How 5G “Slices” are purchased and activated in Android

5G SA, Mobile Networks, ,

Slicing has long been held up as one of the monetizations opportunities for residential customers, but few seem to be familiar with it beyond a concept, so I thought I’d take a look at how it actually works in Android, and how an end user would interact with it.

For starters, there’s a little used hook in Android TelephonyManager called purchasePremiumCapability, this method can be called by a carrier’s self care app.

You can pass it the type of “Slice” (capability) to purchase, for example PREMIUM_CAPABILITY_PRIORITIZE_LATENCY for the slice.

Operators would need the Telephony Permission for their app, and a function from the app in order to activate this, but it doesn’t require on Android Carrier Privileges and a matching signature on the SIM card, although there’s a lot of good reasons to include this in your Android Manifest for a Carrier Self-Care app.

We’ve made a little test app we use for things like enabling VoLTE, setting the APNs, setting carrier config, etc, etc. I added the Purchase Slice capability to it and give it a shot.

Android Studio Carrier Privilages

And the hook works, I was able to “purchase” a Slice.

App running on a Samsung phone shown with SCRCPY

I did some sleuthing to find if any self-care apps from carriers have implemented this functionality for standards-based slicing, and I couldn’t find any, I’m curious to see if it takes off – as I’ve written about previously slicing capabilities are not new in cellular, but the attempt to monetise it is.

More info in Telephony Manager – purchasePremiumCapability – Android Developers

Kamailio Bytes: Stripping SIP Multipart Bodies

FreeSWITCH, IMS / VoLTE, Kamailio, Mobile Networks, VoIP, , ,

For some calls in (such as some IMS emergency calls) you’ll get MIME Multipart Media Encapsulation as the SIP body, as the content-type set to:

Content-Type: multipart/mixed;boundary=968f194ab800ab27

If you’re used to dealing with SIP, you’d expect to see:

Content-Type: application/sdp

This Content-Type multipart/mixed;boundary is totally valid in SIP, in fact RFC 5261 (Message Body Handling in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)) details the use of MIME in SIP, and the Geolocation extension uses this, as we see below from a 911 call example.

But while this extension is standardised, and having your SIP Body containing multipart MIME is legal, not everything supports this, including the FreeSWITCH bridge module, which just appends a new SDP body into the Mime Multipart

Site note: I noticed FreeSWITCH Bridge function just appends the new SIP body in the multipart MIME, leaving the original, SDP:

Okay, so how do we replace the MIME Multipart SIP body with a standard SDP?

Well, with Kamalio’s SDP Ops Module, it’s fairly easy:

#If the body is multipart then strip it and replace with a single part
if (has_body("multipart/mixed")) {
	xlog("This has a multipart body");
	if (filter_body("application/sdp")) {
		remove_hf("Content-Type");
		append_hf("Content-Type: application/sdp\r\n");
	} else {
		xlog("Body part application/sdp not found\n");
		}
}

I’ve written about using SDPops to modify SDP before.

And with that we’ll take an SIP message like the one shown on the left, and when relayed, end up with the message on the right:

Simple fix, but saved me having to fix the fault in FreeSWITCH.

CGrateS – AttributeS

CGrateS, Software, VoIP, , ,

The docs describe AttributeS as a Key-Value-Store, but that’s probably selling it short – You can do some really cool stuff with AttributeS, and in this post, we’re going to learn about using AttributeS to transform stuff.

Note: Before we get started, I’d suggest copying this config file to use for testing.

Let’s look at a really basic example, where we add some data into AttributeS, match based on Account in CGrateS, and get back that data.

Let’s look at how this would look on the API:

{
    "method": "APIerSv2.SetAttributeProfile",
    "params": [{
        "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
        "ID": "ATTR_Nick_Key_Value_Example",
        "Contexts": ["*any"],
        "FilterIDs": [
            "*string:~*req.Account:1234"
        ],
        "Attributes": [
            {
            "FilterIDs": [],
            "Path": "*req.ExampleKey",
            "Type": "*constant",
            "Value": "ExampleValue"
            }
        ],
        "Blocker": False,
        "Weight": 10

    }],
}

So what are we doing in this API call?

Well, for starters we’re calling the SetAttributeProfile endpoint, this is where we go to create / update Attribute Profiles, but in this case, because we’re hitting it for the first time with this ID, we’re creating a new entry called “ATTR_Nick_Key_Value_Example“, this will match any Contexts (more on them later) where the FilterIDs is a string, where the request Account, is equal to 1234.

Let’s run this against the CGrateS API and take a look at the result:

import cgrateshttpapi
import pprint

CGRateS_Obj = cgrateshttpapi.CGRateS('localhost', 2080)

SetAttributeProfile = {
    "method": "APIerSv2.SetAttributeProfile",
    "params": [{
        "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
        "ID": "ATTR_Nick_Key_Value_Example",
        "Contexts": ["*any"],
        "FilterIDs": [
            "*string:~*req.Account:1234"
        ],
        "Attributes": [
            {
            "FilterIDs": [],
            "Path": "*req.ExampleKey",
            "Type": "*constant",
            "Value": "ExampleValue"
            }
        ],
        "Blocker": False,
        "Weight": 10
    }],
}
result = CGRateS_Obj.SendData(SetAttributeProfile)
pprint.pprint(result)

result = CGRateS_Obj.SendData({"method":"AttributeSv1.ProcessEvent",
                               "params":[
                                   {"Tenant":"cgrates.org",
                                    "Event":{"Account":"1234"},"APIOpts":{}}]})
pprint.pprint(result)

All going well you should have got the following back:

{'method': 'AttributeSv1.ProcessEvent', 'params': [{'Tenant': 'cgrates.org', 'Event': {'Account': '1234'}, 'APIOpts': {}}]}
{'error': None,
 'id': None,
 'result': {'APIOpts': {},
            'AlteredFields': ['*req.ExampleKey'],
            'Event': {'Account': '1234', 'ExampleKey': 'ExampleValue'},
            'ID': '',
            'MatchedProfiles': ['cgrates.org:ATTR_Nick_Key_Value_Example'],
            'Tenant': 'cgrates.org',
            'Time': None}}

This tells us we matched the Attribute with the ID ATTR_Nick_Key_Value_Example, and inside Event we can see that ExampleKey was added with value ExampleValue.

Okay, you’re saying, well what was the point of that?

Well, what if as a key in the attributes, we had the password for the SIP account, which we passed to our SIP switch (Kamailio, FreeSWITCH or Asterisk for example), and used that to authenticate?

Let’s see how that would look:

{
    "method": "APIerSv2.SetAttributeProfile",
    "params": [{
        "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
        "ID": "ATTR_Nick_Password_Example",
        "Contexts": ["*any"],
        "FilterIDs": [
            "*string:~*req.Account:1234"
        ],
        "Attributes": [
            {
            "FilterIDs": [],
            "Path": "*req.SIP_password",
            "Type": "*constant",
            "Value": "sosecretiputitonthewebsite"
            }
        ],
        "Blocker": False,
        "Weight": 10
    }],
}

Now if the CGrateS Agent for your SIP Switch, includes the *attributes flag, and the call is coming from 1234, we’ll get back a key called “SIP_password” with the value “sosecretiputitonthewebsite”, which you can use to auth the SIP account.

We can also return multiple AttributeS, for example, we created two Attributes (ATTR_Nick_Password_Example and ATTR_Nick_Key_Value_Example) which match on the account 1234. This means we’ll get back the SIP Password from ATTR_Nick_Password_Example and the key:value we set in ATTR_Nick_Key_Value_Example:

{'method': 'AttributeSv1.ProcessEvent', 'params': [{'Tenant': 'cgrates.org', 'Event': {'Account': '1234'}}]}
{'error': None,
 'id': None,
 'result': {'APIOpts': {},
            'AlteredFields': ['*req.SIP_password', '*req.ExampleKey'],
            'Event': {'Account': '1234',
                      'ExampleKey': 'ExampleValue',
                      'SIP_password': 'sosecretiputitonthewebsite'},
            'ID': '',
            'MatchedProfiles': ['cgrates.org:ATTR_Nick_Password_Example',
                                'cgrates.org:ATTR_Nick_Key_Value_Example'],
            'Tenant': 'cgrates.org',
            'Time': None}}

The order can be controlled by the Weight flag in the attribute, and if you want to stop matching any other AttributeS rules after the current Attribute, you can set the Blocker=True flag when you create/update the Attribute.

Okay, I hear you saying, that’s all well and good, I can add arbitrary key/values to stuff. Here endeth the lesson right?

Well not quite, because we can add key/values, but we can also rewrite variables using AttributeS.

Let’s imagine we’ve got 3 phone numbers (DIDs) associated with an account inside CGrateS, for example’s sake let’s say we have 12340001, 12340002 and 12340003, and we want any calls from these numbers to be billed to a CGrateS account called “NickTest1234”.

Our SIP switch doesn’t need to know anything about “NickTest1234”, just the 3 DIDs it can use to call out from your SIP stack. But to do this, we’d need CGrateS to transform any events from these DIDs to replace the Account value inside CGrateS, with NickTest1234.

Let’s see how that would look:

{'method': 'APIerSv2.SetAttributeProfile', 'params': [{'Tenant': 'cgrates.org', 'ID': 'ATTR_Calling_NickTest1234_12340001', 'Contexts': ['*any'], 'FilterIDs': ['*string:~*req.Account:12340001'], 'Attributes': [{'Path': '*req.Account', 'Type': '*constant', 'Value': 'NickTest1234'}], 'Weight': 0}], 'id': 1}

{'method': 'APIerSv2.SetAttributeProfile', 'params': [{'Tenant': 'cgrates.org', 'ID': 'ATTR_Calling_NickTest1234_12340002', 'Contexts': ['*any'], 'FilterIDs': ['*string:~*req.Account:12340002'], 'Attributes': [{'Path': '*req.Account', 'Type': '*constant', 'Value': 'NickTest1234'}], 'Weight': 0}], 'id': 2}

{'method': 'APIerSv2.SetAttributeProfile', 'params': [{'Tenant': 'cgrates.org', 'ID': 'ATTR_Calling_NickTest1234_12340003', 'Contexts': ['*any'], 'FilterIDs': ['*string:~*req.Account:12340003'], 'Attributes': [{'Path': '*req.Account', 'Type': '*constant', 'Value': 'NickTest1234'}], 'Weight': 0}], 'id': 3}

In the example code to go with this I’ve put together a simple for loop to add these – You can find the code on Github (link at the bottom).

So with these defined, let’s try and rate something, we’ll add a default Charger, and add an SMS balance, before simulating an SMS where the account is set to 12340003:

#Define default Charger
print(CGRateS_Obj.SendData({"method":"APIerSv1.SetChargerProfile","params":[{"Tenant":"cgrates.org","ID":"DEFAULT","FilterIDs":[],"AttributeIDs":["*none"],"Weight":0}]}))

#Add an SMS Balance
print(CGRateS_Obj.SendData({"method":"ApierV1.SetBalance","params":[{"Tenant":"cgrates.org","Account":"Nick_Test_123","BalanceType":"*sms","Categories":"*any","Balance":{"ID":"SMS_Balance_1","Value":"100","Weight":25}}],"id":13}))

import uuid
import datetime
now = datetime.datetime.now()
result = CGRateS_Obj.SendData({
    "method": "CDRsV2.ProcessExternalCDR",
    "params": [
        {
            "OriginID": str(uuid.uuid1()),
            "ToR": "*sms",
            "RequestType": "*pseudoprepaid",
            "AnswerTime": now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"),
            "SetupTime": now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"),
            "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
            #This is going to be transformed to Nick_Test_123 by Attributes
            "Account": "12340003",
            "Usage": "1",
        }
    ]
})
pprint.pprint(result)

Right, so all going well, here’s what you should see in the CDRs table:

Bingo! Despite the fact the Account in the ProcessExternalCDR was set to 12340003, and had no mention of “NickTest1234”, CGrateS transformed it to NickTest1234.

How did that happen? Well, inside our cgrates.json file we have set the cdrs and chargers modules to have a link to Attributes, which means that when we call CDRs or Chargers modules via the API, these will in turn bounce the data through AttributesS for any transformations.

This means we don’t need to run AttributeSv1.ProcessEvent ourselves, when we call CDRsV2.ProcessExternalCDR, the CDRs module will call AttributeSv1.ProcessEvent for us.

We can actually see this happening, using ngrep, which as you work more with CGrateS, is a tool you’ll get very familiar with, let’s take a peek:

sudo ngrep -t -W byline port 2012 -d lo

Now if we run the CDRsV2.ProcessExternalCDR again, we’ll see the CDRs module has called Attributes for us:

Boom, there it is, same as we ran, but it’s being handled by CGrateS for us.

If you look carefully you’ll see the context in the API request is set to “*cdrs”, this means the CDRs module is calling Attributes.

When we define each of our Attributes, as we did earlier in the post, we can set what contexts they are valid in, for example we may want to apply the transformation when called by CDRs, but not other modules, you can restrict that when you define the Attribute by setting “Contexts”: [“*cdrs”].

Okay, so we’ve done some account replacement, what else can we do?

Well, let’s look at some other use cases,

Here in Australia we’ve got a few valid dialing formats, you could dial E.164 format (Numbers look like: +61212341234), 0NSN format (Numbers look like: 02 1234 1234) or NSN format (Numbers look like: 1234 1234 assuming you’re in the 03 area code yourself).
If we want to define all our Destinations in E.164 format, we’ll need to to normalise the format using AttributeS, so the numbers always come as E.164.

