CCM 7.0 will be Windows based!

jozjan — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:53:34 +0100

Unofficial!
I haven't found any official statement but from some sources it looks like that the new Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.0 will be again Windows based!
I remember how happy we were while we were running Cisco Call Manager 4.0 and then Cisco has announced that the upcoming CCM in version 5.0 will be Linux based. Everyone was very pleased by this information.
On the other hand, after having a try with CCM5 and CCM6 ... it looks like many ppl say that the administrative interface is somehow slow. And from my experience I have to admit it. But I don't think that it's a problem of Linux or Windows. The web server performance issues are probably somewhere else. Anyway, the CCM5 and CCM6 have lots of new features and they work pretty well.

Heyyaaaa! IPT Learning Materials are back!

jozjan — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:01:40 +0200

On 4.9.2007 (d.m.yyyy) I contacted the Academy Helpdesk with a request to get access the NetAcad IPT learning materials.
After updating my case every week by asking them if there is anything new, finally today I've got a reply:

Jozef,

Thank you for your patience while this inquiry was reviewed and I apologize for the delay.

Cisco has been working to change the process for the IP telephony materials. Starting this week, a change was made and access for the IP Telephony Materials has been given to all active Instructors in Cisco Networking Academy. Please follow the steps below to access the information:

Please download and read the "About IP Telephony Learning Materials" document for important information regarding the use of these materials. Steps to access the materials is listed below:

1. Login to Academy Community website at http://academy-community.net
2. Click ‘Unified Communications (formerly IP Communications)’ under “Private Community Groups”
3. Select the Document for ‘About Unified Communications Learning Materials’

Please keep in mind Cisco posted these materials in their current form for Academies to use at their discretion. The Cisco Networking Academy Support Desk will not provide assistance regarding these materials, but Cisco has provided a global, peer-supported discussion forum for Academy instructors around the world to support each other. To access this forum, click on "Unified Communications Forum" on the left side of the page where the materials are located.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions or comments.

Best Regards,

S.R.

Cisco Networking Academy Support

Connect you CME based VoIP network to an external VoIP provider

jozjan — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 02:53:34 +0200

When you are building a converged network you are integrating Data, Voice and Video. The voice network has to be connected the telephony network of your Telco. The most common way how to do it, is just to use some telephony interfaces (FXO, E&M, T1/E1, ...) on your ISR router which will be connected directly to a Telco's endpoint. By using this way you have to have additional cards in your router, the management may be more difficult and the costs are usually higher.
Other approach how to connect your VoIP based telephony network to a Telco is directly with VoIP trunk. Why should you get one Internet connection and other different telephony connections if you can integrate all those services also on your network edge, just by reusing your data (Internet) connection. In this way you can save your company some money by lovering costs for different network accesses, your network is more easily managed, and you can implement all of your required converged network functionality in one device - in an ISR router with Unified Communications Manager Express.

What you will need is a Telco operator which provides VoIP services. Nowadays almost every Telco has also VoIP services in his list.
You have to get some information about the provided VoIP service by your Telco - which signalizing protocol they use - usually SIP and in some cases it may be H323. Then you should ask about supported codecs - only uncompressed G.711 or also a better choice for a WAN link - G.729.
The next step is to configure your CME service with an external SIP trunk. This can be accomplished in many different ways.
Depending on your Telco - he may provide a "real" SIP trunk which is a predefined voice route to the IP address of your router. For this kind of service you must have a public static IP address on the WAN side. If your operator provide this kind of service, you should get it. It's the best choice. Then the configuration of CME is really simple - consist just in creating a VoIP dial peer to PSTN numbers directing to your Telco's VoIP server.

! this configuration uses by default the G.729 codec. If your telco has no support for this codec, you must configure also a codec parameter for this dial peer
dial-peer voice 1 voip
destination-pattern 9.
session protocol sipv2
session target dns:myvoicesp.dot

A bit more complicated is a situation when your Telco provides the VoIP service in a "true" SIP mode - in which your device has to register itself to the VoIP server of Telco. Usually the Telco assign your an username and password which is then used in the registration process. The advantage of this solution is that you may have a dynamic IP address on the WAN side, or even in some situations you may have a private IP address behind NAT. The CME's configuration for this solution may a a bit tricky and sometimes you may spend few minutes with a debug lines. Anyway, after configuring it works with the same quality like the previous solution.

sip-ua
authentication username VoIPUSERNAME password VoIPPASSWORD
registrar dns:myvoicesp.dot expires 300
sip-server dns:myvoicesp.dot

What Cisco thinks about MS (or M$?)

jozjan — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 23:20:22 +0200

... you can find out here.

