The Mizu VoIP
softswitch was optimized for Microsoft Windows OS with a MS-SQL backend.
All administration tasks can be done using the MManage (MizuManage) client application. The main module is automatically installed with the server installer, but you can also install it independently to any PC and manage your server remotely. There are four very important forms, with which you can easily administrate your business: Users and devices, Routing, Billing (Price Setup), CDR Records (Call Detail Record)
Users and devices
- this form will allow you to manage the users of the system
- the most important user type are the endusers. These are usually registered on the server using the SIP protocol. They are allowed to call each-other usually for free
- for high amount of inbound traffic, you should use a traffic sender user instead of an enduser (and use IP autheticaton instead of username/password based)
- for outbound routing you will have to add SIP server user type and set the routing properly.
- If you need both to accept and sent traffic to another server (carrier) then you have to add it both as traffic sender and SIP server.
- at Billing tab, Billing packet - you can assign a pricelist to a user. This will always take precedence over the packets set in the "Price Settings" middle column
- at Billing tab, Billed user - if the current type is an enduser than can have a BillingUserID, where we send the invoices or if the current type is a sub-enduser this is his parent endusers ID
- users credit - when postpaid, then we also can set a max amount (which will reset in every month)
Routing
- the routing in the Mizu softswitch means deciding on which active SIP server, GSM Gateway, ISDN gateway should we route the incoming call from traffic senders and endusers.
- for every time period and direction a "Routing Pattern" needs to be defined. Every Routing pattern has a list of routing directories which may be SIP server, GSM Gateways, ISDN gateways or SIP proxies in priority order.
-set up as much directories with the same priority order as possible so the routing engine can prioritize itself after other settings (device priority, LCR, quality,BRS)
- generic rules can be defined by setting the pattern priority lower. For example for every call that doesn't have a specific route can be routed to a specific direction (otherwise is dropped)
- the actual priority order of your route list (right side list) will be affected by numerous factor:
- -Failowering: when a device or a device/direction is in failowered state, then its priority is lowered
- -Load balancing: will prioritize the direction where the last routed date time is oldest (only if the routing entries are entered with the same priority)
- -LCR: the route with the lowest price will be prioritized
- -BRS: the best quality/lower price route will be prioritized
- these settings can be controlled by the "brs_lcr" global config option: 0=not used; 1=only lcr for not gsm; 2=lcr; 3=brs for not gsm; 4=BRS (default); 5=BRS+LCR
Billing - Price Setup
- Mizu Server has built-in prepaid and postpaid billing
- the pricing must be set from this form
- pricing of the CDR records are done after the prices defined on this form
- you can define "Billing Groups". All price settings that belong together after some logic (enduser prices for example). This is located in the left side of the Price Setup form.
- below a "Billing Group" you can have several price setups named "Packets" (the middle column in the form)
- here you have to set up the actual prices. The price setup is further divided into different prefixes (the right side of the form - Pricelist), because it
is very common that you have lots of directions in a provider pricelist.
- type: specify the type of the price. For example the prices used when billing to endusers, or our minute costs to service providers.
Price calculations will be saved directly in the CDRs, thus can be used in prepaid billing. In the CDR records, the following fields are used for
price calculation:
- -costprovider: used to calculating the minute price that you need to pay to service provider (Tmobile for example)
- -costenduser: used for billing to your endusers (sip endusers, traffic senders)
- -costcompany: can be used for profit calculations
- -costsales: sales commission. If not set, than will be calculated by the commission value in users settings
- -costother: can be used for any custom price calculation
- Billing Steps: billing increments in seconds
- importing price definitions from file are done by clicking on the "Import from file" button
- The imported file must have at least two comma separated field: prefix (direction definition), price
- the easiest way to generate such files is to use Excel, fill the first 2 columns with these values and save as CVS file. (Don't leave empty columns before the columns with data)
- importing price files may take some time, depending from your network connection speed
CDR(call detail records) Records
- the server will generate the detailed CDR records after each call(SMS,Email etc.), this CDRs are stored in the database tb_cdrs table.
Thus the billing can work nearly real-time. (Very important for prepaid systems)
- CDR records can be filtered, analyzed, exported and lots of vital statistics are based on this records.
- to view CDRs from a time interval select "Custom" option
- when using quicksearch check "Extended search" to search in all fields not only for called prefix
- using the "Configurations" form you can set the system global configurations (these are stored in the tb_settings database table)