An Overview of Signaling System #7

Kevin Heisler January 2000

Signaling System #7 (SS7) continues to be an extremely important

area for developers of many types of telecommunications equipment including enhanced services platforms, Voice over IP (VoIP) gateways, Central Office (CO) switching platforms, and other platforms which are deployed by carriers inside the telco network. This is primarily because the SS7 protocol is almost universally used inside the world's telephone networks to provide call control and to support Intelligent Networking applications. The evolution of the telecommunications infrastructure from a closed single-vendor system into an open multivendor user-responsive network is the result of economic forces and rapid technological change. From a business perspective, telecommunications carriers and service providers face competition from many sources. They compete against each other on price, service quality, bandwidth and reliability, and-increasingly-the range of special services they offer. Carriers and service providers also compete against alternative technologies, such as computer telephony, which seeks to migrate valueadded services to the periphery of the network and the Internet. Short term, the Internet offers tantalizing possibilities of bypassing traditional carriers for "free" communications. Nonetheless, someone eventually has to pay the bill to maintain the infrastructure, and the challenges of achieving secure and reliable communications across the Internet have yet to be fully resolved. Technologically, the world's telecommunications infrastructure has become almost entirely digital, with modern transmission, switching and signaling protocols migrating telephone technology ever closer to the software-dominated open-system approach pervasive in the computer industry. As the SS7 signaling protocol becomes a universally deployed standard, it increasingly enables the development of a new kind of telecommunications infrastructure, easily controllable and configurable by carriers, service providers and ultimately users-in short, an intelligent network (IN). This paper provides the reader with an overview of the SS7 protocol and the Intelligent Network or 'IN'.

What is SS7 SS7 is the common channel signaling protocol used for call handling within the telephone network and as the basis of the Intelligent Network. SS7 is the underlying data communications protocol used by telephone networks to control call set-up and call routing, and to provide services such as 800- number (toll free) rerouting, wireless roaming, and caller ID and CLASS (Custom Local Area Signaling Services) features. SS7 is able to offer telephone network management functions

which are faster, more reliable, and more advanced than earlier technology by managing voice/media circuit functions on a separate, fully redundant data network. SS7 was originally designed in the mid 1970s for exchanging call control information between the various network switches and databases of the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). SS7 was later used for more sophisticated purposes including enabling the deployment of new technologies such as ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network). SS7 replaced the first Common Channel Interoffice Signaling system, which was based on SS6, and offered several important advantages including greater speed. SS7 is also referred to as CCS7 by AT&T, C7 in Europe, and SS#7 by ANSI. While many of the elements of SS7 are common, there can be some significant regional variations in its deployment. In any telephone system, some form of signaling mechanism is required to set up and tear down calls. Originally, telephone systems such as POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) used in-band signaling to carry signals. With in-band signaling, signals such as DTMF tones (which are used for call set-up) are carried in the same circuit as the talk path. In contrast, SS7 signaling uses an entirely separate data network just for transferring signaling information, which can greatly increase overall efficiency of the telephone network. For example, voice circuits need not be allocated for calls that do not complete. Also, this approach allows data to be associated with each call, and efficiently and reliably transferred between CO switches and other network elements to support advanced applications. The SS7 is a signaling control protocol that enables exchange of messages through the public network for call setups, supervision, tear down and application processing. "Signaling" has a special meaning in the telecommunications world: It refers to the information associated with a call needed to set it up, route it, monitor it and terminate it across either a physical or virtual circuit. The network separates signaling from actual voice and data transmission, running the two functions in parallel. To adopt a gardening metaphor, the transmission acts as water in a hose. Signaling determines where to point the hose, when to start and stop the water, diagnose flow problems and calculate a water bill. SS7 is a layered protocol designed for reliable transfer and delivery of signaling information across a network. Responding to signaling information, the network can take necessary actions to route a call, report and diagnose network failures and ultimately deliver a call to its intended destination. Design objectives for SS7 include high efficiency and low delay between the time a call is placed and when it is received, and the highest possible network availability and integrity. SS7's broad capabilities mean that it can support services much more flexibly than previous generations of signaling technologies, whose functions were typically hard-coded in the switches. The SS7 pattern of software's controlling network hardware gives users greater opportunity to access and control available network services. Users build and operate services by interacting with the features of the SS7 stack to communicate with elements of the network. The SS7 Stack is similar to the OSI Stack.

From its foundations to its top, the main SS7 protocol layers (called "parts" in SS7 terminology) include: - Message Transfer Part Level 1 (MTP Level 1). This defines physical characteristics of bi-directional signal paths for transmission of signaling information. - Message Transfer Part Level 2 (MTP Level 2). These are the mechanisms for guaranteeing reliable data transfer, encompassing error checking, signal-unit delimitation, signal-error detection, signal-unit alignment, signal-unit error correction, signaling-link initial alignment, signaling-error monitoring and flow control. Management functions - Message Transfer Part Level 3 (MTP Level 3). This describes functions and procedures for message handling and signaling-route network management, link management and traffic management. This part also provides signaling message transfer and directing messages to proper signaling links or user parts. - Telephone User Part (TUP). These involve services for the establishment, supervision and release of network connections. TUP supports analog circuits, but not digital circuits or data transmission. - ISDN User Part (ISUP). This performs the same functions of TUP, with additional support for narrow band digital circuits and data transmission. - Broadband ISDN User Part (B-ISUP). This expands ISUP support to additionally handle broadband digital circuits and data transmission using both physical circuits and virtual circuits used by advanced technologies such as ATM and Frame Relay - Signaling Connection Control Part (SCCP). This describes functions and procedures for end-to-end routing of messages across the signaling network, including routing, global title translation and management capabilities. SCCP can handle connectionless, sequenced connectionless, basic connection-oriented and flow-control connection-oriented service classes. - Transaction Capabilities Part (TCAP). This part is especially important to providing IN capabilities within the network. It prescribes functions and procedures for an application running on one network node to invoke execution of an application of another node and exchange results stemming from the remote application. TCAP also provides capabilities to exchange database information. This resembles the Unix world's remote procedure call in its power and functioning.