Let’s give it a whirl with a static translation:

{
    "method": "APIerSv2.SetAttributeProfile",
    "params": [{
        "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
        "ID": "ATTR_0NSN_to_E164_Single",
        "Contexts": ["*any"],
        "FilterIDs": [
            "*string:~*req.Subject:0212341234"
        ],
        "Attributes": [
            {
            "FilterIDs": [],
            "Path": "*req.Subject",
            "Type": "*constant",
            "Value": "61212341234"
            }
        ],
        "Blocker": False,
        "Weight": 10
    }],
}

Now this will work, if we simulate an Event to AttributeS with the Subject 0212341234, it’ll get transformed by AttributeS to 61212341234.

The issue here is probably pretty obvious, the only matches one number, if we dial 0212341235 this all falls apart.

Enter our old friend Regex.

For starters, we’ll change the FilterIDs to match where the Account is NickTest7, this way we can set the rules on a per CGrateS account basis.

{
    "method": "APIerSv2.SetAttributeProfile",
    "params": [{
        "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
        "ID": "ATTR_0NSN_to_E164_02_Area_Code",
        "Contexts": ["*any"],
        "FilterIDs": [
            "*string:~*req.Account:NickTest7"
        ],
        "Attributes": [
            {
            "FilterIDs": [],
            "Path": "*req.Subject",
            "Type": "*variable",
            "Value": "~*req.Subject:s/^0(\d{1})(\d{8})$/61${1}${2}/"
            },
            {
            "FilterIDs": [],
            "Path": "*req.Subject",
            "Type": "*variable",
            "Value": "~*req.Subject:s/^(\d{8})$/612${1}/"
            },
        ],
        "Blocker": False,
        "Weight": 10
    }],
}

And then under AttributeS we’ve defined a rule to replace anything matching the 0NSN regex, to strip the first digit and append a 61, to put it in E.164 format, and in SN format as the second entry.

We can now test this out:

{'method': 'AttributeSv1.ProcessEvent', 'params': [{'Tenant': 'cgrates.org', 'Event': {'Account': 'NickTest7', 'Subject': '0312341234'}, 'APIOpts': {'*processRuns': 5, '*profileRuns': 5, '*subsys': '*sessions'}}]}
{'error': None,
 'id': None,
 'result': {'APIOpts': {'*processRuns': 5,
                        '*profileRuns': 5,
                        '*subsys': '*sessions'},
            'AlteredFields': ['*req.Subject'],
            'Event': {'Account': 'NickTest7', 'Subject': '61312341234'},
            'ID': '',
            'MatchedProfiles': ['cgrates.org:ATTR_0NSN_to_E164_02_Area_Code'],
            'Tenant': 'cgrates.org',
            'Time': None}}



{'method': 'AttributeSv1.ProcessEvent', 'params': [{'Tenant': 'cgrates.org', 'Event': {'Account': 'NickTest7', 'Subject': '12341234'}, 'APIOpts': {'*processRuns': 5, '*profileRuns': 5, '*subsys': '*sessions'}}]}
{'error': None,
 'id': None,
 'result': {'APIOpts': {'*processRuns': 5,
                        '*profileRuns': 5,
                        '*subsys': '*sessions'},
            'AlteredFields': ['*req.Subject'],
            'Event': {'Account': 'NickTest7', 'Subject': '61212341234'},
            'ID': '',
            'MatchedProfiles': ['cgrates.org:ATTR_0NSN_to_E164_02_Area_Code'],
            'Tenant': 'cgrates.org',
            'Time': None}}

And there you have it folks; our number format standardized.

We can combo / cascade AttributeS rules together, with the aid of the Weight and Blocker flags in the API.

Let’s imagine the 61212341234 number has been ported from Operator1 to Operator2, and the Destinations we’ve defined in CGrateS for this prefix are currently set to DST_Operator1.
But because this number has been ported we should use DST_Operator2, so we charge the Operator2, as this number has been ported.

This means we don’t need to duplicate destination definitions to show this number has been ported, as this will be updated as the call gets rated, so we just assign the Attribute to each ported number.

So let’s match where the Subject of the call is 61212341234 (even though we’re going to input the Subject as 12341234), and rewrite the Destination attribute to DST_Operator2:

{
    "method": "APIerSv2.SetAttributeProfile",
    "params": [{
        "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
        "ID": "ATTR_Ported_61212341234",
        "Contexts": ["*any"],
        "FilterIDs": [
            "*string:~*req.Subject:61212341234",
        ],
        "Attributes": [
            {
            "FilterIDs": [],
            "Path": "*req.Destination",
            "Type": "*constant",
            "Value": "DST_Operator2"
            },
        ],
        "Blocker": False,
        "Weight": 5
    }],
}

From the results we can see we matched two AttributeS rules, the first, ATTR_0NSN_to_E164_02_Area_Code reformatted the Subject of the call from 12341234 to 61212341234, then the updated Subject was passed through to ATTR_Ported_61212341234, which updated the Destination attribute to DST_Operator2.

{'method': 'AttributeSv1.ProcessEvent', 'params': [{'Tenant': 'cgrates.org', 'Event': {'Account': 'NickTest7', 'Subject': '12341234'}, 'APIOpts': {'*processRuns': 5, '*profileRuns': 5, '*subsys': '*sessions'}}]}
{'error': None,
 'id': None,
 'result': {'APIOpts': {'*processRuns': 5,
                        '*profileRuns': 5,
                        '*subsys': '*sessions'},
            'AlteredFields': ['*req.Subject', '*req.Destination'],
            'Event': {'Account': 'NickTest7',
                      'Destination': 'DST_Operator2',
                      'Subject': '61212341234'},
            'ID': '',
            'MatchedProfiles': ['cgrates.org:ATTR_0NSN_to_E164_02_Area_Code',
                                'cgrates.org:ATTR_Ported_61212341234'],
            'Tenant': 'cgrates.org',
            'Time': None}}

Hopefully this has helped you to dip a toe into the CGrateS AttributeS pool, and give you some ideas of what we can achieve inside AttributeS.

A complete working code & config is available on my Github here.

If you’re having issues, make sure you have loaded the config file, are running the latest version, and if in doubt (and not on a production system), this script will clear all the data for you so you can rule out anything interfering.

Android and Emergency Calling

GSM, IMS / VoLTE, LTE, Mobile Networks, RFCs & Standards, SDM, SIM Cards, VoIP, , , , , , ,

In the last post we looked at emergency calling when roaming, and I mentioned that there are databases on the handsets for emergency numbers, to allow for example, calling 999 from a US phone, with a US SIM, roaming into the UK.

Android, being open source, allows us to see how this logic works, and it’s important for operators to understand this logic, as it’s what dictates the behavior in many scenarios.

It’s important to note that I’m not covering Apple here, this information is not publicly available to share for iOS devices, so I won’t be sharing anything on this – Apple has their own ecosystem to handle emergency calling, if you’re from an operator and reading this, I’d suggest getting in touch with your Apple account manager to discuss it, they’re always great to work with.

The Android Open Source Project has an “emergency number database”. This database has each of the emergency phone numbers and the corresponding service, for each country.

This file can be read at packages/services/Telephony/ecc/input/eccdata.txt on a phone with engineering mode.

Let’s take a look what’s in mainline Android for Australia:

You can check ECC for countries from the database on the AOSP repo.

This is one of the ways handsets know what codes represent emergency calling codes in different countries, alongside the values set in the SIM and provided by the visited network.

Funky Connectors for Cellular

Mobile Networks, RF,

I came across these the other day, they’re DC & Fibre in the same connector body.

Rather than breaking out to a fibre and an Anderson connector, you’ve got both in one connector, with provision for an extra fibre pair too, then on the other end this splits into the RRU power connector, used by Ericsson and Nokia, and a LC connector for the fibre into the RRU.

I pulled it all apart this to see how it fitted together, it looks like they’re factory pre-term cables, rather than being spliced to length, which I guess makes sense. Cool design!

Up close view of the connector
DC breaks out when you pull it apart
And the fibres are held in with springs to the top half of the connector body
And the breakout to LC and RRU DC connectors

CGrateS – ActionTriggers

CGrateS, EPC, IMS / VoLTE, Mobile Networks, Notes, SDM, Software, Uncategorized, VoIP, , , ,

In our last post we looked at Actions and ActionPlans, and one of the really funky things we can do is setting ActionPlans to trigger on a time schedule or setting ActionTriggers to trigger on an event.

We’re going to build on the examples we had on the last post, so we’ll assume your code is up to the point where we’ve added a Signup Bonus to an account, using an ActionPlan we assigned when creating the account.

In this post, we’re going to create an action that charges $6, called “Action_Monthly_Charge“, and tie it to an ActionPlan called “ActionPlan_Monthly_Charge“, but to demo how this works rather than charging this Monthly, we’re going to charge it every minute.

Then with our balances ticking down, we’ll set up an ActionTrigger to trigger when the balance drops below $95, and alert us.

Defining the Monthly Charge Action

The Action for the Monthly charge will look much like the other actions we’ve defined, except the Identifier is *debit so we know we’re deducting from the balance, and we’ll log to the CDRs table too:

# Action to add a Monthly charge of $6
Action_Monthly_Charge = {
    "id": "0",
    "method": "ApierV1.SetActions",
    "params": [
        {
          "ActionsId": "Action_Monthly_Charge",
          "Actions": [
              {
                'Identifier': '*debit',
                'BalanceType': '*monetary',
               'Units': 6,
               'Id': 'Action_Monthly_Charge_Debit',
               'Weight': 70},
              {
                  "Identifier": "*log",
                  "Weight": 60,
                  'Id' : "Action_Monthly_Charge_Log"
              },
              {
                  "Identifier": "*cdrlog",
                  "BalanceId": "",
                  "BalanceUuid": "",
                  "BalanceType": "*monetary",
                  "Directions": "*out",
                  "Units": 0,
                  "ExpiryTime": "",
                  "Filter": "",
                  "TimingTags": "",
                  "DestinationIds": "",
                  "RatingSubject": "",
                  "Categories": "",
                  "SharedGroups": "",
                  "BalanceWeight": 0,
                  "ExtraParameters": "{\"Category\":\"^activation\",\"Destination\":\"Recurring Charge\"}",
                  "BalanceBlocker": "false",
                  "BalanceDisabled": "false",
                  "Weight": 80
              },
          ]}]}
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Action_Monthly_Charge))

Next we’ll need to wrap this up into an ActionPlan, this is where some of the magic happens. Inside the action plan we can set a once off time, or a recurring time, kinda like Cron.

We’re setting the time to *every_minute so things will happen quickly while we watch, this action will get triggered every 60 seconds. In real life of course, for a Monthly charge, we’d want to trigger this Action monthly, so we’d set this value to *monthly. If we wanted this to charge on the 2nd of the month we’d set the MonthDays to “2”, etc, etc.

# # Create ActionPlan using SetActionPlan to trigger the Action_Monthly_Charge
SetActionPlan_Daily_Action_Monthly_Charge_JSON = {
    "method": "ApierV1.SetActionPlan",
    "params": [{
        "Id": "ActionPlan_Monthly_Charge",
        "ActionPlan": [{
            "ActionsId": "Action_Monthly_Charge",
            "Years": "*any",
            "Months": "*any",
            "MonthDays": "*any",
            "WeekDays": "*any",
            "Time": "*every_minute",
            "Weight": 10
        }],
        "Overwrite": True,
        "ReloadScheduler": True
    }]
}
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(
    SetActionPlan_Daily_Action_Monthly_Charge_JSON))

Alright, but now what’s going to happen?

If you think the accounts will start getting debited every 60 seconds after applying this, you’d be wrong, we need to associate this ActionPlan with an Account first, this is how we control which accounts get which ActionPlans tied to them, to do this we’ll use the SetAccout API again we’ve been using to create accounts:

# Create the Account object inside CGrateS & assign ActionPlan_Signup_Bonus and ActionPlan_Monthly_Charge
Create_Account_JSON = {
    "method": "ApierV2.SetAccount",
    "params": [
        {
            "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
            "Account": str(Account),
            "ActionPlanIds": ["ActionPlan_Signup_Bonus", "ActionPlan_Monthly_Charge"],
            "ActionPlansOverwrite": True,
            "ReloadScheduler":True
        }
    ]
}
print(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Create_Account_JSON))

So what’s going to happen if we run this?

Well, for starters the ActionPlan named “ActionPlan_Signup_Bonus” is going to be triggered, as in the ActionPlan it’s Timing is set to *asap, so CGrateS will apply the corresponding Action (“Action_Add_Signup_Bonus“) right away, which will credit the account $99.

But a minute after that, we’ll trigger the ActionPlan named “ActionPlan_Monthly_Charge”, as the timing for this is set to *every_minute, when the Action “Action_Monthly_Charge” is triggered, it’s going to be deducting $6 from the balance.

We can check this by using the GetAccount API:

# Get Account Info
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData({'method': 'ApierV2.GetAccount', 'params': [
              {"Tenant": "cgrates.org", "Account": str(Account)}]}))

You should see a balance of $99 to start with, and then after 60 seconds, it should be down to $93, and so on.

