RADIUS ASP
Bill directly from your VoIP gateways without a gatekeeper or softswitch!
RADIUS ASP™
is the latest Internet-based service offering from Switch
Management Corp, the company that introduced the award-winning
WebCDR billing system to the telecom industry. RADIUS
ASP performs real-time collection and storage of RADIUS
accounting records from your VoIP gateways to our redundant
data centers in California and Nevada.
Until now, deploying an in-house RADIUS server for VoIP AAA
accounting has been an expensive and daunting undertaking.
In addition to arcane software configurations, IT staffs had
to contend with Unix system administration and the demands
of engineering and maintaining a high-availability service
to ensure 24/7/365 collection of valuable RADIUS billing data.
With the introduction
of RADIUS ASP carriers now have the option to outsource
the entire RADIUS operation to Switch Management, a company
with a proven track record of engineering, deploying, and
maintaining high-availability "always on" web-based applications
and services.
Who needs RADIUS?
Carriers who want to bill directly from their VoIP gateways need RADIUS. Unlike traditional telecom switches that can store their own call transactions (CDRs), VoIP gateways like the Cisco AS5350 and the Quintum Tenor have no built-in means of storing CDRs. They instead rely on an external server (i.e. RADIUS) to collect their CDRs. Taking advantage of their always-on TCP/IP connections, these gateways send their CDRs over the network in real-time to the waiting RADIUS server that receives and stores the CDRs for later processing by a billing system (like WebCDR). Think of RADIUS as a bucket that catches the CDRs from your gateways. Without a bucket the CDRs are simply not stored!
Geographically
Diverse Data Centers for Maximum Reliability
For
maximum protection against disruptive events like natural
disasters, acts of terrorism, and major fiber cuts, RADIUS
ASP's infrastructure is spread between two cities 550 miles
apart from each other. Las Vegas, Nevada houses the
primary RADIUS ASP cluster, and Santa Clara, California houses
the secondary RADIUS ASP cluster. Either cluster alone
can manage all our clients' traffic should the other cluster
suffer a complete outage. Working together, the two
clusters provide an extremely robust RADIUS repository for
your critical billing data.
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Data Centers
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Santa Clara Data Center
Switch Management's Santa Clara-based data center houses the primary RADIUS ASP cluster.
- Secure facility with proximity card access system and 24/7 NOC monitoring
- Climate-controlled
- Battery backup system
- Diesel backup generator with fuel contract
- Fire protection dry pipe system
- Dual entry point fiber optic gigabit Internet service
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Las Vegas Data Center
Switch Management's Las Vegas-based data center provides RADIUS ASP with the ultimate in security and reliability.
- Secured facility with biometric entry and 24/7 NOC
monitoring
- Climate-controlled
- Battery backup system
- Diesel backup generator with fuel contract
- Tier one Internet providers UUNet, Cogent, Williams,
and Electric Lightwave via BGP4 fail-over routing.
- Located at Sahara and Lamb, the fiber capital of
Las Vegas.
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RADIUS ASP Frequently Asked Questions
| Q: |
Do I need RADIUS? |
| A: |
If you own and operate your own VoIP or SIP gateways and want to do termination billing without a gatekeeper or softswitch, then yes, you need RADIUS. |
| Q: |
What is the difference between RADIUS and RADIUS ASP? |
| A: |
RADIUS is an acronym for Remote Authentication Dial In User Service. There are many RADIUS servers available on the market; some turn-key, some not; some free, some not. RADIUS ASP is Switch Management's trademark for its hosted RADIUS service that is specifically tailored to address VoIP and SIP billing. |
| Q: |
What is Triple A? |
| A: |
AAA is an acronym for Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting; the three primary functions of RADIUS. Of the three, RADUS ASP currently offers only Accounting, the module that collects and stores CDRs from VoIP and SIP gateways for later billing by WebCDR. |
| Q: |
How can we make our gateways output RADIUS? |
| A: |
Each gateway has its own command set and control method. Cisco gateways use IOS command line commands to alter and save the running config. Quintum gateways use a Windows-based configuration tool provided by Quintum. In every case it's a simple matter of entering the IP addresses of RADIUS ASP's two collection sites (California and Las Vegas), setting a few retry and retransmit values, and turning on RADIUS accounting. |
| Q: |
How much of our bandwidth will RADIUS take up on our circuit? |
| A: |
