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Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) Reviews & Insights

Score9.9 out of 10

26 Reviews and Ratings

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Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) Reviews

5 Reviews

Cisco CUBE, next generation SBC products

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Cisco CUBE is well suited in large enterprises with VOIP infrastructure, ISP with Tandem support, integration to MS Direct calls, contact center services with more than 100 agents, and businesses with several branch offices with TEHO needed to route calls between countries using the wan link. Cisco CUBE is less appropriate in small businesses with less than 10 users with legacy PBX systems.
SV
Samuel Vitales
Cisco Collaboration Technical Lead in Information Technology at Trans industrias electronicas S.A. (51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)
5 years of experience
View profile

If you need an SIP adapter, try CUBE!

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

If IP PBX is Cisco CUCM, CUBE is its best partner to connect PSTN SIP trunks. The multiple trunks can be from different PSTN providers. It also supports SIP forking for network recording.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
Vetted Review
Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)
10 years of experience

CUBE: Quick n' Easy

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

  • Call Cost (SIP Trunks are cheaper and more efficient way to make PSTN calls)
  • Transcoding and internetworking feature
  • Support of different codes
  • Support for multiple call control agents
  • Call accounting
  • High availability
  • Multiple vendor support
  • Multiple ITSP support
VU
Verified User
Contributor in Information Technology (51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
Reseller
Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)
5 years of experience

Cisco CUBE deployment to reduce legacy PRI circuits

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you are in an environment that is primarily Cisco and switching from PRI circuits or other non-SIP circuits and are generally considered to be on an enterprise-grade platform, CUBE is likely a solid choice for you. From my experience, I cannot speak to the video handling that CUBE offers as we do not employ that, so hopefully other reviews will provide insight on that.
VU
Verified User
Technician in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees)
Vetted Review
Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)
1 year of experience

Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) Review

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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

Cons

  • 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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Great for interconnecting sites with data connections (ITSP). Potential to save money on massive PRI expenses. Cube is more for medium to large enterprises. Cisco makes an appliance for all needs but I personally don't think you need one if you are under the 10+ call per second mark. With call volume that low you should find a different solution that is more designed for small business.
VU
Verified User
Contributor in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
Vetted Review
Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)
3 years of experience