{'error': None,
 'id': None,
 'result': {'ActionTriggers': None,
            'AllowNegative': False,
            'BalanceMap': {'*monetary': [{'Blocker': False,
                                          'Categories': {},
                                          'DestinationIDs': {},
                                          'Disabled': False,
                                          'ExpirationDate': '2023-11-17T14:57:20.71493633+11:00',
                                          'Factor': None,
                                          'ID': 'Balance_Signup_Bonus',
                                          'RatingSubject': '',
                                          'SharedGroups': {},
                                          'TimingIDs': {},
                                          'Timings': None,
                                          'Uuid': '3a896369-8107-4e32-bcef-2d078c981b8a',
                                          'Value': 99,
                                          'Weight': 1200}]},
            'Disabled': False,
            'ID': 'cgrates.org:Nick_Test_123',
            'UnitCounters': None,
            'UpdateTime': '2023-10-17T14:57:21.802521707+11:00'}}

Triggering Actions based on Balances with ActionTriggers

Okay, so we’ve set up recurring charges, now let’s get notified if the balance drops below $95, we’ll start, like we have before, with defining an Action, this will log to the CDRs table, HTTP post and write to syslog:


#Define a new Action to send an HTTP POST
Action_HTTP_Notify_95 = {
    "id": "0",
    "method": "ApierV1.SetActions",
    "params": [
        {
          "ActionsId": "Action_HTTP_Notify_95",
          "Actions": [
              {
                  "Identifier": "*cdrlog",
                  "BalanceId": "",
                  "BalanceUuid": "",
                  "BalanceType": "*monetary",
                  "Directions": "*out",
                  "Units": 0,
                  "ExpiryTime": "",
                  "Filter": "",
                  "TimingTags": "",
                  "DestinationIds": "",
                  "RatingSubject": "",
                  "Categories": "",
                  "SharedGroups": "",
                  "BalanceWeight": 0,
                  "ExtraParameters": "{\"Category\":\"^activation\",\"Destination\":\"Balance dipped below $95\"}",
                  "BalanceBlocker": "false",
                  "BalanceDisabled": "false",
                  "Weight": 80
              },
              {
                  "Identifier": "*http_post_async",
                  "ExtraParameters": "http://10.177.2.135/95_remaining",
                  "ExpiryTime": "*unlimited",
                  "Weight": 700
              },
              {
                  "Identifier": "*log",
                  "Weight": 1200
              }
          ]}]}
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Action_HTTP_Notify_95))

Now we’ll define an ActionTrigger to check if the balance is below $95 and trigger our newly created Action (“Action_HTTP_Notify_95“) when that condition is met:


#Define ActionTrigger
ActionTrigger_95_Remaining_JSON = {
    "method": "APIerSv1.SetActionTrigger",
    "params": [
        {
            "GroupID" : "ActionTrigger_95_Remaining",
            "ActionTrigger": 
                {
                    "BalanceType": "*monetary",
                    "Balance" : {
                        'BalanceType': '*monetary',
                        'ID' : "*default",
                        'BalanceID' : "*default",
                        'Value' : 95,
                        },
                    "ThresholdType": "*min_balance",
                    "ThresholdValue": 95,
                    "Weight": 10,
                    "ActionsID" : "Action_HTTP_Notify_95",
                },
            "Overwrite": True
        }
    ]
}
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(ActionTrigger_95_Remaining_JSON))

We’ve defined the ThresholdType of *min_balance, but we could equally set this to ThresholdType to *max_balance, *balance_expired or trigger when a certain Counter has been triggered enough times.

Adding an ActionTrigger to an Account

Again, like the ActionPlan we created before, before the ActionTrigger we just created will be used, we need to associate it with an Account, for this we’ll use the AddAccountActionTriggers API, specify the Account and the ActionTriggerID for the ActionTrigger we just created.


#Add ActionTrigger to Account 
Add_ActionTrigger_to_Account_JSON = {
    "method": "APIerSv1.AddAccountActionTriggers",
    "params": [
        {
            "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
            "Account": str(Account),
            "ActionTriggerIDs": ["ActionTrigger_95_Remaining"],
            "ActionTriggersOverwrite": True
        }
    ]
}
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Add_ActionTrigger_to_Account_JSON))

If we run this all together, creating the account with the “ActionPlan_Signup_Bonus” will give the account a $99 Balance. But after 60 seconds, “ActionPlan_Monthly_Charge” will kick in, and every 60 seconds after that, at which point the balance will get to below $95 when CGrateS will trigger the ActionTrigger “ActionTrigger_95_Remaining” and get the HTTP POST to the HTTP endpoint and log entry:

We can check on this using the ApierV2.GetAccount method, where we’ll see the ActionTrigger we just defined.

Checking out the LastExecutionTime we can see if the ActionTrigger been triggered or not.

So using this technique, we can notify a customer when they’ve used a certain amount of their balance, but we can lock out Accounts who have spent more than their allocated spend limit by setting an Action that suspends the Account once it reaches a certain level. We notify customers when balance expires, or if a certain number of counters has been triggered.

As always I’ve put all the code used in this example, from start to finish, up on GitHub.

CGrateS – Actions & Action Plans

CGrateS, Mobile Networks, Notes, Python, SDM, Software, VoIP, ,

In our last post we added a series of different balances to an account, these were actions we took via the API specifically to add a balance.

But there’s a lot more actions we may want to do beyond just adding balance.

CGrateS has the concept of “Actions” which are, as the name suggests, things we want to do to the system.

Some example Actions would be:

  • Adding / Deducting / Resetting a balance
  • Adding a CDR log
  • Enable/Disable an account
  • Sending HTTP POST request or email notification
  • Deleting / suspending account
  • Transferring balances

We can run these actions on a timed basis, or when an event is triggered, and group Actions together to run multiple actions via an ActionTrigger, this means we can trigger these Actions, not just by sending an API request, but based on the state of the subscriber / account.

Let’s look at some examples,

We can define an Action named “Action_Monthly_Fee” to debit $12 from the monetary balance of an account, and add a CDR with the name “Monthly Account Fee” when it does so.
We can use ActionTriggers to run this every month on the account automatically.

We can define an Action named “Usage_Warning_10GB” to send an email to the Account owner to inform them they’ve used 10GB of usage, and use ActionTriggers to send this when the customer has used 10GB of their *data balance.

Using Actions

Note: The Python script I’ve used with all the examples in this post is available on GitHub here.

Let’s start by defining an Account, just as we have before:

# Create the Account object inside CGrateS
Account = "Nick_Test_123"
Create_Account_JSON = {
    "method": "ApierV2.SetAccount",
    "params": [
        {
            "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
            "Account": str(Account)
        }
    ]
}
print(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Create_Account_JSON))

Let’s start basic; to sweeten the deal for new Accounts, we’ll give them $99 of balance to use in the first month they have the service. Rather than hitting the AddBalance API, we’ll define an Action named “Action_Add_Signup_Bonus” to credit $99 of monetary balance to an account.

If you go back to our last post, you should know what we’d need to do to add this balance manually with the AddBalance API, but let’s look at how we can create the same balance add functionality using Actions:

#Add a Signup Bonus of $99 to the account with type *monetary expiring a month after it's added
Action_Signup_Bonus = {
    "id": "0",
    "method": "ApierV1.SetActions",
    "params": [
        {
          "ActionsId": "Action_Add_Signup_Bonus",
          "Actions": [
              {
                  "Identifier": "*topup",
                  "BalanceId": "Balance_Signup_Bonus",
                  "BalanceUuid": "",
                  "BalanceType": "*monetary",
                  "Directions": "*out",
                  "Units": 99,
                  "ExpiryTime": "*month",
                  "Filter": "",
                  "TimingTags": "",
                  "DestinationIds": "",
                  "RatingSubject": "",
                  "Categories": "",
                  "SharedGroups": "",
                  "BalanceWeight": 1200,
                  "ExtraParameters": "",
                  "BalanceBlocker": "false",
                  "BalanceDisabled": "false",
                  "Weight": 10
              }
]}]}
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Action_Signup_Bonus))

Alright, this should look pretty familiar if you’ve just come from Account Balances.
You’ll notice we’re no longer calling, SetBalance, we’re now calling SetActions, to create the ActionsId with the name “Action_Add_Signup_Bonus“.
In “Action_Add_Signup_Bonus” we’ve got an actions we’ll do when “Action_Add_Signup_Bonus” is called.
We can define multiple actions, but for now we’ve only got one action defined, which has the Identifier (which defines what the action does) set to *topup to add balance.
As you probably guessed, we’re triggering a top up, and setting the BalanceId, BalanceType, Units, ExpiryTime and BalanceWeight just as we would using SetBalance to add a balance.

So how do we use the Action we just created? Well, there’s a lot of options, but let’s start with the most basic – Via the API:

# Trigger ExecuteAction
Account_Action_trigger_JSON = {"method": "APIerSv1.ExecuteAction", "params": [
    {"Tenant": "cgrates.org", "Account": str(Account), "ActionsId": "Action_Add_Signup_Bonus"}]}
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Account_Action_trigger_JSON))

Boom, we’ve called the ExecuteAction API call, to execute the Action named “Action_Add_Signup_Bonus“.

We can check on this with GetAccount again and check the results:

# Get Account Info
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData({'method': 'ApierV2.GetAccount', 'params': [
              {"Tenant": "cgrates.org", "Account": str(Account)}]}))
{'method': 'ApierV2.GetAccount', 'params': [{'Tenant': 'cgrates.org', 'Account': 'Nick_Test_123'}]}
{'error': None,
 'id': None,
 'result': {'ActionTriggers': None,
            'AllowNegative': False,
            'BalanceMap': {'*monetary': [{'Blocker': False,
                                          'Categories': {},
                                          'DestinationIDs': {},
                                          'Disabled': False,
                                          'ExpirationDate': '2023-11-15T10:27:52.865119544+11:00',
                                          'Factor': None,
                                          'ID': 'Balance_Signup_Bonus',
                                          'RatingSubject': '',
                                          'SharedGroups': {},
                                          'TimingIDs': {},
                                          'Timings': None,
                                          'Uuid': '01cfb471-ba38-453a-b0e2-8ddb397dfe9c',
                                          'Value': 99,
                                          'Weight': 1200}]},
            'Disabled': False,
            'ID': 'cgrates.org:Nick_Test_123',
            'UnitCounters': None,
            'UpdateTime': '2023-10-15T10:27:52.865144268+11:00'}}

Great start!

Making Actions Useful

Well congratulations, we took something we previously did with one API call (SetBalance), and we did it with two (SetAction and ExcecuteAction)!

But let’s start paying efficiency dividends,

When we add a balance, let’s also add a CDR log event so we’ll know the account was credited with the balance when we call the GetCDRs API call.

We’d just modify our SetActions to include an extra step:

Action_Signup_Bonus = {
    "id": "0",
    "method": "ApierV1.SetActions",
    "params": [
        {
          "ActionsId": "Action_Add_Signup_Bonus",
          "Actions": [
              {
                  "Identifier": "*topup",
                  "BalanceId": "Balance_Signup_Bonus",
...
              }, 
              {
                  "Identifier": "*cdrlog",
                  "BalanceId": "",
                  "BalanceUuid": "",
                  "BalanceType": "*monetary",
                  "Directions": "*out",
                  "Units": 0,
                  "ExpiryTime": "",
                  "Filter": "",
                  "TimingTags": "",
                  "DestinationIds": "",
                  "RatingSubject": "",
                  "Categories": "",
                  "SharedGroups": "",
                  "BalanceWeight": 0,
                  "ExtraParameters": "{\"Category\":\"^activation\",\"Destination\":\"Your sign up Bonus\"}",
                  "BalanceBlocker": "false",
                  "BalanceDisabled": "false",
                  "Weight": 10
              }
]}]}
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Action_Signup_Bonus))

Boom, now we’ll get a CDR created when the Action is triggered.

But let’s push this a bit more and add some more steps in the Action:

As well as adding balance and putting in a CDR to record what we did, let’s also send a notification to our customer via an HTTP API (BYO customer push notification system) and log to Syslog what’s going on.

# Add a Signup Bonus of $99 to the account with type *monetary expiring a month after it's added
Action_Signup_Bonus = {
    "id": "0",
    "method": "ApierV1.SetActions",
    "params": [
        {
          "ActionsId": "Action_Add_Signup_Bonus",
          "Actions": [
              {
                  "Identifier": "*topup",
                  "BalanceId": "Balance_Signup_Bonus",
                  "BalanceUuid": "",
                  "BalanceType": "*monetary",
                  "Directions": "*out",
                  "Units": 99,
                  "ExpiryTime": "*month",
                  "Filter": "",
                  "TimingTags": "",
                  "DestinationIds": "",
                  "RatingSubject": "",
                  "Categories": "",
                  "SharedGroups": "",
                  "BalanceWeight": 1200,
                  "ExtraParameters": "",
                  "BalanceBlocker": "false",
                  "BalanceDisabled": "false",
                  "Weight": 90
              },
              {
                  "Identifier": "*cdrlog",
                  "BalanceId": "",
                  "BalanceUuid": "",
                  "BalanceType": "*monetary",
                  "Directions": "*out",
                  "Units": 0,
                  "ExpiryTime": "",
                  "Filter": "",
                  "TimingTags": "",
                  "DestinationIds": "",
                  "RatingSubject": "",
                  "Categories": "",
                  "SharedGroups": "",
                  "BalanceWeight": 0,
                  "ExtraParameters": "{\"Category\":\"^activation\",\"Destination\":\"Your sign up Bonus\"}",
                  "BalanceBlocker": "false",
                  "BalanceDisabled": "false",
                  "Weight": 80
              },
              {
                  "Identifier": "*http_post_async",
                  "ExtraParameters": "http://10.177.2.135/example_endpoint",
                  "ExpiryTime": "*unlimited",
                  "Weight": 70
              },
              {
                  "Identifier": "*log",
                  "Weight": 60
              }
          ]}]}
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Action_Signup_Bonus))

Phew! That’s a big action, but if we execute the action again using ExecuteAction, we’ll get all these things happening at once:

Okay, now we’re getting somewhere!

ActionPlans

Having an Action we can trigger manually via the API is one thing, but being able to trigger it automatically is where it really comes into its own.

Let’s define an ActionPlan, that is going to call our Action named “Action_Add_Signup_Bonus” as soon as the ActionPlan is assigned to an Account.

