Key Technology Components

Application Servers

At the core of PingTone technology are scalable, carrier-grade VoIP application servers. This server architecture leads the market in two critical areas; reliability and simultaneous calls per second. Designed for 99.999% reliability, the service delivery platform provides 1+ 1 master / slave redundancy with continuous pair checkpoints for instant call failover. This means that calls in progress are not dropped in the event of a server switchover. During normal business calling volume, each PingTone application server pair handles two hundred simultaneous calls per second and supports up to 100,000 end users.

Session Border Controllers

The Session Border Controller provides firewall traversal for IP phones and IAD's (integrated access devices for connecting analog equipment to IP) located behind a business’s existing firewall. Customers are able to take advantage of PingTone service without any modification to their NAT (network address translation) firewall or PAT (port address translation) firewall.

• Supports multiple control and signaling protocols between IP endpoints and PingTone application servers. Supported protocols include Cisco SCCP, SIP, H.323 and MGCP.



• Provides the intelligence that allows two IP phones on the same private LAN to send voice packets directly to each other. That is, the voice packets stay "local." This works with NAT and PAT firewall situations and also for no-firewall endpoints.



• Voice firewall technology remains in the PingTone TAP network. No additional firewall components or special firewalls need be deployed at each customer LAN and existing customer data firewalls do not require any modification. Customers can continue to use private IP addresses for all their network connected devices, including IP phones and integrated access devices.



• Session Border Controllers are deployed in pairs – one active and one standby. Since call state information is continually shared with the standby Controller, calls are not lost in the event of a switchover from an active unit.