PortSIP Call Parking Feature

What Is the Problem with Traditional Call Parking?

As described earlier, traditional call parking works well in single-tenant PBX deployments. In these environments, call parking is typically implemented by creating dedicated parking extensions (park spots), which users can monitor and retrieve calls from.

However, this model does not scale in modern cloud PBX deployments.

Challenges in a Cloud, Multi-Tenant Environment

Today’s PBX deployments are predominantly cloud-based and multi-tenant, where:

  • A service provider hosts a single PBX instance

  • The PBX serves hundreds or thousands of tenants

  • Each tenant operates a logically isolated virtual PBX, while sharing the same infrastructure

A single cloud PBX instance may support 1,000 to 10,000 tenants.

In a traditional call parking model:

  • Each tenant must create its own set of parking spots

  • Parking spots are implemented as PBX extensions

  • Each parking extension must:

    • Register to the PBX

    • Periodically send SIP REGISTER messages

    • Be monitored via Dialog Event subscriptions

Scalability impact

For example:

  • If each tenant creates 10 parking spots

  • A PBX with 1,000 tenants requires 10,000 parking extensions

This results in:

  • Tens of thousands of SIP registrations

  • Thousands of Dialog Event subscriptions

  • Significant consumption of CPU, memory, and network bandwidth

As tenants grow and require more parking spots, the impact multiplies further. This approach severely degrades PBX performance and is unacceptable for service providers operating at scale.


PortSIP Solution

PortSIP PBX is designed specifically for cloud PBX and service provider environments. It is a true multi-tenant PBX, where:

  • A single PBX instance can host thousands of tenants

  • Each tenant is fully isolated

  • System resources are used efficiently and predictably

To address the scalability issues of traditional call parking, PortSIP implements call parking in a fundamentally different way.

Key Design Principles

PortSIP’s call parking implementation:

  • Does not require creating parking spot extensions

  • Does not require SIP registration for parking spots

  • Does not require Dialog Event subscriptions

This design eliminates the core scalability bottlenecks found in traditional implementations.


How PortSIP Call Parking Works

Parking a Call

  • There is no need to create parking spots.

  • The target extension number itself acts as the parking reference.

  • To park a call to extension 103, the user simply transfers the call to:

Where:

  • *68 is the Feature Access Code (FAC) for call parking

  • 103 is the extension number associated with the parked call


Call Park Notification

Once the call is parked:

  • The target extension device (IP phone or softphone) receives an out-of-dialog SIP NOTIFY

  • The NOTIFY uses the park-info event

  • The message includes:

    • Who parked the call

    • Where the call is parked

    • How the call can be retrieved

The device can parse this information and alert the user that a call is parked.


Retrieving the Call

  • The user retrieves the parked call by pressing the corresponding button or soft key

  • No polling, subscription, or manual dialing is required


Advantages of the PortSIP Call Parking Design

PortSIP’s approach provides the following benefits:

  • No parking spot extensions required Eliminates the need to create, register, and maintain thousands of virtual extensions.

  • No Dialog Event subscriptions Removes subscription overhead and long-lived SIP dialogs.

  • Rich NOTIFY information Devices receive detailed parking information and can present one-click retrieval to users.

  • Cloud-scale performance Call parking does not consume excessive CPU, memory, or bandwidth—even in very large deployments.

  • Service-provider friendly Suitable for large tenants and massive multi-tenant cloud PBX environments without performance degradation.


Summary

Traditional call parking models were designed for on-premise, single-tenant PBXs. PortSIP’s call parking is cloud-native by design, enabling service providers to deliver call parking at scale—without compromising system performance.

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