Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)

Score9.5 out of 10

28 Reviews and Ratings

What is Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)?

The Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) is a session border controller, which provides session control, security, interworking, and demarcation. CUBE is a software product available for licensing on the Cisco IOS® and Cisco IOS XE Software which runs on Cisco enterprise routers, but is also available for licensing as a software load for a virtual container.

Categories & Use Cases

Session Border Controllers

Verified User

Engineer in Customer Service (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) as a virtual SBC to connect our SIP provider with Microsoft Teams Direct Routing. It ensures secure TLS communication, flexible SIP routing, and compatibility between systems. Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) gives us reliability, control, and scalability while supporting our hybrid voice environmen connecting the branches to the main office.

Pros

Microsoft Teams Direct Routing
SIP configurations
Voice Security over network

Cons

totally CLI (command line interface)
troubleshooting steps
required especific knowledge to implements

Return on Investment

Migration to Ms Teams Direct Routing
Less hardware phones
Define a company standard for voice comunication

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)

Other Software Used

Microsoft Teams, Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager), Cisco Meraki MX

Samuel Vitales View profile

Cisco Collaboration Technical Lead in Information Technology at Trans industrias electronicas S.A. (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We migrated several TDM trunks to SIP trunks with Cisco CUBE, and now we have a better view and resource optimization thanks to Cisco CUBE where we centralized SBC, firewall, demarcation, transcoding, and Trans rating. Now we're using a couple of Cisco 44XX ISR CUBES with Box-to-Box redundancy and our communication improves due to CUBE's capabilities.

Pros

SBC functions.
Firewall demarcation.
Universal transcoding.
Dialplan administration.
TDM and SIP trunk support.

Cons

Web interface.
Log or debugs view.
HSRP redundancy depreciated.

Most Important Features

Session border controller.
Transcoding.
Firewall.
Demarcation.

Return on Investment

Positive impact, saving on monthly phone bills due to sip trunk migration.
Positive, using a couple of CUBEs to concentrate several SIP trunk.
Positive, using a couple of CUBEs to route several branch outbound and inbound calls.

Other Software Used

Cisco Jabber, Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager), Cisco Webex DX80

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

B2B UA
SIP profile
Multiple tenants

Cons

The way to configure is not so intuitive.
It cannot show SIP ladder diagram directly.
The learning curve is a bit steep.

Return on Investment

Very secure
Very flexible
License is a bit expensive

Alternatives Considered

Ribbon Session Border Controller (SBC)

Usability

Verified User

Contributor in Information Technology (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

Call accounting (Integration with 3rd party applications for ease of use and comprehensive CDR's)
Address hiding (Keeping your internal network secure with PSTN calls)
Internetworking between multiple protocols
SIP profiles (message/header customization)
Billing, cost counting

Cons

Syntax input should be easier to read and write. For I.E: voice, translations are similar to SED (Stream Editor). Sometimes regular expression is hard to understand for new users.
Virtual Cube software stability
Cube redundancy setup (defining control interfaces, tracks, setting thresholds and reloads). Redundancy setup should be an automated process, where a user can initiate a setup wizard and then just input key information such as the IP address of Cubes and the exclusive IP address, etc.

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Mitel Applications Suite and Digium Asterisk

Other Software Used

VMware ESXi, Splunk Enterprise Security, Kaseya Traverse

Verified User

Technician in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Pros

As with any Cisco appliance, the support from the TAC is one of the top benefits.
Familiar CLI if you're already working within a Cisco environment.
Basic configuration between CUCM and CUBE is fairly straight forward to set up.

Cons

The expense of the device to run CUBE may have you looking outside Cisco for options.
Requires additional DSPs for transcoding operations.
There's a bit of a learning curve in getting this set up to work with your specific provider when using this as a SIP gateway.

Return on Investment

With the deployment we were able to provide a consistent, easier to support, and central SIP solution. This is not specific to CUBE, but specific to the reason it was deployed.
We were able to disconnect legacy PRI circuits and reduce those costs.
We were able to go to usage based trunks to put our trunking costs more in-line with our actual usage.

Alternatives Considered

AudioCodes E-SBC

Other Software Used

Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)

What is Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)?

Categories & Use Cases

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