# Create ActionPlan using SetActionPlan to trigger the Action_Signup_Bonus ASAP
SetActionPlan_Signup_Bonus_JSON = {
    "method": "ApierV1.SetActionPlan",
    "params": [{
        "Id": "ActionPlan_Signup_Bonus",
        "ActionPlan": [{
            "ActionsId": "Action_Add_Signup_Bonus",
            "Years": "*any",
            "Months": "*any",
            "MonthDays": "*any",
            "WeekDays": "*any",
            "Time": "*asap",
            "Weight": 10
        }],
        "Overwrite": True,
        "ReloadScheduler": True
    }]
}
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(SetActionPlan_Signup_Bonus_JSON))

So what have we done here? We’ve made an ActionPlan named “Action_Add_Signup_Bonus”, which, when associated with an account, will run the Action “Action_Add_Signup_Bonus” as soon as it’s tied to the account, thanks to the Time “*asap“.

Now if we create or update an Account using the SetAccount method, we can set the ActionPlanIds to reference our “ActionPlan_Signup_Bonus” and it’ll be triggered straight away.

# Create the Account object inside CGrateS
Create_Account_JSON = {
    "method": "ApierV2.SetAccount",
    "params": [
        {
            "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
            "Account": str(Account),
            "ActionPlanIds": ["ActionPlan_Signup_Bonus"],
            "ActionPlansOverwrite": True,
            "ReloadScheduler":True
        }
    ]
}
print(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Create_Account_JSON))

Now if we were to run a GetAccount API call, we’ll see the Account balance assigned that was created by the action Action_Add_Signup_Bonus which was triggered by ActionPlan assigned to the account:

{'method': 'ApierV2.GetAccount', 'params': [{'Tenant': 'cgrates.org', 'Account': 'Nick_Test_123'}]}
{'error': None,
 'id': None,
 'result': {'ActionTriggers': None,
            'AllowNegative': False,
            'BalanceMap': {'*monetary': [{'Blocker': False,
                                          'Categories': {},
                                          'DestinationIDs': {},
                                          'Disabled': False,
                                          'ExpirationDate': '2023-11-16T12:41:02.530985381+11:00',
                                          'Factor': None,
                                          'ID': 'Balance_Signup_Bonus',
                                          'RatingSubject': '',
                                          'SharedGroups': {},
                                          'TimingIDs': {},
                                          'Timings': None,
                                          'Uuid': '7bdbee5c-0888-4da2-b42f-5d6b8966ee2d',
                                          'Value': 99,
                                          'Weight': 1200}]},
            'Disabled': False,
            'ID': 'cgrates.org:Nick_Test_123',
            'UnitCounters': None,
            'UpdateTime': '2023-10-16T12:41:12.7236096+11:00'}}

But here’s where it gets interesting, in the ActionPlan we just defined the Time was set to “*asap“, which means the Action is triggered as soon as it was assigned to the account, but if we set the Time value to “*monthly“, the Action would get triggered every month, or *every_minute to trigger every minute, or *month_end to trigger at the end of every month.

Code for these examples is available here.

I’m trying to keep these posts shorter as there’s a lot to cover. Stick around for our next post, we’ll look at some more ActionTriggers to keep decreasing the balance of the account, and setting up ActionTriggers to send a notification to the customer to tell them when their balance is getting low, or any other event based Action you can think of!

Shiny things inside Cellular Diplexers

EUTRAN, GSM, Mobile Networks, RF, ,

I recently ended up with a few Commscope RF combiners from a cell site, they’re not on frequencies that are of any use to us, so, let’s see what’s inside.

The units on the bench are Commscope Diplexer units, these ones allow you to put a signal between 694-862Mhz, and another signal between 880-960Mhz, on the same RF feeder up the tower.

It’s a nifty trick from the days where radio units lived at the bottom of the tower, but now with Remote Radio Units, and Active Antenna Units, it’s becoming increasingly uncommon to have radio units in the site hut, and more common to just run DC & fibre up the tower and power a radio unit right next to the antenna – This is especially important for higher frequencies where of course the feeder loss is greater.

Diplexer unit before it is maimed…

Anywho, that’s about all I know of them, after the liberal application of chemicals to remove the stickers and several burns from a heat gun, we started to get the unit open, to show the zillion adjustment bolts, and finely machined parts.

A lot of screws
Bonus TMA

Thanks to Oliver for offering up the bench space when I rocked to up to their house with some stuff to pull apart.

CGrateS – Accounts & Balances

CGrateS, IMS / VoLTE, Mobile Networks, Notes, Software, VoIP, , ,

So far we’ve used CGrateS to rate a basic CDR and get a cost for it, but in the real world, we’d usually associate the cost with an account, which would represent a business or a person, who will ultimately be charged for using the service.

Note: I’ve put the code for all this in Github, if you’ve got issues following along, or don’t want to copy and paste the code from the website, you can grab the code here.

Creating an Account

Let’s start off by creating an account inside CGrateS – This is kinda pointless, but we’ll talk more about that later:

#Create the Account object inside CGrateS 
Create_Account_JSON = {
    "method": "ApierV2.SetAccount",
    "params": [
        {
            "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
            "Account": "Nick_Test_123"
        }
    ]
}
print(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Create_Account_JSON))

Running this onto the API should create an account named “Nick_Test_123”, but let’s confirm that’s the case:

#Print the Account Information
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData({'method':'ApierV2.GetAccount','params':[{"Tenant":"cgrates.org","Account": "Nick_Test_123"}]}))

Running this will give us the information about the account we just created:

{'method': 'ApierV2.GetAccount', 'params': [{'Tenant': 'cgrates.org', 'Account': 'Nick_Test_123'}]}
OrderedDict([('id', None),
             ('result',
              OrderedDict([('ID', 'cgrates.org:Nick_Test_123'),
                           ('BalanceMap', None),
                           ('UnitCounters', None),
                           ('ActionTriggers', None),
                           ('AllowNegative', False),
                           ('Disabled', False),
                           ('UpdateTime',
                            '2023-10-09T16:53:37.524466041+11:00')])),
             ('error', None)])

That was easy!

There’s not really much to see on our account at this stage, other than the UpdateTime, there’s nothing really going on, we don’t have any Balances.

Adding Balance for Voice

Accounts exist for spending, so let’s add a balance to this account to send from.

We’ll use the SetBalance API to create a new balance with 5 minutes of talk time, that we can use for making a call, and talking, for (you guessed it) – 5 minutes, so and we’ll use the balance “5_minute_voice_balance” that we’ll create:

#Add a balance to the account with type *voice with 5 minutes of Talk Time
Create_Voice_Balance_JSON = {
    "method": "ApierV1.SetBalance",
    "params": [
        {
            "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
            "Account": "Nick_Test_123",
            "BalanceType": "*voice",
            "Categories": "*any",
            "Balance": {
                "ID": "5_minute_voice_balance",
                "Value": "5m",
                "Weight": 25
            }
        }
    ]
}
print(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Create_Voice_Balance_JSON))

Now if we run the GetAccount API command again, we should see the new balance we just created:

#Print the Account Information
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData({'method':'ApierV2.GetAccount','params':[{"Tenant":"cgrates.org","Account": "Nick_Test_123"}]}))
{'method': 'ApierV2.GetAccount', 'params': [{'Tenant': 'cgrates.org', 'Account': 'Nick_Test_123'}]}
{'error': None,
 'id': None,
 'result': {'ActionTriggers': None,
            'AllowNegative': False,
            'BalanceMap': {'*voice': [{'Blocker': False,
                                       'Categories': None,
                                       'DestinationIDs': None,
                                       'Disabled': False,
                                       'ExpirationDate': '0001-01-01T00:00:00Z',
                                       'Factor': None,
                                       'ID': '5_minute_voice_balance',
                                       'RatingSubject': '',
                                       'SharedGroups': None,
                                       'TimingIDs': None,
                                       'Timings': None,
                                       'Uuid': '37423d07-d99a-40b1-851a-981c3df02cb3',
                                       'Value': 300000000000,
                                       'Weight': 25}]},
            'Disabled': False,
            'ID': 'cgrates.org:Nick_Test_123',
            'UnitCounters': None,
            'UpdateTime': '2023-10-14T17:58:23.801531205+11:00'}}

So now we’ve got a new balance named ‘5_minute_voice_balance‘:

  • The type is *voice, because this balance is storing talk time
  • The weight of this balance is 25, this means this balance should take priority over any balances with a lower value than 25 (that’s right, we can (and will) do tiered balances)
  • The value is 300000000000 nanoseconds, which equates to 5 minutes (yes, that’s the correct number of zeros)

Okay, but Nick_Test_123 probably wants to make some calls, so let’s generate a 2.5 minute call event and check out what happens.


#Generate a new call event for a 2.5 minute (150 second) call
Process_External_CDR_JSON = {
    "method": "CDRsV2.ProcessExternalCDR",
    "params": [
        {
            "OriginID": str(uuid.uuid1()),
            "ToR": "*voice",
            "RequestType": "*pseudoprepaid",
            "AnswerTime": now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"),
            "SetupTime": now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"),
            "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
            "Account": "Nick_Test_123",
            "Usage": "150s",
        }
    ]
}
print(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Process_External_CDR_JSON))

Alright, now we’ve got a call event, let’s call the GetAccount API again to check the balance:

#Print the Account Information
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData({'method':'ApierV2.GetAccount','params':[{"Tenant":"cgrates.org","Account": "Nick_Test_123"}]}))
{'method': 'ApierV2.GetAccount', 'params': [{'Tenant': 'cgrates.org', 'Account': 'Nick_Test_123'}]}
{'error': None,
 'id': None,
 'result': {'ActionTriggers': None,
            'AllowNegative': False,
            'BalanceMap': {'*voice': [{'Blocker': False,
                                       'Categories': None,
                                       'DestinationIDs': None,
                                       'Disabled': False,
                                       'ExpirationDate': '0001-01-01T00:00:00Z',
                                       'Factor': None,
                                       'ID': '5_minute_voice_balance',
                                       'RatingSubject': '',
                                       'SharedGroups': None,
                                       'TimingIDs': None,
                                       'Timings': None,
                                       'Uuid': '37423d07-d99a-40b1-851a-981c3df02cb3',
                                       'Value': 150000000000,
                                       'Weight': 25}]},
            'Disabled': False,
            'ID': 'cgrates.org:Nick_Test_123',
            'UnitCounters': None,
            'UpdateTime': '2023-10-14T17:58:23.80925546+11:00'}}

And there you have it, we’ve used 150 seconds of our 300 second (5 minutes) of talk time in this balance, leaving with us 150000000000 nanoseconds (150 seconds) remaining!

And with that progress, now is a great time to pause and talk about some theory that’s really important to grasp!

Balance Types

But *voice is just one balance type – We can support multiple balance types; we’ve just given a balance of *voice for talk time, but we could also give a credit to the balance for *sms or *data, you name it (*generic) and cash (*monetary) and we can have multiple separate balances for each.

This means we can have one account with something like:

  • 100 minutes of Local / National Calls (Expires at the end of the month)
  • 40 minutes of Mobile Calls (Expires 24 hours after it’s been created)
  • 80 minutes of Mobile Calls (During “Happy Hour” from 6 to 7pm)
  • 50 minutes of International Calls (Expires in 30 days)

And not just voice balance, the same account could also have:

  • 1GB of Data usage
  • 50 SMS to on-net destinations
  • $200 of Cash (expiring never)

Phew! That’s a lot of balances, but we can do it all through CGrateS!

What Balance to Use

So if we’ve got a stack of balances defined, how does CGrateS know what balance to use?

Firstly CGrateS is going to evaluate the BalanceType, this is set on events, so if we get an event for *data CGrateS will check out the balances available for *data, and evaluate the balances by Weight, with the highest weight evaluated first.
If we get to the end of all the available balances for that BalanceType, CGrateS then evaluates *generic and then *monetary balances, again, ordered by Weight.

We can set what balance gets used based on the Destination; using DestinationIDs we can filter the Balance to only apply for calls to Local/National numbers, so a call to an International destination won’t use that balance.

We can also set an Expiry on the Balance, for example we can give a customer 30 days to use the balance, after which it expires and can’t be used, likewise we can set Timings so enable scenarios like a “Happy hour” with extra calls between 6pm and 7pm.

When we define a balance we can also set the Blocker flag to True, if this is set, it means CGrateS will not look evaluate any balances after reaching that balance.

Adding a Balance for Local / National & Mobile Calls

Let’s jump back into the practice, and define two new Balances; one for Local/National calls, and another for Mobile calls.
But first we’ll need to know what destinations are mobiles and what are local/national (fixed). We’ve covered setting Destinations previously, so let’s set up the Destinations:


CGRateS_Obj.SendData({'method':'ApierV2.SetTPDestination','params':[{"TPid":"cgrates.org","ID":"Dest_AU_Fixed","Prefixes":["612", "613", "617", "618"]}]})
CGRateS_Obj.SendData({'method':'ApierV2.SetTPDestination','params':[{"TPid":"cgrates.org","ID":"Dest_AU_Mobile","Prefixes":["614"]}]})
CGRateS_Obj.SendData({'method':'ApierV2.SetTPDestination','params':[{"TPid":"cgrates.org","ID":"Dest_AU_TollFree","Prefixes":["6113", "6118"]}]})
#Load TariffPlan we just defiend from StorDB to DataDB
print(CGRateS_Obj.SendData({"method":"APIerSv1.LoadTariffPlanFromStorDb","params":[{"TPid":"cgrates.org","DryRun":False,"Validate":True,"APIOpts":None,"Caching":None}],"id":0}))

Alright, now let’s add a balance for our local/national (fixed) calls.

