National Federations

Making Interconnect Intelligent

  • Overview
  • Member Benefits
  • Federation Technology

A federation is a group of service providers who agree to multi-laterally exchange calls with each other via IP, based on a set of administrative terms for settlement, policy and interconnection.

The National Federation service supports next generation interconnection allowing service providers to realise the true benefits of VoIP communication by exchanging national traffic across an in-country, policy driven, Carrier ENUM Registry and multimedia interconnection Hub.

Each Federation member interconnects once to the Federation hub, and can then exchange traffic with any other member of the Federation. The National Federation hub resolves interworking and interoperability issues between the members and uses XConnect’s ENUM Registry to manage the routing complexities.

Commercially the peering relationships between members are managed through member defined peering policies, allowing members to control who they want to peer with and on what commercial terms.

As all traffic across the Federation is native VoIP, advanced VoIP features between member networks can be fully supported.

 

 

                  Federation Interconnection Hub

By interconnecting through the National Federation, Service Providers can:

  • Improve call quality and customer retention by keeping the call VoIP end to end.
  • Grow revenues by supporting advanced VoIP services which operate between networks.
  • Minimise the operating and capital cost of interconnection by interconnecting once to the National Federation network which provides interworking, security, and complex numbering management amongst the Members.
  • Control peering policies via the National Federation Web portal.
  • Choose settlement terms on a member-by-member basis, including settlement free or traditional settlement.
  • Be assured that all VoIP sessions are secure, and of high quality by using the peering point private IP, Session and Application security features.

The National Federation service is underpinned by XConnect's own network technology, which includes the following technical features:

Community Portal

Community Portal provides the Member’s business and operational interface to the Federation, including member discovery, peering request and policy management, and traffic monitoring and reporting.

Peering Policy

Peering Policy creates and enforces peering rules for the types of traffic exchanged between Members.

ENUM Registry

ENUM Registry contains all member telephone numbers and URIs. Supports call query via ENUM or SIP to query servers which are either hosted or can be co-located within the SP network. May be integrated with the national number portability database for number provisioning.

 
 SIP Signaling Hub

SIP Proxy which provides interworking between the various member implementations of SIP, and provides signalling security, thus isolating each operator from the complexities of other operator networks and simplifying the interconnect process.

Media Relay

Media Relay provides NAT traversal, ‘no media detection’ and media security for RTP traffic.

IP Access

National Federation supports access from the public internet or via secure Private IP depending on Service Provider requirements.

Network management

The National Federation network and traffic is monitored and managed on a 24x7x365 basis from the XConnect Network Operations Center (NOC).