No Media Anchoring - AudioCodes Mediant 800B User Manual

User's Manual

28.4.3 No Media Anchoring

The No Media Anchoring (commonly referred to as Anti-Tromboning) feature enables the
use of SBC signaling capabilities without handling the media (RTP/SRTP) flow between
remote SIP user agents (UA). The media flow does not traverse the device. Instead, the
two SIP UAs establish a direct media flow (i.e., direct call) between one another. Signaling
continues to traverse the device with minimal intermediation and involvement to enable
certain SBC abilities such as routing.
By default, media packets traverse the device to solve NAT problems, enforce media
security policy, perform media transcoding between the two legs, and media monitoring. In
certain deployments, specific calls do not require media anchoring, for example, when
there is no need for NAT, security, or transcoding. This is typical for calls between users in
the LAN:

Internal LAN calls: When the SBC routes a call between two UAs within the same
LAN, the SBC can forward the SDP directly between caller and callee, and direct the
media to flow between the UAs without traversing the SBC.

Internal LAN calls via WAN: In this setup, the SBC dynamically identifies the call as
between UAs located in the same network (i.e., LAN) and thereby, directs the media
to flow between these UAs without traversing the SBC.
The No Media Anchoring feature is typically implemented in the following scenarios:

The device is located within the LAN.

Calls between two SIP UAs in the same LAN and signaling is sent to a SIP proxy
server (or hosted IP PBX) located in the WAN.

The device does not need to perform NAT traversal (for media) and all the users are in
the same domain.
Figure 28-5: SBC SIP Signaling without RTP Media Flow
The benefits of implementing the No Media Anchoring feature include the following:

Saves network bandwidth

Reduces CPU usage (no media handling)

Avoids interference in SDP negotiation and header manipulation on RTP/SRTP
The device handles the No Media Anchoring process as follows:
1. Identifies a No Media Anchoring call according to configuration and the call's
properties (such as source, destination, IP Group, and SRD).
2. Handles the identified No Media Anchoring call.
The No Media Anchoring feature is enabled for all calls (regardless of SRD), using the
global parameter, SBCDirectMedia. You can also enable No Media Anchoring per SRD (in
the SRD table), whereby calls belonging to this same SRD (source and destination) are
Version 6.8 495 Mediant 800B Gateway and E-SBC
28. SBC Overview