Stefano Giorcelli presented this new concept, which is his baby, effectively dynamic routing for dial plans. This is an exciting concept, as the configuration of dial-plans to this point has been done statically. The ability for call-agents to advertise destinations onto the network and for other cal-agents to learn this detail should revolutionise dial plan implementation.
SAF is aimed to advertise any service (not just dial-plan) onto the network, and thus is partly competing with various other technologies, e.g. Bonjour, Service Location Protocol, DNS SRV, however it differs from these technologies as it is not an overlay to the network, but is part of it.
There are two components to enable the call routing ability – Call Control Discovery and SAF agents. The CCD comprises a schema based on XML, thus the detail is easily read from the network. It is available with release 8.0(1) of the Unified Communications platform (CUCM, CUCME, IOS voice gateways)
The SAF network allows both static and dynamic learning of neighbours, which do not need to be physically adjacent, allowing for dark SAF-unaware networks between neighbours enabling deployment to be phased into the network. SAF will initially be available for ISR/ISR-G2 s in 15.0(1)M code and is planned in most other network platforms.
For me, this was the most exciting session of the conference – it was forward looking, provided a solution to an age old problem and was one of those “why didn’t we think of that sooner” kind of moments. I look forward to getting hold of FCS code and trying it out in my lab and getting to see it on a production network.
Stefano is after feedback on what we’d like to see in the future for this, and with his enthusiasm for the subject I can see this going far.
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