RADIUS packets are packed binary and will take up about 2-3% of the bandwidth used for voice packets on a typical full gateway. Unless you are already at your bandwidth limit you won't even notice that RADIUS has been turned on. |
| Q: |
Our gateways are located on another continent, far from either of your RADIUS ASP sites. Won't that pose a challenge to collecting CDRs reliably? |
| A: |
No. When a gateway's retry, retransmit, and secondary server settings are properly set, any network capable of supporting commercial voice traffic will reliably transmit RADIUS packets. RADIUS ASP collects CDRs from gateways in the USA, South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia without incident or lost data. |
| Q: |
We have some gateways but they're not Cisco or Quintum. Will RADIUS ASP support them? |
| A: |
Many gateways are RADIUS compatible but some are not. Consult your technical documentation. If your gateway is not RADIUS compatible then we cannot support it with RADIUS ASP. So-called Cisco-compatible gateways will need to be tested with RADIUS ASP as some RADIUS output is more compatible than others. |
| Q: |
Can RADIUS ASP turn my gateway into a gatekeeper? Into a calling card platform? Into a call shop platform? Into a softswitch? Into a least cost routing switch? |
| A: |
No, not at this time. RADIUS ASP reliably collects and stores CDRs, nothing more. |
| Q: |
Can we subscribe to RADIUS ASP service without subscribing to WebCDR Billing service? |
| A: |
No, not at this time. Without WebCDR we would not be able to count the minutes to determine your usage. |
| Q: |
Can RADIUS ASP block a customer when their deposit is depleted? |
| A: |
No, not at this time. But VoIP Watchdog can email you when a customer has depleted a pre-paid deposit below a certain threshold. |
Supported VoIP Equipment
- Cisco Universal Gateways and Access Servers:
- Cisco AS5300
- Cisco AS5350
- Cisco AS5350XM
- Cisco AS5400
- Cisco AS5400XM
- Cisco AS5400HPX
- Cisco AS5850
- Cisco IPIPGW (IP to IP Gateway)
- Nextone:
- Multiprotocol Signaling Switch (MSW)
- Multiprotocol Session Controller (MSC)
- All Nextone RADIUS-compatible VoIP equipment
- Quintum Tenor Series:
- Quintum Tenor AXM MultiPath Gateways:
- Quintum Tenor AXT Trunking VoIP Gateways:
- Quintum Tenor AXG Series Gateways:
- Quintum Tenor AXE Enterprise VoIP Gateways:
- Quintum Tenor DX Series
- Quintum A800
- Quintum CMS
- VegaStream Vega Series
- All other RADIUS-compatible VoIP equipment and softswitches
When you combine RADIUS ASP with WebCDR, you get a single view of all
calls passing through your network, even if you combine equipment from
Cisco, Nextone, and/or Quintum and mix protocols such as H323 and SIP.
Fast Set Up
Need rock-solid RADIUS in a hurry? Ask about same-day activation!
Upon receipt of your order we provide you with the network addresses
for our Las Vegas and Santa Clara RADIUS clusters. You then enter
these addresses as the primary and secondary RADIUS servers for
each of your VoIP gateways.
On our side, we configure our firewalls
and RADIUS servers to accept your AAA traffic. Once
these configurations are completed our engineers verify that
we are receiving RADIUS records from your network and that
the records are complete and properly formatted. Following
that your RADIUS ASP account is ready for commercial traffic! And from then on, RADIUS ASP's Web-based interface allows you to add, change, or delete gateways at any time, 24/7.
Fully Interoperable
with WebCDR Billing
RADIUS ASP is fully supported by Switch
Management's award-winning WebCDR billing service. WebCDR
polls your RADIUS ASP account for new CDRs every 15 minutes.
Once in WebCDR your VoIP network appears as a stand-alone
switch, complete with the full array of traffic, revenue,
and profitability reports that have made WebCDR the leading
web-based billing service in the wholesale market today.
Pricing Starts at $125 per Month!
Pricing for RADIUS ASP begins at
1/80th cent per minute ($0.000125/min) at the one million minute/month
level and decreases as traffic volume increases.
That's equivalent to $125 per month for up to one million
minutes. (Please note that RADIUS is not a billing system; it is simply a means to collect and store CDRs. For billing you also require WebCDR)
Testimonials
| "WWIE chose RADIUS ASP based on Switch Management's excellent track record
of reliability with WebCDR. RADIUS ASP is less expensive than running RADIUS
in-house and the rapid activation helped speed the turn-up of this network
segment." |
| --Gerald Murray, Senior Telecom Engineer, Western Wireless
International Enterprise, Inc. |
| "Outsourcing to RADIUS ASP was an easy decision once we calculated the total
cost of ownership on IT staff, fault-tolerant servers, and redundant
Internet connections." |
| --Steven, System Administrator. |
The Case for Outsourcing
Total cost of ownership (TCO) should be
considered carefully when determining your VoIP network's
CDR collection strategy.
