OCI Resource Manager

OCI Resource Manager automates the process of provisioning your Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources. The Resource Manager provides stacks to set up OCI resources that runs the virtual SBC using Terraform scripts. However, Terraform scripts cannot be used for complete SBC configuration. Hence, Resource Manager uses two pre-built stacks for deploying environments. The two stacks are - VCN and SBC stack. The VCN stack creates the required network infrastructure to deploy the virtual SBC instance on OCI. The SBC stack instantiates a standalone or HA pair on OCI with all Day-0 configuration. You can run these templates or scripts from the CLI, similar to running the Terraform templates from OCI Resource Manager.

See Create and Deploy on OCI using Resource Manager section in Public Cloud Platforms chapter in the Platform Preparation and Installation Guide.

Listing Available Boot and Code Images from the ACLI

With this release, the SBC can list local bootloader and code images in the output of the boot process. To do this, the SBC reads and prints all files with the .bz extension in the /boot and /code/images directories to the ACLI. The system does not display this list when configured for FIPs.

See Displaying Files from Boot and Images directory section in Boot Management chapter in the Platform Preparation and Installation Guide.

Display Disabled Sip-Interfaces

With this release, the SBC now labels a disabled sip-interface in the output of the show sipd interface command using a capital "D". The system labels each sip-interface this way when you set the sip-interface, state parameter to disabled.

See Viewing SIP Interface Statistics section in Performance Management chapter in the Maintenance and Troubleshooting Guide.

See show sipd section in ACLI Commands N-Z chapter in the ACLI Reference Guide.

Configuration Assistant Enhancements

This release includes assorted enhancements to the configuration assistant function.

See the Configuration Assistant Operations section in the Getting Started chapter in the ACLI Configuration Guide.

NPLI for Unregistered Emergency VoLTE Calls

Despite the absence of a SIP contact within the context of an unregistered user, the SBC manages network provided location information (NPLI) within call flows for unregistered emergency calls using the same controls it uses for registered flows. There is no additional configuration required to support unregistered calls. Common behavior for registered and unregistered emergency calls include the SBC managing NPLI AVP’s in AARs and using the same timing controls to fine tune this management.

See the NPLI section in the External Policy Servers chapter in the ACLI Configuration Guide.

5G NR location support

The SBC provides 5G NR Location support, which enables interoperability with 5G core elements in 5G systems. This allows the SBC to operate as an Application Function and in its role as a P-CSCF in the 5G core. Many carriers deploy a separate 5G with the N26 interface in parallel with their older architectures. This newer architecture continues to use the Rx diameter interface to interwork with the PCF/PCRF and route diameter messages via the DRA. As an A-SBC, the SBC supports this architecture, further enabling operation within 5G. The SBC achieves this support through the ext-policy-server, specific-action-subscription, access-network-info-report configuration, which enables it to support additional 5G objects and behaviors, including objects that provide location information. No additional configuration is required to support NR location support for 5G.

See the NPLI section in the External Policy Servers chapter in the ACLI Configuration Guide.

TrFO for Asymmetric Preconditions

You can configure the SBC to avoid using transcoding resources while supporting call flows with asymmetric preconditions. After establishing a call that includes transcoding, the SBC can trigger this Transcoder Free Operation (TrFO) feature if the asymmetric preconditions parameter is present in the caller's SDP and a compatible codec can still be identified. Having determined that the call can proceed without transcoding, the SBC originates a reINVITE towards the calling party containing the called side codec. Once the reINVITE is completed, the call can continue without transcoding. The negotiated codec on the called party side must have been included in the calling party's original offer (after ingress codec-policy execution).

See the TrFO section in the Transoding chapter in the ACLI Configuration Guide.

STIR/SHAKEN Implementation Enhancements

This version of the SBC enhances the STIR/SHAKEN implementation to include new attestation behaviors and additional traffic statistics that report on STIR/SHAKEN traffic on per-interface, agent, realm and system-wide bases.These statistics are now available using the ACLI, SNMP and HDR.

See the STIR/SHAKEN chapter in the ACLI Configuration Guide.

DSCP marking for WPS

This feature provides you with the ability to configure the OCSBC to mark media packets for NSEP calls with DSCP codes on a realm-specific basis. This allows you to use DSCP to classify and set this traffic's priority differently for each realm.

See the Multimedia Priority Service for VoLTE Access section in the IMS Support chapter in the ACLI Configuration Guide.

WPS Session Reservation

This feature allows you to configure the SBC to reserve resources from the overall session pool for NSEP sessions only.

See the Multimedia Priority Service for VoLTE Access section in the IMS Support chapter in the ACLI Configuration Guide.

Forcing Port Parity for SRS

You can configure the SBC to enforce media port number parity on flows between the SBC and the SRS, as discussed in RFC 4566. By default, the SBC does not consider port number parity when assigning or recognizing RTP and RTCP flows in SDP session descriptions. This can result in signaling issues, including one-way audio recording, when the recording server and the SBC establish flows that have a port number conflict.

