User`s guide

USER’S GUIDE
30 SFVRA Connection Manager
4. If required, enter your password.
5. Click OK.
SFVRA SERVICE
The SFVRA Service must establish a connection to the database before it will perform any
authentication, management or logging functions. Once the database connection is established, the
SFVRA Service will open connections to the CyberSWITCH systems that are configured in the
database. When a connection has been established to a CyberSWITCH, the service begins the
process of user authentication, call management and connection logging.
In a traditional system, the user authentication procedure includes call management and data
logging functions. However, these functions have been split into separate operations in order to
provide flexibility in the usage of the SFVRA-CONN system.
Authentication is provided at the device level. If SFVRA Service has been selected to perform
authentication, call management and data logging are also performed. Call management consists
of ensuring that the time of day that the remote device attempts to connect is valid, as well as
maintaining a limit on the number of call minutes for each call, day and month. Data logging tracks
current calls as well as past calls. Data logged includes the time of connection and disconnection
per device, as well as other useful information, such as maximum bandwidth, the type and
direction of the call. A problem log reports lost connections and the reason for their termination.
The SFVRA Service uses a standard ODBC connection to the SQL Server. The SQL Server may
reside on the same machine as the SFVRA Service or on another machine that is accessible via the
LAN. Although there is a nokeepalive mechanism to ensure that the database connection is active,
the SFVRA Service has been designed to recover from a database connection failure.
The CyberSWITCH systems and the SFVRA Service communicate through a TCP/IP connection.
The standard TCP/IP keepalive mechanisms are too slow to be useful in maintaining the
connection between a CyberSWITCH and the SFVRA Service. Therefore, the SFVRA-CONN
protocol specifies keepalive messages that are used to maintain the connection. If no messages have
been received from the CyberSWITCH for 5 seconds a keepalive message is sent.
If three consecutive keepalives fail, no response received from a CyberSWITCH, the connection is
closed. The SFVRA-CONN will set the status of all active calls on the CyberSWITCH to
“UNKNOWN”, and will try to reconnect every 45 seconds.
Upon establishment of a connection between a CyberSWITCH and the SFVRA Service, the SFVRA
Service will request a User Audit Reply message from the CyberSWITCH. The User Audit Reply is
a message that specifies every active ISDN or Digital Modem call on the CyberSWITCH. The
SFVRA Service uses this message to ensure that the Database and the SFVRA Service tables match
the CyberSWITCH state.