SS7 Media Gateways

What is SS7? Signaling System 7 is a networking protocol employed by traditional telephony carrier networks to control and manage the establishment and dismantling of voice telephone calls. SS7 is a common channel signaling (CCS), which means the call setup and call teardown information for multiple phone calls is carried on a separate channel from the voice traffic. In contrast, the channel-associated signaling (CAS) approach assigns a signaling channel to each phone call individually.

What is an SS7 gateway? An SS7 gateway is a networking device positioned within a carrier core network to provide protocol translations between traditional telephony signaling and modern voice-over-IP signaling (H.323 or SIP (session initiation protocol). Today's telco service providers need to reduce costs when interconnecting with other carriers as they build out their network footprints in order to transport voice traffic across their IP backbones. That's why so many service providers are adding VoIP capabilities to their SS7, SIGTRAN, and Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) networks. As a viable replacement for the recently end-of-life (EOL) Cisco PGW 2200 SS7/C7 solution, Patton's SmartNode 10K series of SS7 Media Gateways enable delivery of SS7-to-SIP and H.323 VoIP services. SN10K solutions bridge voice traffic between emerging VoIP telephony networks and the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN), which is based on time-division multiplexing (TDM) with SS7 signaling or SCTP and SIGTRAN protocols.