See the Session Recording Server section in the Selective Call Recording chapter in the Call Traffic Monitoring Guide.

SIP Transaction KPIs

This version of the SBC includes three new KPIs for measuring success-rate, timeout-rate and failure rate. These new parameters are displayed for SIP SUBSCRIBE, NOTIFY and MESSAGE messages only

See the SIP Method Counters section in the Performance Management chapter in the Maintenance and Troubleshooting Guide.

Increased Support of Static Trusted and Untrusted ACL Entries for vSBC and vSR

When deployed as a Virtual SBC or a Virtual SR, the SBC supports static ACL entry counts based on virtual machine memory. Deployments under 8GB of memory support 8000 trusted and 4000 untrusted entries. When memory is:

• Between 8GB and 64GB, supported entries include:
  • Trusted static ACLs is 1024 per GB
  • Untrusted static ACLs is 512 per GB
• Greater than 64G, supported entries include:
  • Trusted static ACLs is 65536
  • Untrusted static ACLs is 32768

Reason Header AVP

This version of the SBC includes the Reason-Header AVP (code 3401) in STOP/EVENT ACRs when it receives a BYE/CANCEL (or SIP error response 4xx, 5xx, 6xx) with the Reason header in the SIP message.

See the Reason Header AVP section in the External Policy Server chapter of the ACLI Configuration Guide.

Reset Local Account Passwords

The local-accounts command has a new option to reset the password of a local user account. You must be logged in as an administrator to use this feature.

See the Manage Local Accounts section in the Getting Started chapter of the Configuration Guide.

STIR/SHAKEN Functionality on the OCSR

This release provides the same STIR/SHAKEN Functionality on the OCSR that is available on the SBC.

See the STIR/SHAKEN Client chapter in the ACLI Configuration Guide for documentation on STIR/SHAKE support on these session delivery products.

MSRP KPIs

This release allows your to configure the SBC to present additional statistics on MSRP traffic using the ACLI and SNMP. These statistics include a filter for viewing realm-specific statistics, and allow you to extend reported data to include SEND and REPORT statistics.

See the Extended MSRP Statistics section in the ACLI Configuration Guide for explanation on this feature. See the Maintenance and Troubleshooting Guide and the MIB Guide for reference information about these statistics.

OCI Shapes supported on Intel X9 processor

This version of the SBC supports the use of VM.Optimized3.Flex Machine Shapes over the OCI public cloud platform.

See the Create and Deploy on OCI section in the Public Cloud Platforms chapter of the Platform Preparation and Installation Guide for detail on using this platform. See the Supported Private Virtual Infrastructures and Public Clouds section in the Introduction chapter of these Platform Preparation and Installation Guide for shape and specification support of this OCI machine type for this software version release.

DPDK Version Support

This release adds support for the DPDK version 21.11 at S-Cz9.1.0p2.

This change is reflected in the Supported Private Virtual Infrastructures and Public Clouds section in these Release Notes.

Matching Source Addressing for Authentication by a Surrogate Agent

Adds the source-ip-prefix parameter within the surrogate-agent element to specify the source addressing of endpoints for which the system can authenticate calls using this surrogate-agent. This configuration provides a means of matching mulitple source addresses, which defines a list of addresses for which the system can perform surrogate agent authentication.

This support is available in software versions S-Cz9.1.0p3 and above. See the ACLI Configuration Guide.

Authenticating Surrogate Agent Registrations across Realms

This release allows you to use surrogate-agent and realm-config configuration to configure surrogate-agent authentication. This method is considered robust, supporting multi-tenant, diverse IP-IPXs, and intra-realm registration support.

See the SIP chapter in the ACLI Configuration Guide for explanation on this feature. See the ACLI Reference Guide for reference information on the applicable configuration parameters and values.

Changing the Precedence for Handling orig and verstat Values

This release allows you to change the header the system focuses on to populate orig and verstat values, Some regions require that the FROM header be the first source of this information. To accommodate these deployments, you can configure the SBC to use the FROM as the primary caller id source for information used to determine a SHAKEN orig claim and the verstat value.

See the Stir/Shaken Client chapter in the ACLI Configuration Guide for explanation on this feature. See the ACLI Reference Guide for reference information on the applicable configuration parameters and values.

Configurable PAI and FQDN Manipulations

You can configure the system to manipulate the content of egress messages, including PAI headers and FQDNs, using realm parameters instead of HMR. By setting these parameters, you cause the system to perform these manipulations on specific SIP methods that egress the realm.

See the Realms and Nested Realms chapter in the ACLI Configuration Guide for explanation on this feature. See the ACLI Reference Guide for reference information on the applicable configuration parameters and values.