SS7 Stack
Transaction-oriented Call Control-oriented

OSI Stack

Application Specific Layers

GSM MAP/ IS-41 TCAP SCCP

7 - Application INAP 6 - Presentation ISUP TUP 5 - Session 4 - Transport MTP Layer 3 MTP Layer 2 MTP Layer 1 3 - Network 2 - Data Link 1 - Physical

Examples of In-Band The Intelligent Network The IN allows users to customize the operations of the telecommunications infrastructure to meet their needs. Capabilities include cellular phone, paging, personal communication services, automatic call distribution, data base services, per-call "rate shopping," portable phone numbers, nomadic computing and many other emerging services. Such a network should not be confused with the computer-telephony concept. Computer telephony places intelligence on the periphery of the network, with PCs and embedded systems attempting to perform services more efficiently performed within the network. Computer telephony treats the network primarily as a transparent pipe and generally is not able to take full advantage of its possibilities. By contrast, the IN with its almost universal access and extensive infrastructure of equipment, people and processes provides opportunities for service development and puts the power of the network at the command of users. For those viewing SS7 from the perspective of the data processing world, there is not an exact correlation between the SS7 protocol stack and the OSI seven-layer model. At the lower layers of the SS7 protocol stack, MTP Level 1 corresponds to the OSI Physical Layer, MTP Level 2 matches up with the OSI Data Link Layer and MTP Level 3 and SCCP perform the functions of the OSI Network Layer. Rounding out the OSISS7 comparison, the SS7 TUP, ISUP, B-ISUP and TCAP components are spread across the OSI Transport, Session Presentation and Application Layers. The IN offers a model for the control and invocation of services available through the network. Its elements are those parts of the network that execute IN applications. Thus, while the SS7 architecture describes the rules for communicating between elements, the IN model classifies relationships among the elements themselves and IN applications providing services. Key IN elements include:

- Service Switching Point (SSP). This can be any intelligent switch and its remotes that detect IN activation events from users. The SSP communicates with other IN elements and controls resources used to process IN activities. - Signaling Transfer Point (STP). These can originate, receive and transmit signaling messages from one link to another. To assure network reliability, almost all STPs are mated to a redundant back-up STP. STPs act as routers, directing signaling information to the next appropriate signaling transfer point. - Service Control Point (SCP). SCPs contain applications available through the IN, such as line information databases and call management services databases. SCPs respond to messages from SSPs to invoke these functions.
STP
D-Link

STP
A-Link

SCP

A-Link

D-Link

A-Link C-Links C-Links A-Link

SSP
A-Link

D-Link

D-Link

A-Link

STP

STP

SCP

- Adjunct Processor (AP). Functionally equivalent to SCPs, adjunct processors are connected via high-speed links rather than ordinary SS7 links. - Intelligent Peripheral (IP). This element provides IN services such as voice response, voice messaging, voice recognition, call origination, call termination, etc. - Operations Support Systems (OSS). OSS encompasses vital functions for which carriers and service providers need to retain control such as provisioning, billing and call supervision. - Network Management (NM). Again, this is largely closed to users, but some carriers and service providers are granting NM spectator status to IN users as a way to help optimize the running of user applications in the ebb and flow of network operations. - Service Creation Environments (SCE). This encompasses the development environments, hardware, software tools, utilities and libraries used to define IN services. In other words, this offers the ways and means to develop and deploy IN services. IN carriers, service providers and users launch, monitor and control applications from either inside or outside the network from a wide

range of platforms running under general-purpose multitasking (Unix, Windows NT) or real-time operating systems. These platforms can consist of PCs, workstations, fault-tolerant computers or embedded systems such as VMEbus computers. These platforms also provide applicationdevelopment environments and software required to build, debug and test IN applications.

SS7 and VoIP The interest in SS7 by the VoIP community continues to grow. The main reason is that in order for VoIP (packet-based) networks to offer ubiquitous access to telephone service, they must connect to the circuit-based PSTN a network that uses SS7 as its signaling mechanism of choice. Support for SS7 by VoIP gateways, therefore, becomes critical. VoIP standards continue to evolve, but a strong emerging trend is the decomposition of media (voice, fax, etc.) from signaling. Additionally, various signaling approaches are being proposed and it appears today that SS7 or some variant is likely to play an important role in emerging VoIP standards. The two key problems being addressed are transport of SS7 over IP and interconnection of circuit and packet networks. Transport of SS7 over IP involves the transparent transport of SS7 signaling information between PSTNs which are connected over an IP network. The goal is to provide telephone sub-scribers the same ubiquitous access and sets of service features regardless of whether the back-haul for the call is over a circuit-based PSTN network or over a VoIP network. Additionally, infrastructure to provide transport of SS7 over IP has the potential to be significantly less costly than traditional SS7 infrastructure equipment. This includes determining how SS7 signaling information should be handled when the VoIP network needs to either process or generate the SS7 information as the call connects between a PSTN and VoIP network. An example of this would be a call originating on a PSTN network and terminating on a VoIP network. Both networks use inherently different signaling, yet ideally callers would have access to the same features and services as before, regardless of which network happens to be used.