Route sets are the core of the routing functionality and represent a set of independent routing tables that can be assigned to one or more accounts. Route sets enable grouping of multiple routes from various providers and thus allow comprehensive route prioritization mechanisms based on longest match, priority, cost, or quality. Features include bundling of tariffs and endpoints from a number of carriers, easy management of routes/routing tables, every account is assigned one route set to terminate its calls.
1. Create Route Set
Routing > Route Sets > Add Route Set
In order to send calls to your providers, you must first create your routes and route sets. The route is the link between the carrier IP, the area codes and the relevant rate. The route set is the link between your customers and providers.
Enter the routes set’s name and description and define the prioritization parameters:
- Priority – a static parameter which is set manually for the each route, the higher number the higher the priority
- Longest Match – the called number is compared to the prefixes in the carrier tariff and if there is more than one match, the one with the longest match is chosen – e.g. if the called number is 19253940284 and the carrier prefixes are 1, 192 and 1925, the longest match is 1925 so this the one that will be chosen
- Least Cost – the called number is compared to the prefixes in the carrier tariff and if there is more than one match, the one with the lowest rate is chosen
- Quality – a static parameter which is set manually for the each route, the higher the number the higher the priority
Note that it is useful to put “Priority” in first place in the settings as this allows a quick and easy way to make changes – e.g. if a route goes down “Priority” can be decreased immediately and all calls to this destination will be routed last to this non-working route; when the route is up again you can just increase its priority up and it will be back in routing immediately.
2. Manage Route Sets
Routing > Route Sets > Edit Route Set > Manage Routes > Add Route
You have to enter the name of the route you want to create.
You also have to choose the endpoints that will be included in the route set. Endpoints must be created before they can be assigned here.
The “Is Blocked Route” feature allows for blocking of routes – please see below for more details.
Next you need to select the tariff – the dropdown menu will show all tariffs that belong to the carrier of the selected endpoint. Tariffs must be created before they can be assigned here.
You can also set the priority and quality of each endpoint – based on these priorities, the system will choose to which route incoming calls will go first, and if they fail, to which second route they will go next, etc. The system supports fail-over to up to 5 routes.
Finally you have to select the “Effective Date” – if the chosen date is in the past or today – the Route set will start work immediately. If the chosen date is in the future – then the system will wait till this date, before activating this Route Set. If you use it meanwhile in some of your accounts – the calls will not passed through and will fail.
3. Blocking Routes
Routing > Route Sets > Edit Route Set >Manage Routes > Add Route
The blocking routes functionality is based on Destination Groups.
If you want to block one destination, a single code or several countries, you should first create a Destination Group with the exact codes you want to be blocked. Once the Destination Group is ready it can be used for creating a route in route sets.
When “Is Blocked Route” is checked, the Destination Group drop-down menu allows you to choose the group you want to use for blocking routes.
4. View Routing Table
Routing > Route Sets > View Routing Table
The routing table displays all possible combinations and routes that a given call can be placed. The best possible way to see through which routes one call can be terminated is to search by “Route Prefix”, entering the number you wish to call. You can also search by area code, carrier name, endpoint, etc.
If there are blocked routes in the route set, all the codes from those routes have status “Yes” under “Blocked Route”. As blocking routes only make sense between destination group and carrier endpoint, tariffs are irrelevant and all blocked codes have status n/a in the tariff column.
During the routing process blocked routes will be scanned before any other routes:
- If a blocked route is matched, the system will not send the call to that endpoint. Also this endpoint ID will be removed for further traversing of the routes for this call. Thus the fail-over mechanism will not try to send the same call again to this endpoint ID, but will continue searching routes from the other available ones in the route set.
- In the routing table there can be 2 routes with the same prefix from the same endpoint ID, but if one of them is with status blocked, the other one cannot be used for routing and termination. This way the user achieves blocking routes to a specific carrier or endpoint.
Note that you must be very careful to block only specific routes in order to avoid multiple destinations being blocked.
5. How Route Sets Work
Please find below some examples of common routing cases together with the steps necessary to set them up the system.
Example 1:
You have three A-Z providers – Carrier A, Carrier B, and Carrier C.
You have one customer – Account A.
You want your customer to send traffic to all area codes offered by these providers.
You need to do the following:
1. Create Endpoint 1 for Carrier A
2. Create Endpoint 2 for Carrier B
3. Create Endpoint 3 for Carrier C
4. Create Tariff 1 for Carrier A
5. Create Tariff 2 for Carrier B
6. Create Tariff 3 for Carrier C
7. Create Route Set 1
8. Create Route A with Endpoint 1 and Tariff 1
9. Create Route B with Endpoint 2 and Tariff 2
10. Create Route C with Endpoint 3 and Tariff 3
11. Assign Route Set 1 to Account A
Example 2:
You have the above A-Z providers – Carrier A, Carrier B, and Carrier C.
You have another customer – Account B.
You want this customer to send traffic only to the UK offered by Carrier A.
You need to do the following:
1. Use Endpoint 1 for Carrier A (already created in Example 1)
2. Create Tariff 4 for Carrier A only for the UK area codes
3. Create Route Set 2
4. Create Route D with Endpoint 1 and Tariff 4
5. Assign Route Set 2 to the Account B
Example 3:
You have the above A-Z providers – Carrier A, Carrier B, and Carrier C.
You have two other customers – Account C and Account D.
You want Account C to use only Bangladesh from Carrier A and India and Bangladesh from Carrier B.
At the same time you want Account D also to use only Bangladesh from Carrier A but the whole A-Z from Carrier B.
You need to do the following:
1. Use Endpoint 2 for Carrier A (already created in Example 1)
2. Use Endpoint 3 for Carrier B (already created in Example 1)
3. Create Tariff 5 for Carrier A only for the Bangladesh area codes
4. Create Tariff 6 for Carrier B only for the Bangladesh and India area codes
5. Used Tariff 2 for Carrier B (already created in Example 1)
6. Create Route Set 3
7. Create Route E with Endpoint 2 and Tariff 5
8. Create Route F with Endpoint 3 and Tariff 6
9. Create Route Set 4
10. Create Route G with Endpoint 2 and Tariff 5
11. Create Route H with Endpoint 3 and Tariff 2
12. Assign Route Set 3 to Customer C
13. Assign Route Set 4 to Customer D
Example 4:
Carrier C above offers two A-Z products – standard and premium – each with different translation sets and tariffs.
You have another customer – Account E.
You want this customer to use both products offered by Carrier C.
Steps:
1. Create Tariff 7 for Carrier C – standard tariff
2. Create Tariff 8 for Carrier C – premium tariff
3. Create Translation Set Standard
4. Create Translation Set Premium
5. Create Endpoint 4 with Translation Set Standard and the carrier IP
6. Create Endpoint 5 with Translation Set Premium and carrier IP with virtual port 1 (in order to allow two endpoints to use the same carrier IP)
7. Create Route Set 5
8. Create Route I with Endpoint 4 and Tariff 7 (Standard)
9. Create Route J with Endpoint 5 and Tariff 8 (Premium)
10. Assign Route Set 5 to Account E
Please refer to “How to Create Carriers” and “How to Create Carrier Tariffs” for full details about these topics.