[cisco-voip] ACME Packet

[Erick Wellnitz]

Can anyone share their experiences with ACME Packet SBC? Good, bad, ugly?

[Thomas LeMay]

Two things I would consider are:

1. Cisco with the Cisco Cube provides 24X 7 TAC support
2. Using Cisco cube means the learning curve is shorter because more
engineers know and are familiar with Cisco IOS

Tom


-----Original Message-----
From: cisco-voip-***@puck.nether.net
[mailto:cisco-voip-***@puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Erick Wellnitz
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 9:53 AM
To: cisco-voip
Subject: [cisco-voip] ACME Packet

Can anyone share their experiences with ACME Packet SBC? Good, bad, ugly?

[Robert Kulagowski]

Post by Thomas LeMay
1. Cisco with the Cisco Cube provides 24X 7 TAC support
2. Using Cisco cube means the learning curve is shorter because more
engineers know and are familiar with Cisco IOS

Do you actually have or have used an Acme Packet SBC? Because that's
what the question was, not Cisco CUBE.

I don't have an AP SBC (but we're considering them), but there's
probably a very good reason why all the big telco players have Acme
Packet SBCs and not CUBE or ASR's.

[Erick Wellnitz]

I was thinking the same thing but was wondering why Cisco would
suggest the ACME product.

Post by Thomas LeMay
1. Cisco with the Cisco Cube provides 24X 7 TAC support
2. Using Cisco cube means the learning curve is shorter because more
engineers know and are familiar with Cisco IOS
Tom
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 9:53 AM
To: cisco-voip
Subject: [cisco-voip] ACME Packet
Can anyone share their experiences with ACME Packet SBC? Good, bad, ugly?
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[Leslie Meade]

Interesting questionŠ.

I asked for RFI's form a few providers, Acme Packet and Cisco were amongst
them, for a very large utilities company, and Cisco did not want to enter
the bid.. So that that for what is worthŠ

Post by Robert Kulagowski
on't have an AP SBC (but we're considering them), but there's
probably a very good reason why all the big telco players have Acme
Packet SBCs and not CUBE or ASR's.
___

[Grant Teague]

I currently work in EMEA for a large US Telco, who use Acme as both the
Core SBC and as a Enterprise SBC. I was actively involved in the testing of
the Acme 3800 Series before it's released and found it to be a very strong
product - hence the launch of it is a managed SBC offering.. I tested it
with Avaya CM 5.X, Microsoft OCSR2 and CUCM 6.X & 7.X.. The one thing that
jumped out and hit me was it ability to support stateful failover of RTP
Steams. This was something that we found an advantage over the CUBE, as we
were not able to get this to work without the CUSP. However my testing is a
couple of years old now..

[Nick Matthews]

A lot of the reason ISPs use Acme is that is where Acme started there
focus, where Cisco started their focus in the Enterprise. Since then
both companies have tried competing in each other's space with
differing levels of success. Many take the ISPs suggestion, and since
they have more ISP share, they assume Acme is better for the
enterprise. (Whether it is or not is a different story).

Some of the issues like header passing have been implemented in CUBE
for over a year for what it's worth.

-nick

I currently work in EMEA for a large US Telco, who use Acme as both the Core
SBC and as a Enterprise SBC. I was actively involved in the testing of the
Acme 3800 Series before it's released and found it to be a very strong
product - hence the launch of it is a managed SBC offering.. I tested it
with Avaya CM 5.X, Microsoft OCSR2 and CUCM 6.X & 7.X.. The one thing that
jumped out and hit me was it ability to support stateful failover of RTP
Steams. This was something that we found an advantage over the CUBE, as we
were not able to get this to work without the CUSP. However my testing is a
couple of years old now..

[Andreas Sikkema]

Can anyone share their experiences with ACME Packet SBC?  Good, bad, ugly?

I have used both Cisco CUBE (2801 running 12.4T something) and Acme
Packet.Both work, but the Acme is much more what I would consider an
SBC, a CUBE doesn't forward every SIP header or header parameter I
have noticed.

