The 11.4.0 release is major release of the Total Recall VR LinX II technology.
We continue to embrace virtualization and cloud based operation with release 11.4.0. It introduces the following new features:
- Source based routing for IP packets
- SIP Media Server deployment behind a firewall
- RTSP Media Server deployment behind a firewall
- RTSP based monitoring server
- Total Recall VR OS that can be exported as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) which can then be used to run the Total Recall VR application on EC2 instances.
- New licensing model for Total Recall VR PC applications.
Additional information for each of the new features follows.
Source based routing for IP packets
As of this release, Total Recall VR uses source based routing for IP packets so the capacity of the LAN 1 and LAN 2 interfaces are utilized in full by separating the traffic on both interfaces.
Note that as before, Total Recall VR will not route between the networks that are connected by the LAN 1 and LAN 2 interface. So it cannot be used as a routing device.
The source based routing strategy allows user to set a separate gateway for each interface. However, the gateway for the LAN 1 interface is also used as a default gateway for the whole system. As a result, packets to services such as DNS, NTP etc. if not on one of the networks connected by the LAN 1 and LAN 2 interface, will be sent via the LAN 1 interface. This is one of the reasons why we recommend to connect the LAN 1 interface to your enterprise network and use the LAN 2 interface for IP traffic recording.
In addition, you can connect both the LAN 1 and LAN 2 interfaces to the same network, and set them to use the same gateway. However, even in this case the enterprise traffic will be completely separate from the voice traffic being recorded.
Note that if you upgrade a Total Recall VR to 11.4.0 (or better) from a prior release, then source based routing will not be enabled by default. You must re-apply the configuration to the LAN 1 and LAN 2 interfaces in order to switch the system to source based routing.
SIP & RTSP media server deployment behind a firewall
As of this release it is possible to deploy a Total Recall VR behind a firewall that uses a Full Cone NAT (a.k.a. Static NAT and 1-to-1 NAT) to record SIP, RTPS, RoIP and AoIP traffic in active mode.
As a result, Total Recall VR can now work in IaaS environments such as the AWS, Google Cloud and Azure. In addition, network operators can deploy Total Recall VR in their networks and offer recording services, SIPrec for example.
RTSP monitoring server
This release adds an RTSP monitoring server which can be used by RTSP clients for real-time monitoring of recordings in progress. This is in addition to the existing method of monitoring which uses the Remote Interface API to control monitoring.
The advantages of the RTSP server are:
- It uses TCP connections to stream media. So, at least in theory, the quality of monitoring should be better when compared to the existing method which uses UDP sockets.
- It eliminates the need to configure NAT port forwarding at the client sites, i.e. the site that runs Total Recall VR PC applications, when clients are connecting to recorders over the Internet.
Total Recall VR OS as Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
The Total Recall VR OS can now be exported as an Amazon Machine Image. This enables deployment of the Total Recall VR application on Amazon EC2 compute instances.
Total Recall VR is capable of recording VoIP, RoIP and AoIP audio streams when running on an Amazon EC2 instance. In addition, we added cloud-init configuration to the Total Recall VR OS to help customize cloud instances at deployment time.
New Licensing Model for Total Recall VR PC Application
Total Recall VR PC applications now use a new licensing model which removes the need to send Node Keys to us in order to receive an activation key. In addition, users can now activate trials of applications automatically when running the application for the first time. Finally, new systems will ship with activation tokens that can be used by users to automatically activate application of choice a number of times, based on the configuration of the token.
Application instances that use the now old activation key will continue to use the activation key and continue to operate without changes after upgrade as long as the activation key that they use remains valid.
Application instances that use the now old trial activation key will continue to use the activation key and continue to operate without changes after upgrade until the trial expires. When the trial expires the application will automatically switch to the new licensing model.
In addition to the new features, the following technologies were upgraded:
- H2 database to 1.4.195
- Time zone data to 2017c
Finally, the following defects were removed:
- A defect that was preventing users to disable the passive IP collector from PC applications was removed.
- The RTSP server IP address is now updated automatically when a user changes the IP address of the LAN interface that is used by the RTSP server.
- The IP address used by RTP Streams is now updated automatically when a user changes the IP address of the LAN interface that is used by the RTP Streams.
- A defect that was causing searches based on channel number to fail when using channel numbers that start with 0, for example 008, was removed.
- The recorder ID is now reported correctly to PC application immediately after its change which removes the need to re-start the recorder in order to see the correct recorder ID in PC applications like the Total Recall VR Manager.
- The RTSP media server can now process ANNOUCE messages that do not contain the Session: parameter.