To do this, we’ll add two new balances, but we’ll need to differentiate this from the 5_minute_voice_balance we created earlier, and to achieve this we weill:

  • Set a higher Weight value than we have set on 5_minute_voice_balance (25) so this balance will get consumed before 5_minute_voice_balance does
  • Set the DestinationIDs to match the destinations (Dest_AU_Mobile for Mobile and Dest_AU_Fixed for Local/National) we want the balance to apply to

ProTip: When you we create our Balance we can set what Destinations we want to use this balance for, if you want to specify multiple balances, we can do it by setting the Balance names as a string delimited by semicolons, like “DestinationIDs”: “Dest_AU_Fixed;Dest_AU_Mobile;Dest_AU_TollFree”

We’ll also set a balance expiry, which we’ll cover shortly, but now let’s define out 100 minutes for Local/National expiring at the end of the month:

#Add a balance to the account with type *voice with 100 minutes of talk time to Local / National Destinations expiring at the end of the month
Create_Local_National_Voice_Balance_JSON = {
    "method": "ApierV1.SetBalance",
    "params": [
        {
            "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
            "Account": "Nick_Test_123",
            "BalanceType": "*voice",
            "Categories": "*any",
            "Balance": {
                "ID": "Local_National_100_minutes_voice_balance",
                "Value": "100m",
                "ExpiryTime": "*month_end",
                "Weight": 60,
                "DestinationIDs": "Dest_AU_Fixed",
            }
        }
    ]
}
print(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Create_Local_National_Voice_Balance_JSON))

We’ll also add our 24 hours to use to use 40 minutes of talk to mobiles, and a GetAccount to check the result:

#Add a balance to the account with type *voice with 40 minutes of talk time to Mobile Destinations expiring in 24 hours
Create_Mobile_Voice_Balance_JSON = {
    "method": "ApierV1.SetBalance",
    "params": [
        {
            "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
            "Account": "Nick_Test_123",
            "BalanceType": "*voice",
            "Categories": "*any",
            "Balance": {
                "ID": "Mobile_40_minutes_voice_balance",
                "Value": "40m",
                "ExpiryTime": "*daily",
                "Weight": 60,
                "DestinationIDs": "Dest_AU_Mobile",
            }
        }
    ]
}
print(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Create_Mobile_Voice_Balance_JSON))

# Get Account Info Again
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData({"method": "ApierV2.GetAccount", "params": [
              {"Tenant": "cgrates.org", "Account": "Nick_Test_123"}]}))

Alright, let’s try running that:

{'method': 'ApierV2.GetAccount', 'params': [{'Tenant': 'cgrates.org', 'Account': 'Nick_Test_123'}]}
{'error': None,
 'id': None,
 'result': {'ActionTriggers': None,
            'AllowNegative': False,
            'BalanceMap': {'*voice': [{'Blocker': False,
                                       'Categories': None,
                                       'DestinationIDs': None,
                                       'Disabled': False,
                                       'ExpirationDate': '0001-01-01T00:00:00Z',
                                       'Factor': None,
                                       'ID': '5_minute_voice_balance',
                                       'RatingSubject': '',
                                       'SharedGroups': None,
                                       'TimingIDs': None,
                                       'Timings': None,
                                       'Uuid': 'ad9d8bdd-64df-430f-af9d-3fc0410fd16b',
                                       'Value': 150000000000,
                                       'Weight': 25},
                                      {'Blocker': False,
                                       'Categories': None,
                                       'DestinationIDs': {'Dest_AU_Fixed': True},
                                       'Disabled': False,
                                       'ExpirationDate': '2023-10-31T23:59:59+11:00',
                                       'Factor': None,
                                       'ID': 'Local_National_100_minutes_voice_balance',
                                       'RatingSubject': '',
                                       'SharedGroups': None,
                                       'TimingIDs': None,
                                       'Timings': None,
                                       'Uuid': 'e4a2c211-8112-4e40-b3e6-250863404cc9',
                                       'Value': 6000000000000,
                                       'Weight': 60},
                                      {'Blocker': False,
                                       'Categories': None,
                                       'DestinationIDs': {'Dest_AU_Mobile': True},
                                       'Disabled': False,
                                       'ExpirationDate': '2023-10-15T18:15:11.521636734+11:00',
                                       'Factor': None,
                                       'ID': 'Mobile_40_minutes_voice_balance',
                                       'RatingSubject': '',
                                       'SharedGroups': None,
                                       'TimingIDs': None,
                                       'Timings': None,
                                       'Uuid': 'd4cbf6d8-50a5-4c97-82c2-dfe9936ae8d1',
                                       'Value': 2400000000000,
                                       'Weight': 60}]},
            'Disabled': False,
            'ID': 'cgrates.org:Nick_Test_123',
            'UnitCounters': None,
            'UpdateTime': '2023-10-14T18:15:11.524242437+11:00'}}

Alright! We now have 3 balances defined!

Notice in the API in the expiry I put *daily and *month_end, but in the output it’s got a real date and time (I wrote this 14/10/23 around 07:00 UTC, hence why those dates are what they are).
I could have specified the date and time in the API of a specific time I wanted the balance to expire (You can too, just replace “*daily” with “2024-01-01T00:00:00Z” for example), but that’s a pain in the butt, especially considering most of the time these values will be something common.
The *month_end is a special “meta” value, there’s a heap of these that allow us to do things like “current time + 20 minutes” (+20m), this time next month (*monthly), “this time tomorrow” (*daily), or “this time next week” (+168h) – You can find the full list of special dates here.

From a product perspective, setting an expiry on balances means we can set credit to expire 2 years after the subscriber tops up, but the same logic can be used so a subscriber could purchase a 7 day addon pack, that expires in 7 days, or a monthly plan can automatically expire in 30 days.

Now if we call the ProcessExternalCDR API again with a call to a Mobile and a Fixed number, we’ll see the respective balances get deducted.


#Generate a new call event for a 2.5 minute (150 second) call to a mobile number
Process_External_CDR_JSON = {
    "method": "CDRsV2.ProcessExternalCDR",
    "params": [
        {
            "OriginID": str(uuid.uuid1()),
            "ToR": "*voice",
            "RequestType": "*pseudoprepaid",
            "AnswerTime": now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"),
            "SetupTime": now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"),
            "Subject": "61412341234",
            "Destination": "61412341234",
            "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
            "Account": "Nick_Test_123",
            "Usage": "30s",
        }
    ]
}
print(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Process_External_CDR_JSON))

#Generate a new call event for a 2.5 minute (150 second) call to a fixed line local/national number
Process_External_CDR_JSON = {
    "method": "CDRsV2.ProcessExternalCDR",
    "params": [
        {
            "OriginID": str(uuid.uuid1()),
            "ToR": "*voice",
            "RequestType": "*pseudoprepaid",
            "AnswerTime": now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"),
            "SetupTime": now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"),
            "Subject": "61212341234",
            "Destination": "61212341234",
            "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
            "Account": "Nick_Test_123",
            "Usage": "30s",
        }
    ]
}
print(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Process_External_CDR_JSON))

# Get Account Info Again
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData({"method": "ApierV2.GetAccount", "params": [
              {"Tenant": "cgrates.org", "Account": "Nick_Test_123"}]}))

We should see the minutes reduced by 30 seconds for our Local_National_100_minutes_voice_balance and Mobile_40_minutes_voice_balance balances, while our 5_minute_voice_balance hasn’t been touched.

{
   "Blocker":false,
   "Categories":"None",
   "DestinationIDs":"None",
   "Disabled":false,
   "ExpirationDate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
   "Factor":"None",
   "ID":"5_minute_voice_balance",
   "RatingSubject":"",
   "SharedGroups":"None",
   "TimingIDs":"None",
   "Timings":"None",
   "Uuid":"29f21735-1d62-49b1-9c53-80eab6f7b005",
   "Value":150000000000,
   "Weight":25
},
{
   "Blocker":false,
   "Categories":"None",
   "DestinationIDs":{
      "Dest_AU_Fixed":true
   },
   "Disabled":false,
   "ExpirationDate":"2023-10-31T23:59:59+11:00",
   "Factor":"None",
   "ID":"Local_National_100_minutes_voice_balance",
   "RatingSubject":"",
   "SharedGroups":"None",
   "TimingIDs":"None",
   "Timings":"None",
   "Uuid":"54db4f60-342e-4738-aaf1-a1304badc41d",
   "Value":5970000000000,
   "Weight":60
},
{
   "Blocker":false,
   "Categories":"None",
   "DestinationIDs":{
      "Dest_AU_Mobile":true
   },
   "Disabled":false,
   "ExpirationDate":"2023-10-15T18:32:34.888821482+11:00",
   "Factor":"None",
   "ID":"Mobile_40_minutes_voice_balance",
   "RatingSubject":"",
   "SharedGroups":"None",
   "TimingIDs":"None",
   "Timings":"None",
   "Uuid":"501eb00e-e947-4675-926f-080911e66897",
   "Value":2370000000000,
   "Weight":60
}

One last thing we’ll try before we end, our Mobile_40_minutes_voice_balance has still got 39.5 minutes left, and our 5_minute_voice_balance has still got minutes remaining, so if we try and make a call that’s 2450 seconds (~41 minutes), we should consume all the remaining minutes in Mobile_40_minutes_voice_balance and the go onto consume the remaining 1 minute out of 5_minute_voice_balance.

Let’s test this theory!

#Generate a new call event for a 42 minute call to a mobile to use all of our Mobile_40_minutes_voice_balance and start consuming 5_minute_voice_balance
Process_External_CDR_JSON = {
    "method": "CDRsV2.ProcessExternalCDR",
    "params": [
        {
            "OriginID": str(uuid.uuid1()),
            "ToR": "*voice",
            "RequestType": "*pseudoprepaid",
            "AnswerTime": now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"),
            "SetupTime": now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"),
            "Subject": "61412341234",
            "Destination": "61412341234",
            "Tenant": "cgrates.org",
            "Account": "Nick_Test_123",
            "Usage": "2450s",
        }
    ]
}
print(CGRateS_Obj.SendData(Process_External_CDR_JSON))

# Get Account Info Again
pprint.pprint(CGRateS_Obj.SendData({"method": "ApierV2.GetAccount", "params": [
              {"Tenant": "cgrates.org", "Account": "Nick_Test_123"}]}))

Let’s check the output:

{
   "Blocker":false,
   "Categories":"None",
   "DestinationIDs":"None",
   "Disabled":false,
   "ExpirationDate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
   "Factor":"None",
   "ID":"5_minute_voice_balance",
   "RatingSubject":"",
   "SharedGroups":"None",
   "TimingIDs":"None",
   "Timings":"None",
   "Uuid":"29f21735-1d62-49b1-9c53-80eab6f7b005",
   "Value":70000000000,
   "Weight":25
},
...
{
   "Blocker":false,
   "Categories":"None",
   "DestinationIDs":{
      "Dest_AU_Mobile":true
   },
   "Disabled":false,
   "ExpirationDate":"2023-10-15T18:44:18.161474861+11:00",
   "Factor":"None",
   "ID":"Mobile_40_minutes_voice_balance",
   "RatingSubject":"",
   "SharedGroups":"None",
   "TimingIDs":"None",
   "Timings":"None",
   "Uuid":"501eb00e-e947-4675-926f-080911e66897",
   "Value":0.0161939859,
   "Weight":60
}

Boom, there we have it! Used all of the minutes in Mobile_40_minutes_voice_balance and started eating into the 5_minute_voice_balance.

Note: I’ve put the code for all this in Github, if you’ve got issues following along, or don’t want to copy and paste the code from the website, you can grab the code here.

Alright, that was a long post! Sorry about that, and props for making it to the end, still so much to learn about CGrateS.

Tales from the Trenches: mode-set in AMR

IMS / VoLTE, Mobile Networks, VoIP, , , , ,

This one was a bit of a head scratcher for me, but I’m always glad to learn something new.

The handset made a VoLTE call, and it’s SDP offer shows it can support AMR and AMR-WB:

        Media Attribute (a): rtpmap:116 AMR-WB/16000/1
        Media Attribute (a): fmtp:116 mode-set=0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8;mode-change-capability=2;max-red=220
        Media Attribute (a): rtpmap:118 AMR/8000/1
        Media Attribute (a): fmtp:118 mode-set=0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7;mode-change-capability=2;max-red=220
        Media Attribute (a): rtpmap:111 telephone-event/16000
        Media Attribute (a): fmtp:111 0-15

Okay, that’s pretty normal, I can see we have the mode-set parameter defined, which indicates what modes the handset supports for each codec.

In our problem scenario, the Media Gateway that the call was sent to responded with this SDP answer:

        Media Description, name and address (m): audio 24504 RTP/AVP 118 110
        Media Attribute (a): rtpmap:118 AMR/8000
        Media Attribute (a): fmtp:118 mode-set=7
        Media Attribute (a): rtpmap:110 telephone-event/8000
        Media Attribute (a): fmtp:110 0-15
        Media Attribute (a): ptime:20
        Media Attribute (a): sendrecv
        [Generated Call-ID: FA163E564B37-f4d-98f56700-735d25-65357ee0-9c488]

But we got an error about not available codecs and the call drops, what gives?

Both sides support AMR (Only the phone supports AMR-WB), and the Media Gateway, as the answerer, supports mode-set 7, which is supported by the UE, so we should be good?

Well, not quite:

If mode-set is specified, it MUST be abided, and frames encoded with modes outside of the subset MUST NOT be sent in any RTP payload or used in codec mode requests. If not present, all codec modes are allowed for the payload type.

RFC 4867 – RTP Payload Format for AMR and AMR-WB

Okay, I get it, the answerer (media gateway) only supports mode 7, but the UE supports all the modes, so we should be fine right?

Well, no.

Section 8.3.1 in the RFC goes on to say in the Offer-Answer Model Considerations:

The parameter [mode-set] is bi-directional, i.e., the restricted set applies to media both to be received and sent by the declaring entity. If a mode set was supplied in the offer, the answerer SHALL return the mode-set unmodified or reject the payload type. However, the answerer is free to choose a mode-set in the answer only if no mode-set was supplied in the offer for a unicast two-peer session.

And there is our problem, and why the call is getting rejected.

