1. Feature Guide
  2. Introduction to Diameter Signaling Router
  3. Diameter Signaling Router Solution

1.2 Diameter Signaling Router Solution

Oracle Communication’s Diameter Signaling Router (DSR) creates a centralized core Diameter signaling layer that relieves LTE, IMS and 3G Diameter endpoints of routing, traffic management and load balancing tasks and provides a single interconnect point to other networks. Each endpoint only needs one connection to a DSR to gain access to all other Diameter destinations reachable by the DSR. This approach eliminates the Diameter or SCTP(or TCP) mesh that is created by having direct signaling connections between each network element. Having one or more connection hubs that centralize the Diameter traffic to all end nodes simplifies interoperability between different network elements and enhances network scalability.

Centralizing Diameter routing with a DSR creates a signaling architecture that reduces the cost and complexity of the core network and enables core networks to grow incrementally to support increasing service and traffic demands. It also facilitates network monitoring by providing a centralized vantage point in the signaling network.

Advantages of a centralized signaling architecture as listed below:
  • Improves signaling performance and scalability by alleviating issues related to the limited signaling capacity of MMEs, HSSs, CSCFs and other Diameter endpoints.
  • Provides a centralized point from which to implement load balancing.
  • Simplifies network expansion because routing configuration changes for new endpoints are performed only on the DSR.
  • Increases reliability by providing geographic redundancy.
  • Provides mediation point for Diameter variants to support interoperability between multi-vendor endpoints.
  • Creates a gateway to other networks to support roaming, security and topology hiding.
  • Reduces provisioning, maintenance and IOT costs associated with adding new network nodes.
  • Enables HSS routing flexibility by providing a central point to perform HSS address resolution.
  • Creates a centralized monitoring and network intelligence data collection point to isolate problems and track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
  • Provides network wide PCRF binding to ensure that all messages associated with a user’s particular IP-CAN session are processed by the same PCRF.

    The DSR can be deployed as a core router routing traffic between Diameter elements in the home network and as a gateway router routing traffic between Diameter elements in the visited network and the home network. Refer to the figure below for a representation of an operator’s EPC or IMS core network with DSR.

Figure 1-4 Example of Operator’s EPC/IMS Core network with DSR


Example of Operator’s EPC/IMS Core network with DSR

The resulting architecture enables IP networks to grow incrementally and systematically to support increasing service and traffic demands. A centralized Diameter router is the ideal place to add other advanced network functionalities like network performance intelligence via centralized monitoring, address resolution, Diameter interworking and traffic steering.