NEC Sphere IP PBX Reliability

A properly configured NEC Sphere IP PBX system provides 99.999% uptime and carrier-grade reliability.  It operates as a single all-encompassing system consisting of a primary Media Gateway Controller (MGC) and one or more secondary MGCs running on industry standard servers.  The servers may be co-located or distributed across a network spanning a wide geographic area.  Media Gateways (MG) include Sphere VG3 trunk gateways, station gateways and/or various endpoints such as IP telephones. 

NEC Sphere MGs use IP multicast for MGC discovery and may align themselves with any allowed MGC.  This automated process not only allows for easy expansion of a system through plug-and-play performance but also allows for service redirection if an MGC should become unavailable on the network.  Request an NEC Sphere IP PBX Quote Online Now.



The NEC Sphere solution can be configured to provide real time load balancing of resources.  MGCs will shift their hosting duties for call control based upon resource availability.  This activity occurs completely in the background and remains transparent to the end user.  E ach MGC has several supporting processes to the support the core Sphericall call control process.  If a critical issue should arise within one of the supporting processes, the Sphericall software will restart the problem service and note the issue within the administrative log.

Many IP telephones maintain a list of NEC Sphere MGCs that they may use for call control.  If their preferred MGC becomes unavailable, the IP telephone will move to a secondary (or tertiary, etc.) MGC of choice.

The primary MGC maintains a master database and a backup it creates locally.  The backup replicates to all other MGCs to provide redundancy and local availability.  Database replication and updates are configurable and can happen as often or infrequently as required.

When an MG powers up and joins the network, it checks in with the most available MGC.  Availability is determined by physical proximity and the level of activity required on an MGC when multiple MGCs are available.  Once the MG has checked in, it retrieves its configuration from the MGC database.

All calls are setup by the MGC, but do not pass through the MGC.  If a call is in progress and the MGC that provided call set-up becomes unavailable, the call always remains intact.  End users will have no indication of back office issues as call continuity is retained.  With proper system design, NEC Sphere will provide 99.999% uptime.  Sphere customers include police and fire departments as well as a number of U.S. Department of Defense locations where system reliability is absolutely critical.  These locations run on a typical network configuration and have been Sphere customers for years.

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