This handbook describes the architecture and the operational steps to install, operate and modify the Sipwise sip:provider CE.

In various chapters, it describes the system architecture, the installation and upgrade procedures and the initial configuration steps to get your first users online. It then dives into advanced preference configurations such as rewrite rules, call blockings, call forwards, etc.

There is a description of the customer self-care interface, how to configure the billing system and how to provision the system via the provided APIs.

Finally, it describes the internal configuration framework, the network configuration and gives hints about tweaking the system for security and performance.

The sip:provider CE is a SIP based Open Source Class5 VoIP soft-switch platform providing rich telephony services. It offers a wide range of features to end users (call forwards, voicemail, conferencing, call blocking, click-to-dial, call-lists showing near-realtime accounting information, etc.), which can be configured by them using the customer-self-care web interface. For operators, it offers a fully web-based administrative panel, allowing them to configure users, peerings, billing profiles, etc., as well as viewing real-time statistics of the system. For tight integration into existing infrastructures, it provides a powerful REST API.

The sip:provider CE can be installed in a few steps within a couple of minutes and requires no knowledge about configuration files of specific software components.

Opposed to other free VoIP software, the sip:provider CE is not a single application, but a whole software platform, the Sipwise NGCP (Sipwise Next Generation Communication Platform), which is based on Debian GNU/Linux.

Using a highly modular design approach, the NGCP leverages popular open-source software like MySQL, NGINX, Kamailio, SEMS, Asterisk, etc. as its core building blocks. These blocks are glued together using optimized and proven configurations and workflows and are complemented by functionality developed by Sipwise to provide fully-featured and easy to operate VoIP services.

After downloading and starting the installer, it will fetch and install all the required Debian packages from the relevant Debian repositories. The installed applications are managed by the NGCP Configuration Framework, which makes it possible to change system parameters in a single place, so administrators don’t need to have any knowledge of the dozens of different configuration files of the different packages. This provides a very easy and bullet-proof way of operating, changing and tweaking the otherwise quite complex system.

Once configured, integrated web interfaces are provided for both end users and administrators to use the sip:provider CE. By using the provided provisioning and billing APIs, it can be integrated tightly into existing OSS/BSS infrastructures to optimize workflows.

The sip:provider CE is specifically tailored to companies and engineers trying to start or experiment with a fully-featured SIP-based VoIP service without having to go through the steep learning curve of SIP signalling, integrating the different building blocks to make them work together in a reasonable way and implementing the missing components to build a business on top of that.

In the past, creating a business-ready VoIP service included installation and configuration of SIP software like Asterisk, OpenSER, Kamailio, etc., which can get quite difficult when it comes to implementing advanced features. It required implementing different web interfaces, billing engines and connectors to existing OSS/BSS infrastructure. These things are now obsolete due to the CE, which covers all these requirements.