In this section:
The Ribbon SBC Software Edition (SWe) is the virtualized version of the Ribbon Session Border Controller (SBC). As a software-based application, the SBC SWe decouples SBC features and functionality from proprietary hardware and greatly expands the options for where and how the SBC is deployed. This article provides an overview of some key characteristics that contribute to the wide range of SBC SWe deployment models.
In contrast to installation on dedicated SBC hardware, the SBC SWe software runs as a virtual machine (VM) or as a virtual network function (VNF) in a variety of virtualized environments. The software-based nature of SBC SWe enables great flexibility in network design. Operators select the environment and determine the number and size of SBC SWe instances, or nodes, they need to meet their requirements. Working with virtual instances, an operator can readily adapt the deployment capacities by creating or tearing down SBC SWe nodes as their requirements change. You can deploy the SBC SWe in the following environments:
Hardware-based SBCs provide redundancy when deployed in a 1:1 high-availability (HA) configuration. The SBC SWe supports the 1:1 HA model, but also supports an N:1 HA model in which N (up to 4) active nodes are backed up by a single standby node. The characteristics of these redundancy models are summarized below:
The traditional Integrated SBC (I-SBC) architecture provides all the services associated with an SBC – call processing, media policing, transcoding, signaling normalization, and so on – within a single node. Hardware-based SBCs support the integrated SBC model.
The SBC SWe also supports a Distributed SBC (D-SBC) architecture that separates the signaling, media, and (optional) transcoding functions and implements them on separate node clusters. Clusters communicate with each other by means of a control protocol to jointly provide the full set of SBC services. Separating the services enables flexible scaling of the functional components to meet the specific requirements of a deployment. Refer to Distributed SBC Architecture for more information.
The SBC SWe supports a range of different deployment models and requirements. Some of these variations are referred to as specific SBC "personalities" from a node instantiation standpoint, while other variations are special use cases of other personalities. Terminology related to SBC personalities is explained below:
The following tables summarize the current support the SBC SWe provides for different combinations of deployment options and platforms.
The first table lists the redundancy models currently supported by different types of SBC nodes. In this table, the column for OAM nodes refers to the OAM nodes themselves, not the nodes they are managing.
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Supported | |
Not Supported |
Redundancy Model Support by Specific SBC Node Type
Redundancy Model | SBC Node Types | |||||
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S-SBC | M-SBC | T-SBC | I-SBC | SLB | OAM | |
1:1 HA | ||||||
N:1 HA | N/A |
The second table lists specific platforms and which types of SBC nodes can be deployed on each.
Platforms Supporting Specific SBC Node Types
Platforms | SBC Node Types | ||||||
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| OAM | |
KVM | |||||||
OpenStack | |||||||
VMware vSphere /ESXi | |||||||
Red Hat Virtualization (RHV) | |||||||
AWS | |||||||
Azure | |||||||
GCP |
The SBC SWe does not currently support "elastic cloud computing" environments.