The Media Gateway (the answerer in this scenario) is sending back the mode-set it supports (7) but as the UE / handset (offerer) included the mode-set, the Media Gateway should either respond with the same mode set (if it supported all the requested modes) or reject it.

Instead we’re seeing the Media Gateway repond with the mode set, which it supports, which it should not do: The Media Gateway should either return the same mode-set (unmodified / unchanged) or reject it.

And boom, another ticket to another vendor…

The role of the telecom Pillar & Cabinet in the Australian copper network

Australian Telco, History, , ,

The gray telecom cabinets and pillars can be seen in suburbs across Australia, along rail corridors and even overseas.

But what do they do? What’s the difference between a pillar and a cabinet? Are they still used today? What’s inside? Why are they such an important part of the network?

What are they?

In a nutshell, they’re weatherproof (if properly cared for) enclosures for cross connecting (jumpering) cables.

This means that rather than doing the jumpering / cross connecting services in a dirty pit, a cabinet can be opened and the connection made quickly, in a clean, easily accessed, above ground housing.

They utilise a really clever design, that was the result of a competitive design process in the 1950s.

The schrader valve (bike valve) at the top allows the units to remain pressurized, this means in areas subject to flooding or for pressurised cables, the pillar remains water tight ( although the practice of sealing them again with air isn’t very common anymore).

When the aluminum top plate is unlocked and spun off the threaded fitting, the linesworker can unscrew the big nut on top, and lift up the cover, which locks open at the top, revealing the terminal units (either solder tag blocks or Krone blocks) inside the unit.

900 pair IDC
1800 pair tag block with Loopalines
1800 pair with IDC and F-Set
1900 pair tag block
900 pair in a fence
Cable management

Jumpering a service is just a matter of opening up the cabinet, finding the A side and the B side, and running jumper wire through the built in cable management loops from one side to the other.

Each of the Terminal Units is a pre-terminated strip with a few meters of tail, which is fed through the base of the pillar to a nearby pit where they can join 1 to 1, out onto the underground cables, this means the units can be upgraded for additional capacity as needed.

While pressurised they are IP67 rated, but this only goes so far, check out this Telstra photo from Queensland Floods in 2010 from Taroom. https://www.flickr.com/photos/telstra-corp/5362036747/in/album-72157625841011142/
While pressurised they are IP67 rated, but this only goes so far, check out this Telstra photo from Queensland Floods in 2010 from Taroom.

Why were they needed?

  • Cables are expensive. We want to minimize excess unused pairs and use the existing pairs with maximum flexibility and efficacy
  • Opening joints costs time, money, and risks disturbing other services. We want to avoid opening joints
  • Troubleshooting is also time consuming and costly. A convenient test point is needed for isolating where in a cable a fault lies. (Main Cable, Distribution Cable, etc)
  • Easily use gas/air filled cables, without having to constantly open and reseal cables them to splice in new joins / jumpers

Cabinet vs Pillar

Cabinets and Pillars look the same, but the hints as to their purpose are in their location and what’s sprayed on them in faded paint.

Pillars are used for cross-connecting main cables (“M” Pair from the exchange) with distribution cables (to subscribers “O” pairs which run down the street to the pit in the front of your house).

Pillars are generally stenciled with a “P” and an number, or just the DA (Distribution Area) number.

Cabinet are a more flexible setup where you can connect cables between Pillars, akin to a root & branch approach.

Cabinets cross connect Main Cables (“M” pair to the exchange), with Branch Cables (“B” Pair from the Cabinet to Pillar) and Distribution cables (“O” pair to the customer).

Cabinets are stenciled with the prefix “CA” and a number, and exist in the 900 and 1800 pair variants, where one is just taller than the other.

The blue example is direct from the Main Cable to the Pillar, while Cabinets are used in the black example.

This means the distribution can go via a Cabinet to the Pillar to the Customer, as shown in the top /grey lines in the diagram.

  1. Exchange Main Cables (Main Cables / M-Pairs) go to Cabinets
  2. Cabinets connect to Pillars (Branch Cables / B-Pairs)
  3. Pillars connect (Distribution Cables / O-Pairs) that run through the pits outside houses
  4. Inside the Openable Joint in the pit is used to connect the lead in cable from a subscriber’s premises

Alternatively, the Cabinet may be bypassed and a direct cable goes between the Exchange and the Pillar, in that scenario it looks like the one show in blue lines on the diagram.

  1. Exchange Main Cables (Main Cables / M-Pairs) go to Pillar
  2. Pillars connect (Distribution Cables / O-Pairs) that run through the pits outside houses
  3. Inside the Openable Joint in the pit is used to connect the lead in cable from a subscriber’s premises
Display of 300, 900 and 1800 pair pillars and cabinets at the former Telstra Museum in Hawthorn

The Cabinet to Pillar model fell out of favor due to its increased complexity.
While it was cheaper to deploy the network using cabinets that cascaded down to feed pillars (you would only have to install enough cable for the “here and now” and could add additional Main & Branch cables as needed in a targeted manner) the move to outsourced lineswork for Telecom found that any increased complexity, led to additional operational cost that outweighed the capital savings

Use in the “Modern” Copper Customer Access Network

Pillars are still used in areas of Australia where NBNco have deployed Fibre to the Node.

NBN adds a row of X-Pairs (VDSL) and C-Pairs (Channel) to the pillar, which connect into the FTTN nodes themselves.

This means a customer with a traditional POTS line (M-Pair from the Exchange, C-Pair from the Cabinet to the Pillar, O-Pair from the Pillar to the Pit, and then the lead-in into their property) has the O-Pair and C-Pair buzzed out on the pillar, and then routed through the X-Pair and the C-Pair on the Node.

This puts the DSLAM in the Alcatel ISAM inline with the customer’s existing copper loop to the Exchange. The main cable comes from the exchange onto the M-Pair blocks in the Pillar, is jumpered onto the X-Pairs which go through the DSLAM, and come out as C-Pairs back onto the pillar. The C-Pair is then jumpered back to the Customer’s O-Pair and bingo, the FTTN cabinet is inline with the copper loop.

However as the PSTN services get dropped, the Main / M-Pair to the exchange can eventually be removed and the cables removed, meaning the connection just goes from the C pair for VDSL out into the O pair to the customer.

As part of the NBN migration some pillars were upgraded to include IDC / Punch Down blocks, and a rectangular version of the pillar was introduced.

NBN pillar

Oddly, these rectangular covers, do not have rectangular units inside, but rather cylindrical ones, just like the pillars of old.

This does fix the missing lids issue – The lid is captive, but I’m not sure what other design improvements this introduces – if anyone has the insight I’d be keen to hear it!

Tales from the Trenches – Emergency Calling when Roaming

IMS / VoLTE, Mobile Networks, RFCs & Standards, SDM, , , , ,

In my last post talking about the Emergency Calling Codes, I had a few comments asking about what about in roaming scenarios?

For example, an American visiting the UK, would have 911 on the Emergency Calling Codes list on their SIM card, but in the UK they dial 999 to reach emergency services.

There’s two angles to this, the first is if a roamer dials the emergency calling code of their home country, the other is if they dial the emergency calling code of the country they are in.

Let’s look at the first scenario, where the roamer dials the emergency calling code of their home country.

If our American in the UK abroad dials 911, that number is on the ECC list on the SIM, it’s still flagged as an emergency call, and just goes out with the standard urn:service:sos URN – The network never sees 911 or 999, just that it’s an SOS call that goes to the PSAP.

In this scenario, the fact the dialled number is not passed to the network is actually a positive, we get the intent that the user wants to reach emergency services, and route based on this.

But what if our American friend in need dials 999?
That’s the correct number for the end user to dial in the UK after all, but if that’s not in their ECC list on the SIM / device, it’d go through as a regular call right?

If the call does not get flagged as an emergency call on the UE this has its own set of complications and considerations:

S8-Home Routing for VoLTE means that as the UE doesn’t know this is an emergency call, the call will get routed back to the home network. This means the call doesn’t go to the E-CSCF in the visited network, and would probably just get a message saying the number they’ve dialed is unavailable, this would be exactly as if they dialed 999 at home in the US.

But we have a fix for this!
On each MME we can set a list of emergency numbers, which would allow our Britt’s phone to know on this network, what the emergency calling codes are, and route the 999 call to the local PSAP, rather than home routing it.

MME Emergency Number list Config

This information is jammed into the Emergency Number List IE in the NAS Attach Accept body.

This means our American visitor in the UK, would know about 999 from the ECC list configured in the roaming operator’s MME.

The purpose of this information element is to encode emergency number(s) for use within the country where the IE is received.

3GPP TS 24.008: 10.5.3.13 – Emergency Number List

Where this becomes more problematic is unauthenticated emergency calling.

For example, a our American visiting the UK, that is not roaming dials 999.

We’ll assume the UK and US operator don’t have a VoLTE roaming agreement because they’ve been kicking the can down the road when it comes to VoLTE roaming… This is super common scenario – last numbers I saw on this were last year with ~50 bilateral VoLTE agreements in place worldwide.

Because the phone is not attached to a local MME, the handset does not know that 999 is an emergency calling code (because it’s not on the SIM), after all, the only way it can get the Emergency Number List is from an MME, and not having been attached to an MME, means the phone does not have the ECC list for the country, so the the handset does not begin the emergency attach procedure to make the call.

Common sense prevails here, on the majority of phones and the majority of SIM profiles, codes like 112 or 911 are treated as emergency calls, but more obscure numbers, such as dialing 999 in the UK or 10111 for South African Police on a handset with US firmware, are not guaranteed to work. Generally dialing the Emergency Calling code in the home network would get you through to some emergency services (although as we talked about in the last post, this might get you routed to the wrong agency in countries where each agency has their own number).

A better way forward?

These days I don’t dial much (apart from if I’m making adjustments on the Step-by-Step exchange), when I call people I do it from contacts, hyperlinks, etc.

Emergency Dialler page in Android

There is mountains of research to suggest that asking people to remember codes and phone numbers, is a struggle. A tourist who finds themselves in Tunisia in need of assistance, is unlikely to remember that it’s 190 for an Ambulance, and 198 for Fire.

Perhaps the ECC list on a phone should populate a page of icons from the emergency page on the phone, with the universal icon for each agency, that sends to the URN for that service type?

Countries with a single PSAP could have the URNs for each service type routed to the same place, while countries with seperated PSAPs for each service type, can route accordingly.

Likewise if a country does have a centralised PSAP for all call types, knowing the type that is selected would be useful, for example if the user has pressed fire and is not responsive when the call is answered, the best unit to dispatch would probably be a fire engine.

GNS3 vCenter / ESXi – Allow Traffic

Notes, Software, , ,

The other day I setup GNS3 in the lab for some testing, we run vCenter for our server workloads, so I chucked the OVA on there.

One issue I ran into is that when linking a Cloud Component to a router, I simply could not get a path in/out of the router, I wasn’t learning MAC addresses and my ARP requests were going unanswered.

Wireshark showed the ARP requests going down that interface, and broadcast traffic from the rest of the network, so what gives?

The answer was pretty simple, on the vHost itself I needed to enable Promiscuous mode to allow L2 addresses that aren’t the VM, to be sent from within the VM.

Under Networking -> Port Groups -> the NICs you have assigned in GNS3:

Make sure Promiscuous mode, MAC address changes and Forged transmits are allowed – By default they’re denied on the vSwitch which it inherits from.

There’s obviously security concerns here, so think before you do, but that should have packets flowing.

Tales from the Trenches: The issue with Emergency Calling URNs in IMS Networks

IMS / VoLTE, Mobile Networks, RFCs & Standards, VoIP, , , , , ,

A lot of countries have a single point of contact for emergency services; in Europe you’d call 112 in an emergency, 000 in Australia or 911 in the US. Calling this number in the country will get you the emergency services.

This means a caller can order an ambulance for smoke inhalation, and the fire brigade, in one call.

But that’s not the case in every country; many countries don’t have one number for the emergency services, they’ve got multiple; a phone number for police, a different number for fire brigade and a different number for an ambulance.

For example, in Brazil if you need the police, you call 190, while a for example, uses 193 as the emergency number for the fire department, the police can be reached at 190 or 191 depending on if it’s road policing or general, and medical emergencies are covered by 192. Other countries have similar setups.

This is all well and good if you’re in Brazil, and you call 192 for an ambulance, the phone sends a SIP INVITE with a Request URI of sip:[email protected], because we can put a rule into our E-CSCF to say if the number is 192 to route it to the answer point for ambulances – But that’s not often the case on emergency calls.

In IMS, handsets generally detect the number dialed is on the Emergency Calling Code (ECC) list from the USIM Card.

The use of the ECC list means the phone knows this is an emergency call, and this is really important. For countries that use AML this can trigger sending of the AML SMS that process, and Emergency Calls should always be allowed to be made, even without credit, a valid SIM card, or even a SIM in the phone at all.

But this comes with a cost; when a user dials 911, the phones doesn’t (generally) send a call to sip:[email protected] like it would with any other dialled number, but rather the SIP INVITE is sent to urn:service:sos which will be routed to the PSAP by the E-CSCF. When a call comes through to these URNs they’re given top priority in the network

This is all well and good in a country where it doesn’t matter which emergency service you called, because all emergency calls route to a single PSAP, but in a country with multiple numbers, it’s really important when you call and ambulance, your call doesn’t get routed to animal control.

That means the phone has to look at what emergency number you’ve dialed, and map the URN it sends the call to to match what you’ve actually requested.

Recently we’ve been helping an operator in a country with a numbering plan like this, and we’ve been finding the limits of the standards here.
So let’s start by looking at what the standards state:

IMS Emergency Calling is governed by TS 103.479 which in turn delegates to IETF RFC 5031, but for the calling number to URN translation, it’s pretty quiet.