TOS Passthrough Configuration

As stated above, the SBC does not passthrough received DSCP values transparently. If this is the desired behavior, no config change is required. This is the default behavior. Packets sent by SBC show DSCP value 0x00.

If passthrough support is desires, you can enable the sip-config option called use-recvd-dscp-marking which enables passthrough support. With this option enabled, the SBC passes the DSCP value which was received through to egress. To enable this option in sip-config, set the option as shown below.

ORACLE(sip-config)#options +use-recvd-dscp-marking

Creating a Reason Header During Verification

You can configure the OCSBC to create and insert SIP reason headers into applicable SIP INVITEs based on information received from an STI-VS during verification attempts. These headers provide insight into the reason the STI-VS could not or did not verify the request. You can use this feature to provide visibility into the reasoncode, reasontext and the verstat parameters downstream within the SIP INVITE and in CDRs. This feature applies to both ATIS and 3GPP modes.

See the Creating a Reason Header During Verification section in the STIR/SHAKEN chapter of theACLI Configuration Guide for detailed information.

HTTP Header Customization for STIR/SHAKEN

You can configure the OCSBC with static mapping to and from SIP INVITEs and HTTP requests or responses within the context of STIR/SHAKEN authentication or verification procedures. This mapping provides a means of conveying SIP header information within HTTP headers and vice-versa. This feature adds headers and their new parameters in the rules' targets or modifies existing headers with the new parameters presented by the rule. This feature applies to both ATIS and 3GPP modes.

See the HTTP Header Manipulation section in the STIR/SHAKEN chapter of the ACLI Configuration Guide for detailed information.

Pooled Transcoding for MS-Team Deployments

You can configure the SBC to support pooled transcoding for most call flows, including incoming calls, outgoing calls, call forwarding and call transfers within MS Teams environments.

See the Pooled Transcoding for MS-Team Deployments section in the Transcoding chapter of the ACLI Configuration Guide for detailed information.

PSAP Callback Enhancement

You can configure the SBC to support Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) callback handling to numbers that are not in the PSAP callback list, which includes 911, 112 and any number you have added. You can also configure the SBC to replace the request-URI in a PSAP callback to resolve routing issues.

See the PSAP Callback Option section in the SBC Processing Language (SPL) chapter of the ACLI Configuration Guide for detailed information.

New Memory Support for TCM-3

This version of the SBC supports TCM-3 cards with new memory. This software is also backwards compatible with cards that include the old memory. Note that older software does not support this new memory.

See the Acme Packet 3950/4900 Minimum Versions section in the Transcoding chapter of the ACLI Configuration Guide for detailed information about verifying software/hardware compatibility. See the Troubleshooting section of these Release Notes for specific software/hardware compatibility for this version of the SBC software.

Allocation Strategies for Steering Pools

This version of the SBC allows you to configure three types of steering pools to allocate network ports for specific types of network traffic. These pool types include audio/video, MSRP and mixed media types. Establishing these pool types provides more efficient use of media ports. The SBC provides you with a means of monitoring port usage by type to troubleshoot and refine these configurations.

See the Allocation Strategies for Steering Pools section in the Realms chapter of the ACLI Configuration Guide for detailed information about this feature.

HTTP Client Cache Size Configuration

This version of the SBC allows you to configure the httpclient-cache-size-multiplier parameter in the system-config to adjust the size of the HTTP connection cache.

See the HTTP Connection Management section in the System Configuration chapter of the ACLI Configuration Guide for detailed information about this parameter.

Verstat Delimiter

This version of the SBC allows you to configure the verstat-delimiter option in the applicable sti-server. You use this delimiter to refine the specific text of the verstat during verstat retrieval processes.

See the STIR/SHAKEN chapter of the ACLI Configuration Guide for detailed information about this parameter.

Session-Level DoS Protection

You can configure the SBC to implement DoS protection when any individual session appears to be conducting an attack. You can configure this protection on a realm-config or a session-agent, with the session-agent configuration taking precedence when applicable.

See the DoS Protection section in the Security chapter of the ACLI Configuration Guide for detailed information about this parameter.

Subscription-Id-Data AVP

When applicable, the SBC can send a Subscription-Id-Data AVP (444) to an external policy server. This AVP is contained within the grouped Subscription-Id AVP (443) and carries the user's identifier. You can configure the SBC to refine this data so it gets this information from the SBC and uses your configured value for the subscription-id-type parameter to determine which user identifier it sends.

See the Subscriber Information AVP section in the External Policy Server chapter of the ACLI Configuration Guide for detailed information about this parameter.

Supporting HA with STIR SHAKEN over TCP

You can configure the SBC with the exclusive-http-client-port-range option within the system-config to support an HA Pair running STIR SHAKEN to use the different set of ports between Primary and Secondary machine for establishing TCP connection with HTTP server.

See the Supporting HA with STIR SHAKEN over TCP section in the STIR SHAKEN chapter of the ACLI Configuration Guide for detailed information about this feature.