Name: Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)
Rating: 8.8 (27 reviews)
Author: Cisco

Help Desk

Web and Video Conferencing

Customer Support

Augmented Reality Development

Development

School Management

Education

Board Management

Business Intelligence (BI)

Collaboration

Digital Rights Management (DRM)

Risk Management

Enterprise

Accounting

Accounts Receivable

Budgeting and Forecasting

Subscription Management

Finance and Accounting

Applicant Tracking

Corporate Learning Management

HR Management

Payroll

Talent Intelligence

Talent Management

Workforce Analytics

Workforce Management

Human Resources

Build Automation

Cloud Storage

Data Fabric

Email Verification

Firewall Security Management

Fraud Detection

IP Address Management (IPAM)

Infrastructure Capacity Planning

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)

IoT Security

Network Performance Monitoring

Network Simulation

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)

Output Management

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

SOA Application Gateways

Software Components

Software-Defined WAN

Web Content Filtering

Web Portal

Information Technology

A/B Testing

AI Image Generation

Ad Serving & Retargeting

All-in-One Marketing

Audio Editing

Blogging

Content Management

Email Marketing

Gamification

Local Marketing

Marketing Automation

Mobile Analytics

Product Sampling

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Social Media Management

Survey & Forms Building

Video

Video Editing

Web Analytics

Website Builder

Marketing

Job Site Management

Project Management

Waste Management

Writing and Proofreading Tools

Professional Services

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Social Commerce

Sales

Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR)

Security

Architecture

Last Mile Delivery

Legal Case Management

Nonprofit CRM

Physical Therapy

Roofing

Vertical-Specific

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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.

Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)

Session Border Controllers are devices or appliances used in VoIP networks that govern many functions, such as initiation and termination of communication sessions (e.g. a call), event prioritization, transcoding for simultaneous sessions, and also perform security functions.

Session Border Controllers

Likelihood to Recommend

Usability

Support Rating

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) enables people to make powerful connections-whether in business, education, philanthropy, or creativity. Cisco hardware, software, and service offerings are used to create the Internet solutions that make networks possible-providing easy access to information anywhere, at any time.Cisco was founded in 1984 by a small group of computer scientists from Stanford University. Since the company's inception, Cisco engineers have been leaders in the development of Internet Protocol (IP)-based networking technologies. Today, with more than 65,225 employees worldwide, this tradition of innovation continues with industry-leading products and solutions in the company's core development areas of routing and switching, as well as in advanced technologies.

Cisco Jabber

Unified

Cisco Webex DX80 (discontinued)

Cisco Collaboration Technical Lead

Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) 2022-06-22 11:26:33

Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) 2020-09-04 20:53:43

MiContact Center

Splunk Enterprise

Kaseya Traverse

VMware ESXi

MiVoice Office Application Suite (Mitel Application Suite)

Splunk Enterprise Security

Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) 2019-10-22 09:58:59

Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) 2019-01-16 16:32:17

Unity

Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) 2018-10-10 18:17:49

TrustRadius is a technology and business research firm based in Austin, Texas. The company is known as a review platform for verified B2B technology and software reviews through a proprietary algorithm and human verification.

TrustRadius

Learning curve

Automated process

Requires additional

Ip address

Way to configure

Easier to read

Not so intuitive

Read and write

Hard to understand

Extremely difficult

Integration with 3rd

3rd party

3rd party applications

Ability to hide

Ease of use

Network topology

Internal network

Fairly straight forward

Home

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.

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

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

Session border controller.
Transcoding.
Firewall.
Demarcation.

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.

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

Product Features
Product Usability
Prior Experience with the Product

I would like to compare in real-life scenario Cisco CUBE with other SBC, and check process handle, ease of configuration and deployment, documentation available online, community support to consult doubts, features or minors issues with the products, prices and guarantee is an important item as well. Cisco CUBE HW is guaranteed for life.

CUBE is used as SBC in our organization and for our customers to secure SIP connections of PSTN providers. It also works as a SIP protocol adapter between IP PBX and PSTN SBC to resolve any compatibility issue.

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

Very secure
Very flexible
License is a bit expensive

Cisco Unified Border Element is being used as a primary PSTN circuit across the whole organization. We have HA (High Availability) with redundant ITSP providers distributed across 2 locations for 100% availability.

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

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.

Mitel Applications Suite and Digium Asterisk

VMware ESXi, Splunk Enterprise Security, Kaseya Traverse

CUBE is currently deployed as an SBC for our enterprise SIP platform to bring the service into our CUCM environment as we transition off of a plethora of PRI circuits scattered across our locations. The reliability and ease of integration (through documentation and support) into our network has really allowed us to expedite our move away from legacy telco circuits.

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.

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.

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.

We have a few CUBEs in production. We land our ITSP connections on them and interconnect our sites. This prevents from buying expensive carrier PRI circuits. We believe this brings in savings over time and make the product more valuable.

Interconnects VoIP networks, H.323 and SIP
Security (encryption, toll fraud prevention)
Ability to hide network topology

Price. These things are expensive if you get into using multiple appliances.
Advanced setup. If you are unfamiliar with Cisco collaboration products it may be extremely difficult for you to provision.
License management.

Saving money on PRI cost by switching to ITSP connections. Massive savings.
TAC support is great. Having maintenance with Cisco gear is game changing for small IT shops.
Streamline security. Great place for a Demarc.

Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)

Overview

What is Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)?