The learning curve with an Acme was (is?) steep. There's so much
functionality available, while a CUBE always felt a little more
limited to me. We also looked into using an ASR1k but that was too
expensive for us.

[Roger Wiklund]

Here are my 2 cents, I've setup a couple of clusters with Acme 3820s
with Callmanager 7x and 8x

Good - Really good failover between HA pairs, powerful sip
manipulations, excellent TAC support, surprisingly good documentation
and SIP trunking soultions with carriers and IPPBX models.
Bad - Complex configuration style, expensive, complex sip
manipulations, no transcoding on 3800/4500 (last time I checked)

I think even if you are equally skilled and experience with Acme SBCs
and CUBEs, it still takes alot longer to setup the Acmes.
For example, the way you enter commands and the show running config
output is different, so you cannot copy paste from another Acme. (Some
stuff works)

Also small things like you cannot clear/rotate certain logfiles you
use, like sipmsg.log, you have to ftp to the box and remove it.
No pipe/include/grep to search in running config, no ctrl+z when you
are deep in config tree, you have to exit exit exit exit which feels a
bit unprofessional/unfinished

But as its a smaller company (compared to Cisco) you get really good
support, partners get access to documentations, sw downloads, TAC
cases etc.

/Roger

Can anyone share their experiences with ACME Packet SBC?  Good, bad, ugly?
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[Mark Holloway]

My experience has been positive. :)

I started using Acme Packet SBC's in 2006. You won't find a more powerful platform for SIP as it has all kinds of intricate capabilities. TAC is 24x7 and the product is 100% developed at HQ just outside of Boston. For some folks that is important.

Post by Erick Wellnitz
Can anyone share their experiences with ACME Packet SBC? Good, bad, ugly?
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[Paul]

Do you have any experience with Cisco's PGW2200 as well?

I'm assuming two Acme Packet boxes can be setup in a redundant fashion to replace the PGW2200 which will be end-of-support in 2017. The PGW2200 is a very resilient platform and CCM Session Manager Edition looks to be the replacement path but CCM SME does *not* failover gracefully like its predecessor since if the primary cluster dies, all calls go with it. It's a real problem when there's 2k calls on the wire. :(

Guess I'll have to play around with the two Acme Packet boxes I have in the lab to find out more.


________________________________
From: Mark Holloway <***@markholloway.com>
To: Erick Wellnitz <***@gmail.com>
Cc: cisco-voip <cisco-***@puck.nether.net>
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 10:01 PM
Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] ACME Packet

My experience has been positive. :)

I started using Acme Packet SBC's in 2006. You won't find a more powerful platform for SIP as it has all kinds of intricate capabilities. TAC is 24x7 and the product is 100% developed at HQ just outside of Boston. For some folks that is important.

Can anyone share their experiences with ACME Packet SBC?  Good, bad, ugly?
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cisco-voip mailing list
https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-voip

[Mark Holloway]

I haven't used PGW myself but isn't it a SIP to SS7 gateway only? The Acme SBC's are typically deployed in high availability pairs and there is stateful replication happening between the two nodes in the pair. Failover is 100ms. CDR's remain intact during a failover as well.

Post by Paul
Do you have any experience with Cisco's PGW2200 as well?
I'm assuming two Acme Packet boxes can be setup in a redundant fashion to replace the PGW2200 which will be end-of-support in 2017. The PGW2200 is a very resilient platform and CCM Session Manager Edition looks to be the replacement path but CCM SME does *not* failover gracefully like its predecessor since if the primary cluster dies, all calls go with it. It's a real problem when there's 2k calls on the wire. :(
Guess I'll have to play around with the two Acme Packet boxes I have in the lab to find out more.
________________________________
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 10:01 PM
Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] ACME Packet
My experience has been positive. :)
I started using Acme Packet SBC's in 2006. You won't find a more powerful platform for SIP as it has all kinds of intricate capabilities. TAC is 24x7 and the product is 100% developed at HQ just outside of Boston. For some folks that is important.

Post by Erick Wellnitz
Can anyone share their experiences with ACME Packet SBC? Good, bad, ugly?
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