, in some form or another. Also, our LNP lookups are over SS7. 



Several months ago we migrated to SIGTRAN, staying with Inteliquent, now called Sinch. They helped us through the migration process, which went quite smooth overall. 


The IP connections are over VPN tunnels, to two geographically diverse VPN endpoints. We connect to two geographically diverse STPs through those VPN tunnels (one STP per VPN tunnel). One thing that I don't like, though, is that the VPN endpoints are not located near the STPs. The STPs are located somewhat near me (same state & next state over), but the VPN endpoints are multiple states away, meaning the IP traffic trombones around the US. This has not caused us any actual problems, though. 


In general, yes, I would recommend Inteliquent/Since for SS7/SIGTRAN. They have been good to us, and reliable. 


Note: I was not involved in any of the money conversations. Just the technical conversations. 

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