Let’s look at what RFC 5031 allows for URNs:

  • urn:service:sos.ambulance
  • urn:service:sos.animal-control
  • urn:service:sos.fire
  • urn:service:sos.gas
  • urn:service:sos.marine
  • urn:service:sos.mountain
  • urn:service:sos.physician
  • urn:service:sos.poison
  • urn:service:sos.police

The USIM’s Emergency Calling Codes EF would be the perfect source of this data; for each emergency calling code defined, you’ve got a flag to indicate what it’s for, here’s what we’ve got available on the SIM Card:

  • Bit 1 Police
  • Bit 2 Ambulance
  • Bit 3 Fire Brigade
  • Bit 4 Marine Guard
  • Bit 5 Mountain Rescue
  • Bit 6 manually initiated eCall
  • Bit 7 automatically initiated eCall
  • Bit 8 is spare and set to “0”

So these could be mapped pretty easily you’d think, so if the call is made to an Emergency Calling Code flagged with Bit 4, the URN would go to urn:service:sos.mountain.

Alas from our research, we’ve found most OEMs send calls to the generic urn:service:sos, regardless of the dialled number and the ECC flags that are set on the SIM for that number.

One of the big chip vendors sends calls to an ECC flagged as Ambulance to urn:service:sos.fire, which is totally infuriating, and we’ve had to put a rule in our E-CSCF to handle this if the User Agent is set to one of their phones.

Is there room for improvement here? For sure! Emergency calling is super important, and time is of the essence, while animal control can probably transfer you to an ambulance, an emergency is by very nature time sensitive, and any time wasted can lead to worse outcomes.

While carrier bundles from the OEMs can handle this, the global ability to take any phone, from any country and call an emergency number is so important, that relying on a country-by-country approach here won’t suffice.

What could we do as an industry to address this?

Acknowledging that not all countries have a single point of contact for emergency service, introducing a simple mechanism in the UE SIP message to indicate what number (Emergency Calling Code) the user actually dialled would be invaluable here.

URNs are important, but knowing the dialed number when it comes to PSAP routing, is so important – This wouldn’t even need to be its own SIP header, it could just be thrown into the Contact header as another parameter.

Highly developed markets are often the first to embrace new tech (for us this means VoLTE and VoNR), but this means that these issues seen by less developed markets won’t appear until long after the standard has been set in stone, and often countries like this aren’t at the table of the standards bodies to discuss such requirements.

This easy, reasonable update to the standard, has the potential to save lives, and next time this comes up in a working group I’ll be advocating for a change.

Information overload on NBN FTTH

Australian Telco, RFCs & Standards, , , ,

At long last, more and more Australians are going to have access to fibre based access to the NBN, and this seemed like as good an excuse than any to take a deep dive into how NBN’s GPON based fibre services are delivered to homes.

We’ve looked at NBN FTTN architecture, and NBN FTTC architecture and Skymuster Satellite architecture, so now let’s talk about how FTTH actually looks.

Let’s start in your local exchange where you’ll likely find a Nokia (Well, probably Alcatel-Lucent branded) 7210 SAS-R access aggregation switch, which is where NBN’s transmission network ends, and the access network begins.

It in turn spits out a 10 gig interface to feed the Optical Line Terminal (OLT), which provides the GPON services, each port on the OLT is split out and can feed 32 subscribers.

In NBN’s case, Nokia (Alcatel-Lucent) 7302, and rather than calling it an OLT, they call it a “FAN” or “Fibre Access Node” – Seemingly because they like the word node.

Each of the Nokia 7302s has at least one NGLT-A line card, which has 8 GPON ports. Each of the 8 ports on these cards can service 32 customers, and is fed by 2x 10Gbps uplinks to two 7210 SAS-R aggregation switches.

The chassis supports up to 16 cards, 8 ports each, 32 subs per port, giving us 4096 subscribers per FAN.

In some areas, FANs/OLTs aren’t located in an exchange but rather in a street cabinet, called a Temporary Fibre Access Node – Although it seems they’re very permanent.

To support Greenfields sites where a FAN site has not yet been established a cabinetised OLT solution is deployed, known as a Temporary FAN (TFAN).

In reality, each port on the OLT/FAN goes out Distribution Fibre Network or DFN which links the ports on the OLTs to a distribution cabinet in the street, known as as a Fibre Distribution Hub, or FDH.

If you look in FTTH areas, you’ll see the FDH cabinets.
The FDH is essentially a roadside optical distribution frame, used to cross connect cables from the Distribution Fibre Network (DFN) to the Local Fibre Network (LFN), and in a way, you can think of it as the GPON equivalent of a pillar, except this is where we have our optical splitters.

Remember when we were talking about the FAN/OLT how one port could serve 32 subscribers? We do that with a splitter, that takes one fibre from the DFN that runs to the FAN, and gives us 32 fibres we can could connect to an ONT onto to get service.

Inside the FDH showing the Distribution Fibre Network (DFN) connecting to the optical splitters below
Distribution Fibre Network with up to 576 fibres running out and down streets, with parking below

The FDH cabinets are made by Corning (OptiTect 576 fibre pad mounted cabinets) and you can see in the top right the Aqua cables go to the Distribution Fibre Network, and hanging below it on the right are the optical splitters themselves, which split the one fibre to the FAN into 32 fibres each on SC connectors.

These are then patched to the Local Fibre Network on the left hand side of the cabinet, where there’s up to 576 ports running across the suburb, and a “Parking” panel at the bottom where the unused ports from the splitter can be left until you patch the to the DFN ports above.

The FDH cabinets also offer “passthrough” allowing a fibre to from the FAN to be patched through to the DFN without passing through the GPON splitter, although I’m not clear if NBN uses this capability to deliver the NBN Business services.

But having each port in the FDH going to one home would be too simple; you’d have to bring 576 individually sheathed cables to the FDH and you’d lose too much flexibility in how the cable plant can be structured, so instead we’ve got a few more joints to go before we make it to your house.

From the FDH cabinet we go out into the Local Fibre Network, but NBN has two variants of LFN – LFN and Skinny LFN.
The traditional LFN uses high-density ribbon fibres, which offer a higher fibre count but is a bit tricker to splice/work with.
The Skinny LFN uses lower fibre count cables with stranded fibres, and is the current preferred option.

The original LFN cables are ribbon fibres and range from 72 to 288 fibre counts, but I believe 144 is the most common.

These LFN cables run down streets and close to homes, but not directly to lead in cables and customer houses.

These run to “Transition Closures” (Older NBN) or “Flexibility Joint Locations” (FJLs – Newer NBN)

While researching this I saw references to “Breakout Joint Locations” (BJLs) which are used in FTTC deployments, and are a Tenio B6 enclosure for 2x 12 Fibers and 4x 1 Fibers with a 1×4 splitter.

The FJLs are TE Systems’ (Now Commscope) Tenio range of fibre splice closures, and they’re use to splice the high fibre count cable from from the FDH cabinets into smaller 12 fibre count cables that run to multiple “Splitter Multi Ports” or “SMPs” in pits outside houses, and can contain splitters factory installed.

Sealed NBN FJL
Open NBN FJL
Reassembled NBN FJL
FJL in situ in pit
Neat open FJL

The splitters, referred to as “Multiports” or “SMPs” are Corning’s OptiSheath MultiPort Terminals, and they’re designed and laid out in such a way that the tech can activate a service, without needing to use a fusion splicer.

Due to the difficulty/cost in splicing fibre in pits for a service activation, NBNco opted to go from the FJL to the SMPs, where a field tech can just screw in a weatherproof fibre connector lead in to the customer’s premises.

During installation / activation callouts, the tech is assigned an SMP in the pit near the customer’s house, and a port on it. This in turn goes to the FJL and onto FDH cabinet as we just covered, but that patching/splicing for that is already done, so the tech doesn’t need to worry about that.

SMP in pit
Corning OptiSheath Multiport Splitter
SMP in a pit

The tech just plugs in a pre-terminated lead in cable with a weatherproof fibre end, and screws it into the allocated port on the SMP, then hauls the other end of the lead in cable to the Premises Connection Device (Made by Madison or Tyco), located on the wall of the customer’s house.

TC000006252

The customer end of the lead in cable may be a pre terminated SC connector, or may get mechanically spliced onto a premade SC pigtail. In either case, they both terminate onto an SC male connector, which goes into an SC-SC female coupler inside the PCD.

Next is the customer’s internal wiring, again, preterm cable is used, to run between the PCD and the First Fibre Wall Outlet inside the house. This preterm cable join the lead in cable inside the PCD on the SC-SC female coupler, to join to the lead in.

Inside the house we have the “Network Termination Device” (NTD), which is a GPON ONT, is where the fibre from the street terminates and is turned into an Ethernet handoff to the customer. NBN has been through a few models of NTD, but the majority support 2x ATA ports for analog phones, and the option for an external battery backup unit to keep the device powered if mains power is lost.

Phew! That’s what I’ve been able to piece together from publicly available documentation, some of this may be out of date, and I can see there’s been several revisions to the LFN / DFN architectures over the years, if there’s anything I have incorrect here, please let me know!

Playing back AMR streams from Packet Captures

IMS / VoLTE, Mobile Networks, VoIP, , , ,

The other day I found myself banging my head on the table to diagnose an issue with Ringback tone on an SS7 link and the IMS.

On the IMS side, no RBT was heard, but I could see the Media Gateway was sending RTP packets to the TAS, and the TAS was sending it to the UE, but was there actual content in the RTP packets or was it just silence?

If this was PCM / G711 we’d be able to just playback in Wireshark, but alas we can’t do this for the AMR codec.

Filter the RTP stream out in Wireshark

Inside Wireshark I filtered each of the audio streams in one direction (one for the A-Party audio and one for the B-Party audio)

Then I needed to save each of the streams as a separate PCAP file (Not PCAPng).

Turn into AMR File

With the audio stream for one direction saved, we can turn it into an AMR file, using Juan Noguera (Spinlogic)’s AMR Extractor tool.

Clone the Repo from git, and then in the same directory run:

python3 pcap_parser.py -i AMR_B_Leg.pcap -o AMR_B_Leg.3ga

Playback with VLC / Audacity

I was able to play the file with VLC, and load it into Audacity to easily see that yes, the Ringback Tone was present in the AMR stream!

A look at Advanced Mobile Location SMS for Emergency Calls

5G SA, GSM, IMS / VoLTE, LTE, Mobile Networks, , , , , , , , ,

Advanced Mobile Location (AML) is being rolled out by a large number of mobile network operators to provide accurate caller location to emergency services, so how does it work, what’s going on and what do you need to know?

Recently we’ve been doing a lot of work on emergency calling in IMS, and meeting requirements for NG-112 / e911, etc.

This led me to seeing my first Advanced Mobile Location (AML) SMS in the wild.

For those unfamiliar, AML is a fancy text message that contains the callers location, accuracy, etc, that is passed to emergency services when you make a call to emergency services in some countries.

It’s sent automatically by your handset (if enabled) when making a call to an emergency number, and it provides the dispatch operator with your location information, including extra metadata like the accuracy of the location information, height / floor if known, and level of confidence.

The standard is primarily driven by EENA, and, being backed by the European Union, it’s got almost universal handset support.

Google has their own version of AML called ELS, which they claim is supported on more than 99% of Android phones (I’m unclear on what this means for Harmony OS or other non-Google backed forks of Android), and Apple support for AML starts from iOS 11 onwards, meaning it’s supported on iPhones from the iPhone 5S onards,.

Call Flow

When a call is made to the PSAP based on the Emergency Calling Codes set on the SIM card or set in the OS, the handset starts collecting location information. The phone can pull this from a variety of sources, such as WiFi SSIDs visible, but the best is going to be GPS or one of it’s siblings (GLONASS / Galileo).

Once the handset has a good “lock” of a location (or if 20 seconds has passed since the call started) it bundles up all of this information the phone has, into an SMS and sends it to the PSAP as a regular old SMS.

The routing from the operator’s SMSc to the PSAP, and the routing from the PSAP to the dispatcher screen of the operator taking the call, is all up to implementation. For the most part the SMS destination is the emergency number (911 / 112) but again, this is dependent on the country.

Inside the SMS

To the user, the AML SMS is not seen, in fact, it’s actually forbidden by the standard to show in the “sent” items list in the SMS client.

On the wire, the SMS looks like any regular SMS, it can use GSM7 bit encoding as it doesn’t require any special characters.

Each attribute is a key / value pair, with semicolons (;) delineating the individual attributes, and = separating the key and the value.

Below is an example of an AML SMS body:

A"ML=1;lt=+54.76397;lg=-
0.18305;rd=50;top=20130717141935;lc=90;pm=W;si=123456789012345;ei=1234567890123456;mcc=234;mnc=30; ml=128

If you’ve got a few years of staring at Wireshark traces in Hex under your belt, then this will probably be pretty easy to get the gist of what’s going on, we’ve got the header (A”ML=1″) which denotes this is AML and the version is 1.

After that we have the latitude (lt=), longitude (lg=), radius (rd=), time of positioning (top=), level of confidence (lc=), positioning method (pm=) with G for GNSS, W for Wifi signal, C for Cell
or N for a position was not available, and so on.

AML outside the ordinary

Roaming Scenarios

If an emergency occurs inside my house, there’s a good chance I know the address, and even if I don’t know my own address, it’s probably linked to the account holder information from my telco anyway.

AML and location reporting for emergency calls is primarily relied upon in scenarios where the caller doesn’t know where they’re calling from, and a good example of this would be a call made while roaming.

If I were in a different country, there’s a much higher likelihood that I wouldn’t know my exact address, however AML does not currently work across borders.

The standard suggests disabling SMS when roaming, which is not that surprising considering the current state of SMS transport.

Without a SIM?

Without a SIM in the phone, calls can still be made to emergency services, however SMS cannot be sent.