Proprietary CDR collection solutions for
VoIP exist from many telecom vendors but they tend to be pricey
and are often only sold as even-pricier turnkey solutions
in hardware configurations that you may not want or need.
Softswitches are even more complex and even more costly.
The popular solution is RADIUS. So how much does
RADIUS cost?
RADIUS is an open standard
and RADIUS software is available free on the Internet
from sources like freeradius.org. FreeRADIUS runs on
the popular Linux operating system, is available from multiple
sources, and is also free for the downloading. Add an
inexpensive PC to the mix and you have a good, cheap RADIUS
solution. Or do you?
As good as Linux is, it requires a competent
system administrator -- particularly in a high-volume production
environment like telecom -- to run reliably over extended
periods of time. Good sysadmins are always in high demand
and you can expect to pay handsomely for a full-time (or part-time)
administrator to join your staff. Don't forget that
your sysadmin will need to be on-call 24/7 with a pager in
case your RADIUS server ever has trouble (trust us... eventually
it will). It's getting expensive...
Your Linux/PC/FreeRADIUS server, even properly
administrated, is going to require occasional maintenance
(hopefully scheduled, though sometimes not!), so you should
decide now if you are going to stop all traffic on
your network during your maintenance windows or if your traffic
is important enough to warrant a second parallel RADIUS
server to step in when your first server is offline.
Stopping traffic is usually not an option for even the smallest
of carriers, and keeping the traffic flowing without a working
RADIUS server to catch CDRs is tantamount to letting money
gush down the drain, so we think you would opt for a second
RADIUS server. It's getting complicated...
Your second RADIUS server has given you
(and your grateful sysadmin) some breathing room, so let's
turn our attention to other single points of failure.
Without a reliable Internet connection even the best
RADIUS strategy is useless, so skip right over DSL and order
a T1 from your local telco or ISP. T1s are reliable,
aren't they? But are they reliable enough? How much would five
minutes of missed CDRs or a halted network cost your company?
How about five hours?? Better order a
second T1 from a totally different ISP, and make sure it's
brought to your location on a different local loop.
And don't forget the two routers you'll need, one per T1.
It's getting more complicated...
So with your two independent T1s (we'll
call them A and B) you can either connect A to router
1 and PC 1, and B to router 2 to PC 2 and hope
that you don't have a system failure at the same time you
have an Internet failure on that T1, or you can meld
the two T1s together using a complex routing scheme called
BGP4. But let's stop there as the implementation timeline is
starting to stretch into many months; let's instead turn
our attention to electricity.
If your two PCs are in the same location
they are subject to the same power outages, acts of nature/terrorism
and other catastrophic events. The typical battery-backed
UPS will get you through the shorter outages (i.e. 30-60 minutes),
but what about the longer ones? Does your facility have a
diesel generator? Is it tested on a regular basis? Is there
a fuel contract in place to ensure that it won't
run out of gas after its first tank in the event of an area-wide
disaster? That sounds really expensive...
And how about network security? Unless you're
running your VoIP network on private lines (most VoIP traffic
today runs on the public Internet) you will need your RADIUS
servers to be visible from the public Internet to allow your
deployed gateways to reach them. But that also opens
the door to hackers who continually scan the public
Internet looking for unsecured servers such as yours.
Leaving your network unsecured and wide open to hackers would
be an invitation to disaster so add in two firewalls
and their ongoing administration as your network grows and
evolves. It's getting more complicated...
Our hypothetical solution has come a long
way from the "cheap PC with FreeRADIUS and Linux". That
long way is directly measurable in terms of time and money.
But we arrived here for a reason: VoIP CDR collection is a
serious undertaking with real money on the line in every passing
minute. We built RADIUS ASP so you wouldn't have to,
because, as with our successful WebCDR ASP, we believe that
outsourcing such IT- and infrastructure-intensive services
offers clear and compelling benefits to carriers of all
sizes.
Get Started Today!
Contact the Switch Management sales department
at +1 925-283-9600 x2, or send us your contact information on-line
to sign up!
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