VOS3000: accounts, mapping & routing gateways, prefixes and rate groups

This lesson walks through the typical order of work when you bring a new customer and a new vendor onto a VOS3000 softswitch. The steps are deliberately generic: field names and screens vary between versions, and every carrier has its own conventions. Use this as a checklist for what needs to be decided, and your own system for where to click. All names, numbers and addresses below are examples.

Before you start: collect the details

For both customers and vendors, gather the technical and commercial information in writing first. A short interconnect form saves hours of trial and error.

Step 1 – Create the rate group

Create a rate group for the customer (or reuse a standard one such as “Wholesale-Standard”). Import the destinations they will buy: prefix, description, price per minute and billing increments. Double-check:

• Prefixes are in the same format the switch will see after any inbound number rewriting.
• Longer, more specific prefixes (for example a mobile range) are present where they should have different prices than the country code.
• Effective dates are correct, so a future rate does not apply today.

If you track vendor costs in the switch, load the vendor’s deck into its own rate group too.

Step 2 – Create the customer account

Create an account for the customer and decide:

• Billing type: prepaid (calls stop when balance runs out) or postpaid with a credit limit.
• Rate group: the one created in step 1.
• Limits: maximum concurrent calls, so that one customer cannot use all your capacity.
• Initial balance or credit: start conservatively with new customers.

Use a clear, consistent naming convention, for example C-CustomerY-Prepaid. Good names make CDR searches and reports much easier later.

Step 3 – Create the mapping gateway (customer side)

The mapping gateway tells the switch how to recognise this customer’s calls.

1. Link it to the customer account.
2. Enter the customer’s signalling IP addresses. Only list the addresses they gave you; never use wide ranges.
3. Choose the protocol (normally SIP) and allowed codecs.
4. Set inbound number rules. For example, if the customer sends a tech prefix 777# in front of every number, strip it here so that rates and routing see a clean international number.
5. Set any limits specific to this gateway, such as concurrent calls.

Step 4 – Create the routing gateway (vendor side)

The routing gateway describes where calls can go.

1. Enter the vendor’s signalling address and protocol.
2. Add the destination prefixes this vendor is allowed to carry, for example only the prefixes of Country Z if that is all you bought.
3. Add the vendor’s tech prefix, if any, for example 1234#, so it is added in front of the number on the way out.
4. Configure caller-ID handling as agreed (pass through, or apply a format).
5. Set capacity limits to match what the vendor allows.
6. Set a priority value. Lower or higher meaning “preferred” depends on the system — check yours.

Step 5 – Decide routing order

When several routing gateways can carry the same prefix, the switch needs an order. Typical approaches are:

• Priority (failover): always try Vendor X first; if it rejects the call, try Vendor Y.
• Load sharing: split traffic between vendors by percentage or round-robin.
• Least cost: prefer the cheapest vendor, limited to vendors that meet your quality standard.

Be careful with failover: retrying on every error code can multiply post-dial delay, and some errors (such as “busy”) should not be retried at all because the called person really is busy.

Step 6 – Test before going live

1. Make a few test calls through the new routing gateway to numbers you control. Check that audio works both ways, caller ID arrives as agreed, and the call is answered only when the phone is actually picked up.
2. Look at the CDRs: is the right customer account charged, the right vendor used, and the right rate applied?
3. Ask the customer to send a small amount of test traffic, and watch it live.

Lesson 8 covers testing methods in detail.

Step 7 – Document and monitor

Record what you configured: gateway names, prefixes, tech prefixes, limits and who approved the commercial terms. Then add the new route to your monitoring so that ASR, ACD and quality are tracked from day one. A new route is worth watching closely for the first days of traffic.

Common mistakes

• Tech prefix stripped on the wrong side, so rates or routes do not match.
• Rate group missing a specific mobile prefix, so mobile calls are billed at the cheaper fixed-line rate.
• Routing gateway allowed to carry all prefixes instead of only the ones you bought.
• No concurrent-call limit on a new prepaid customer.
• Customer IP whitelist too broad, opening the door to unauthorised traffic.

Examples in this course use invented names (Vendor X, Customer Y, Country Z) and documentation IP ranges. Menu names and options differ between softswitch versions; always check your own system and vendor documentation.