That’s because the emergency calling standards for unauthenticated emergency calls, only cater for

This is a limitation however this could be addressed by 3GPP in future releases if there is sufficient need.

HTTPS Delivery

The standard was revised to allow HTTPS as the delivery method for AML, for example, the below POST contains the same data encoded for use in a HTTP transaction:

v=3&device_number=%2B447477593102&location_latitude=55.85732&location_longitude=-
4.26325&location_time=1476189444435&location_accuracy=10.4&location_source=GPS&location_certainty=83
&location_altitude=0.0&location_floor=5&device_model=ABC+ABC+Detente+530&device_imei=354773072099116
&device_imsi=234159176307582&device_os=AOS&cell_carrier=&cell_home_mcc=234&cell_home_mnc=15&cell_net
work_mcc=234&cell_network_mnc=15&cell_id=0213454321

Implementation of this approach is however more complex, and leads to little benefit.

The operator must zero-rate the DNS, to allow the FQDN for this to be resolved (it resolves to a different domain in each country), and allow traffic to this endpoint even if the customer has data disabled (see what happens when your handset has PS Data Off ), or has run out of data.

Due to the EU’s stance on Net Neutrality, “Zero Rating” is a controversial topic that means most operators have limited implementation of this, so most fall back to SMS.

Other methods for sharing location of emergency calls?

In some upcoming posts we’ll look at the GMLC used for E911 Phase 2, and how the network can request the location from the handset.

Further Reading

https://eena.org/knowledge-hub/documents/aml-specifications-requirements/

Australia’s secret underground telephone exchanges

Australian Telco, History,

A few years ago, I was out with a friend (who knows telecom history like no one else) who pointed at a patch of grass and some concrete and said “There’s an underground exchange under there”.

Being the telecommunications nerd that I am, I had a lot of follow up questions, and a very strong desire to see inside, but first, I’m going to bore you with some history.

I’ve written about RIMs – Remote Integrated Multiplexers before, but here’s the summary:

In the early ’90s, Australia was growing. Areas that had been agricultural or farmland were now being converted into housing estates and industrial parks, and they all wanted phone lines.
While the planners at Telecom Australia had generally been able to cater for growth, suddenly plonking 400 homes in what once was a paddock presented a problem.

There were traditional ways to solve this of course; expanding the capacity at the exchange in the nearest town, trenching larger conduits, running 600 pair cables from the exchange to the housing estate, and distributing this around the estate, but this was the go-go-nineties, and Alcatel had a solution, the Remote Integrated Multiplexer, or RIM.

A RIM is essentially a stack of line cards in a cabinet by the side of the road, typically fed by one or more E1 circuits. Now Telecom Australia didn’t need to upgrade exchanges, trench new conduits or lay vast quantities of costly copper – Instead they could meet this demand with a green cabinet on the nature strip.

This was a practical and quick solution to increase capacity in these areas, and this actually worked quite well; RIMs served many Australian housing estates until the copper switch off, many having been upgraded with “top-hats” to provide DSLAM services for these subscribers as well, or CMUX being the evolved version. There’s still RIMs that are alive in the CAN today, in areas serviced by NBN’s Fixed Wireless product, it’s not uncommon to see them still whirring away.

File:Telstra roadside cabinet housing a RIM and CMUX.jpg
A typical RIM cabinet

But in some areas planning engineers realised some locations may not be suitable for a big green cabinet, for this they developed the “Underground CAN Equipment Housing” (UCEH). Designed as a solution for sensitive areas or locations where above ground housing of RIMs would not be suitable – which translated to areas council would not them put their big green boxes on their nature strips.

So in Narre Warren in Melbourne’s outer suburbs Telecom Research Labs staff built the first underground bunker to house the exchange equipment, line cards, a distribution frame and batteries – a scaled down exchange capable of serving 480 lines, built underground.

Naturally, an underground enclosure faced some issues, cooling and humidity being the big two.

The AC systems used to address this were kind of clunky, and while the underground exchanges were not as visually noisy as a street cabinet, they were audibly noisy, to the point you probably wouldn’t want to live next to one.

Sadly, for underground exchange enthusiasts such as myself, by 1996, OH&S classified these spaces as “Confined Spaces”, which made accessing them onerous, and it was decided that new facilities like this one would only be dug if there were no other options.

This wasn’t Telecom Australia’s first foray into underground equipment shelters, some of the Microwave sites in the desert built by telecom put the active equipment in underground enclosures covered over by a sea freight container with all the passive gear.

In the US the L-Carrier system used underground enclosures for the repeaters, and I have a vague memory of the Sydney-Melbourne Coax link doing the same.

Some of these sites still exist today, and I was lucky enough to see inside one, and let’s face it, if you’ve read this far you want to see what it looks like!

A large steel plate sunk into a concrete plinth doesn’t give away what sits below it.

A gentle pull and the door lifts open with a satisfying “woosh” – assisted by hydraulics that still seem to be working.

The power to the site has clearly been off for some time, but the sealed underground exchange is in surprisingly good condition, except for the musky smell of old electronics, which to be honest goes for any network site.

There’s an exhaust fan with a vent hose that hogs a good chunk of the ladder space, which feels very much like an afterthought.

Inside is pretty dark, to be expected I guess what with being underground, and not powered.

Inside is the power system (well, the rectifiers – the batteries were housed in a pit at the end of the UECH entrance hatch, so inside there are no batteries), a distribution frame (MDF / IDF), and the Alcatel cabinets that are the heart of the RIM.

From the log books it appeared no one had accessed this in a very long time, but no water had leaked in, and all the equipment was still there, albeit powered off.

I’ve no idea how many time capsules like this still exist in the network today, but keep your eyes peeled and you might just spot one yourself!

Logging DSL Line Rate & SNR on a Draytek Modem

Australian Telco, Notes, Software, , , , ,

I am connected on a VDSL line, not by choice, but here we are.
DSL is many things, but consistent it not one of them, so I thought it’d be interesting to graph out the SNR and the line rate of the connection.

This is an NBN FTTN circuit, I run Mikrotiks for the routing, but I have a Draytek Vigor 130 that acts as a dumb modem and connects to the Tik.

Draytek exposes this info via SNMP, but the OIDs / MIBs are not part of the standard Prometheus snmp_exporter, so I’ve added them into snmp_exporter.yaml and restarted the snmp_exporter service.

draytek:
  walk:
  - 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.3.1.8
  - 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.3.1.4
  - 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.5.1.2.4
  - 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.4.1.2.4
  metrics:
  - name: Draytek_dsl_LineRate
    oid: 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.3.1.8
    type: gauge
    help: adslAtucCurrAttainableRate

  - name: Draytek_dsl_Linerate_Down
    oid: 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.4.1.2.4
    type: gauge
    help: Draytek_dsl_Linerate_Down

  - name: Draytek_dsl_Linerate_Up
    oid: 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.5.1.2.4
    type: gauge
    help: Draytek_dsl_Linerate_Up

  - name: Draytek_dsl_SNR
    oid: 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.3.1.4
    type: gauge
    help: adslAturCurrSnrMgn

Then I added this as a target in Prometheus:

  - job_name: Draytek Logger
    scrape_interval: 1m
    scrape_timeout: 30s
    static_configs:
          - targets: ['10.0.2.1']  # My modem

    metrics_path: /snmp
    params:
      module: ['draytek']
    relabel_configs:
      - source_labels: [__address__]
        target_label: __param_target
      - source_labels: [__param_target]
        target_label: instance
      - target_label: __address__
        replacement: localhost:9116  # SNMP exporter address

And then from Grafana I can quantify exactly how bad my line is over time!

Only two dropouts today!

Australia’s East-West Microwave Link of the 1970s

Australian Telco, History, , , ,

On July 9, 1970 a $10 million dollar program to link Australia from East to West via Microwave was officially opened.
Spanning over 2,400 kilometres, it connected Northam (to the east of Perth) to Port Pirie (north of Adelaide) and thus connected the automated telephone networks of Australia’s Eastern States and Western States together, to enable users to dial each other and share video live, across the country, for the first time.

In 1877, long before road and rail lines, the first telegraph line – a single iron wire, was spanned across the Nullabor to link Australia’s Eastern states with Western Australia.

By 1930 an open-wire voice link had been established between the two sides of the continent.
This was open-wire circuit was upgraded a rebuilt several times, to finally top out at 140 channels, but by the 1960s Australian Post Office (APO) engineers knew a higher bandwidth (broadband carrier) system was required if ever Standard Trunk Dialling (STD) was to be implemented so someone in Perth could dial someone in Sydney without going via an operator.

A few years earlier Melbourne and Sydney were linked via a 600 kilometre long coaxial cable route, so API engineers spent months in the Nullarbor desert surveying the soil conditions and came to the conclusion that a coaxial cable (like the recently opened Melbourne to Sydney Coaxial cable) was possible, but would be very difficult to achieve.

Instead, in 1966, Alan Hume, the Postmaster-General, announced that the decision had been made to construct a network of Microwave relay stations to span from South Australia to Western Australia.

In the 1930s microwave communications had spanned the English channel, by 1951 AT&T’s Long Lines microwave network had opened, spanning the continental United States. So by the 1960’s Microwave transmission networks were commonplace throughout Europe and the US and was thought to be fairly well understood.

But soon APO engineers soon realised that the unique terrain of the desert and the weather conditions of the Nullabor, had significant impacts on the transmission of Radio Waves. Again Research Labs staff went back to spend months in the desert measuring signal strength between test sites to better understand how the harsh desert environment would impact the transmission in order to overcome these impediments.

The length of the link was one of the longest ever attempted, longer than the distance from London to Moscow,

In the end it was decided that 59 towers with heights from 22 meters to 76 meters were to be built, topped off with 3.6m tall microwave dishes for relaying the messages between towers.

The towers themselves were to be built in a zig-zag pattern, to prevent overshooting microwave signals from interfering with signals for the next station in the chain.

Due to the remote nature of the repeater sites, for 43 of the 59 repeater sites had to be fully self sufficient in terms of power.

Initial planning saw the power requirements of the repeater sites to be limited to 500 watts, APO engineers looked at the available wind patterns and determined that combined with batteries, wind generators could keep these sites online year round, without the need for additional power sources. Unfortunately this 500 watt power consumption target quickly tripled, and diesel generators were added to make up any shortfall on calm days.

The addition of the Diesel gensets did not in any way reduce the need to conserve power – the more Diesel consumed, the more trips across the desert to refuel the diesel generators would be required, so the constant need to keep power to a minimum was one of the key restraints in the project.

The designs of these huts were reused after the project for extreme temperature equipment housings, including one reused by Broadcast Australia seen in Marble Barr – The hottest town in Australia.

Active cooling systems (Like Air Conditioning) were out of the question due to being too power hungry. APO engineers knew that the more efficient equipment they could use, the less heat they would produce, and the more efficient the system would be, so solid state (transistorised devices) were selected for the 2Ghz transmission equipment, instead of valves which would have been more power-hungry and produced more heat.

The reduced power requirement of the fully transistorized radio equipment meant that wind-supplied driven generators could provide satisfactory amounts of power provided that the wind characteristics of the site were suitable.

THE TELECOMMUNICATION JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIA / Volume 21 / Issue 21 / February 1971

So forced to use passive cooling methods, the engineers on the project designed the repeater huts to cleverly utilize ventilation and the orientation of the huts to keep them as cool as possible.

Construction was rough, but in just under 2 years the teams had constructed all 59 towers and the associated equipment huts to span the desert.

Average time to construct a tower was 6 days
Menzies, built in the 1980s as an additional spur
Tower in Kalgoorlie

When the system first opened for service in July 1970, live TV programs could be simulcast on both sides of the country, for the first time, and someone in Perth could pick up the phone and call someone in Melbourne directly (previously this would have gone through an operator).

PMG Engineers designed a case to transport the fragile equipment spares – That resided in the back of a Falcon XR Station Wagon

The system offered 1+1 redundancy, and capacity for 600 circuits, split across up to 6 radio bearers, and a bearer could be dedicated at times to support TV transmissions, carried on 5 watt (2 watt when modulated) carriers, operating at 1.9 to 2.3Ghz.

By linking the two sides of Australia, Telecom opened up the ability to have a single time source distributed across the country, the station in Lyndhurst in Victoria, created the 100 “microseconds” signal generated by a VNG, that was carrier across the link.

Looking down one of the towers

Unlike AT&T’s Long Lines network, which lasted until after MCI, deregulation and the breakup off the Bell System, the East-West link didn’t last all that long.

By 1981, Telecom Australia (No longer APO) had installed their first experimental optic fibre cable between Clayton and Springvale, and fibre quickly became the preferred method for broadband carrier circuits between exchanges.

By 1987, Melbourne and Sydney were linked by fibre, and the benefits of fibre were starting to be seen more broadly, and by 1989, just under 20 years since the original East-West Microwave system opened, Telecom Australia completed a 2373 kilometre long / 14 fibre cable from Perth to Adelaide, and Optus followed in 1993.

This effectively made the microwave system redundant. Fibre provided a higher bandwidth, more reliable service, that was far cheaper to operate due to decreased power requirements. And so piece by piece microwave hops were replaced with fibre optic cables.

I’m not clear on which was the last link to be switched off (If you do know please leave a comment or drop me a message), but eventually at some point in the late 1980s or early 1990s, the system was decommissioned.

Many of the towers still stand today and carry microwave equipment on them, but it is a far cry from what was installed in the late 1960s.

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References

East-west microwave link opening (Press Release)

Walkabout.Vol. 35 No. 6 (1 June 1969) – Communications Across the Nullabor

$8 Million Trans-continental link

ABC Goldfields-Esperance – Australia’s first live national television broadcast

APO – Newsletter ‘New East-West Trunks System’

TelevisionAU.com 50 years since Project Australia

Whirlpool Post

TJA Article on spur to Lenora