IOS - Colors in CLI

jozjan — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 01:55:03 +0200

Yes, you can put colors into your CLI of IOS. The keys for this feature are the escape characters and the terminal support for colors.
For example to create a banner like on the picture below you have to enter a banner command like this:

swr(config)#banner motd #
Enter TEXT message. End with the character '#'.
< CTRL+V >< ESC >[1;33m

     _______.____    __    ____ .______
    /       |\   \ / \ /   / |   _ \
   |   (----` \   \/    \/   / | |_) |
    \   \      \            /   |      /
.----)   |      \    /\    /    | |\ \----.
|_______/        \__/ \__/     | _| `._____|

Cisco Unified Application Designer

jozjan — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:12:19 +0200

Cisco Unified Application Designer is a tool which helps you to rapidly develop applications that converge voice and video with enterprise applications and data. Without learning the complex details of telephony protocols and real-time media processing, you use drag-and-drop techniques to visually construct applications containing communications business logic. This approach will help you reduce development time for new applications to days or weeks instead of months, while producing more full-featured applications.
An integrated component of the Cisco Unified Application Environment, the Cisco Unified Application Designer offers these features:

Finally, I've got it!

jozjan — Wed, 30 May 2007 22:16:23 +0200

Finally I've got a new Cisco IP Communicator 2.1.
Some weeks ago I wrote an article about the new Cisco IP Communicator 2.1. In that time there was just in some non-official version and a public whitepaper, but yesterday I found it on CCO (you have to be logged in). It looks like it was released on 16-MAY-2007.
I am very happy because the new version has finally support for the Realtec HD Audio chip which is used in my notebook. The previous version (2.0) of IP Communicator didn't detect my sound card so I wasn't able to create voice calls from my notebook :-( But now with 2.1 it works pretty well :) Big thanks for Cisco devel guys :-)

HOWTO: Create custom ringtones for Cisco IP Phones

jozjan — Sun, 13 May 2007 00:26:02 +0200

If you are not satisfied with prebuilt ringtones in your Cisco IP Phone, then you can quite easily get your favorite song as your ringtone. Here is the procedure how to create your own ringtone:

1. Get your favorite song as a mp3 or a wav file.
Maybe Google with help you to find it :)

2. Convert it into a RAW PCM file with some specified requirements.
You can use any kind of sound editing software in which you can create a RAW PCM file.

How to find an IOS image with CCME of version XY and vice versa?

jozjan — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 22:42:34 +0200

During the CZ&SK NetAcad conference some guys asked me how could they find which IOS contains the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express (formerly Cisco Call Manager Express). The answer is quite easy, you can use Cisco Feature Navigator web page. Click on the "Search by feature", then select "Call Manager Express" in version that you want and click on "Add" and "Continue". Then select your "Hardware plaform" and there you are :) You will get a list of IOS images for your HW platform which contains CCME.

CZ&SK NetAcad Conference 2007

jozjan — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 22:14:11 +0200

During the last week I was again presenting on the CZ&SK NetAcad Conference 2007 our experiences with teaching IP Telephony with NetAcad IPT materials. The presentation was great (at least I hope it was :)). Maybe the most important part of my presentation was the summary of feedbacks that we've got from our students on IPT trainings. I will just briefly mention some of most wanted things that we should include in our training on IPT:

Transformation of IPT(x) into independent course like the FWL
- Unfortunately not yet, not in this year and not even in the next year :(
SIP
- CCME supports SIP trunk and from CCME 4.0 it also supports SIP endpoints registration
Unity Express
- This is important if you want to do the IPTX certification exam
IP IVR
- It's just nice :)
  
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VoIP NetAcad Working Group blogs