Enabling Java-based VoIP backend platforms through JVM performance tuning

Software backend platforms are increasingly important in voice over IP (VoIP) service offering. Java, currently the most popular language, and the J2EE platform have evolved toward one of the important software frameworks for designing and implementing business logic on a telecom backend platform. Considering the popularity of Java, the question arises whether Java-based backend platforms can meet the requirements imposed by VoIP applications. SIP is an important example of a signaling protocol often used for VoIP. The SIP Servlet technology was developed for building Java based VoIP services. Therefore, we evaluated both the functionality and performance of the SIP Servlet specification and implementations. The evaluation procedure and the obtained results are reported upon. The influence of the Java virtual machine (JVM) tuning has been investigated and will be detailed in this paper. Moreover, performance of techniques based on the obtained results to optimize the garbage collector tuning of the JVM in general, and more specifically for VoIP related applications, will be presented.