Cisco TelePresence Endpoints and IP Address Dialing with CUCM

Cisco has been steering customers and partners to centralize all call processing on the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM). This includes video or we can call it telepresence, if you prefer. For deployments where the Cisco Video Communications Server (VCS) is in play with CUCM, Cisco has some general design guidance that is slanted to registering Cisco telepresence endpoints on the CUCM. The VCS being relegated to legacy endpoint registration, protocol interworking, and facilitating firewall traversal.

This is all well and good but there are gaps. One of those gaps is supporting the ability to dial an H.323 party by IP address. Dialing by IP address refers to the ability of an endpoint to set up a video session with a remote party by simply using the IP address. This method is natively supported by H.323 devices. SIP devices use a URI format for "dialing". While SIP URIs can certainly use an IP address as the suffix, that is not the focus here.

Enabling Local IP Address Dialing on a Cisco VCS Control

I recently fielded a question about IP address dialing and the Cisco Video Communications Server (VCS). It reminded me of a video design I put together a while ago and I have been meaning to put some more video / telepresence content on the blog. To that end, I figured I would share my approach to enabling IP address dialing with the Cisco VCS. 

Unlocking Jabber Video Sign-In Preferences for Jabber.com

Recently, I was doing some testing with the Jabber Video for TelePresence (Movi) client. I was all set to go. I had my Jabber client loaded on my iPad, my VCS up and humming (loudly, I might add), and the Jabber Video client running on my MBP. I wanted to add another client to the mix, so I figured I would use the Jabber Video client on my iMac. This client was configured to use the free Jabber service (jabber.com) and I found out that I was unable to edit the server configuration. 

I found an easy (albeit unsupported) fix to the problem and I figured it was worth sharing.

Provisioning Cisco Jabber for iPad on the VCS Starter Pack

Cisco just released VCS release X7.2.1, which contains some third-party software updates and a handful of bug fixes. That's great but hardly noteworthy. What is noteworthy is that X7.2.1 adds support for the Cisco Jabber for iPad client on the VCS Starter Pack Express.

A few months ago, I posted a write up on provisioning the Cisco Jabber for iPad client with CUPS/CUCM and another one covering provisioning the client for hosted services like WebEx Connect. I guess the next logical step would have been to discuss provisioning with the VCS+TMS. I'll have to come back to that one. For this blog post, I am going to focus on provisioning the Jabber client with the Cisco VCS Starter Pack Express.

Cisco Jabber for iPad Pt 2 Individual Accounts and Hosted Services

Last month I posted a blog on provisioning Cisco Jabber for iPad to use CUPS and CUCM. For part deux, I wanted to switch gears and provide a walk through for provisioning the Jabber client to use hosted services for Presence and video. 

Namely, I am going to discuss using Cisco WebEx Connect for IM/Presence and Cisco's Jabber Video for TelePresence (or as I like to call it, @jabber.com). It is worth noting that we are going to explore the "Personal Account" provisioning track here. That means discussion of WebEx Connect with CUCM or Cisco VCS won't be front and center. That will come later.

Cisco Jabber for iPad Now Has Video

I know there are a fair number of people out there in Cisco land that have been waiting for Cisco to bring video capabilities to the iPad via their Jabber client. Well, the wait is finally over. 

On July 11, 2012 the Cisco Jabber for iPad client appeared in the AppStore. The new Jabber client (yes, it is a 1.0 release) is an application that provides instant messaging (IM), video and voice calling, corporate directory, and presence all in one client. 

Troubleshooting: Protocol Captures on Cisco VCS

This is just a quick write up on how to pull network traces from the Cisco Video Communications Server (VCS). As anyone who has been in the business of integrating solutions in existing networks knows, having the ability to pull protocol traces goes a long way to streamlining the troubleshooting process. Deploying a VCS is no different.

Upgrading Cisco VCS from X6.1 to X7.1

This is just a quick blog on a recent upgrade I did for a VCS X6.1 system to X7.1. The upgrade was pretty painless but I wanted to highlight two points of interest. Well, interesting to me anyway...

Upgrading from Factory Built X6.1

The first is a RTFM item that I almost missed. Fortunately, I caught this on a second read through. From the X7.1 release notes, if you have a VCS unit that was shipped with X6.1 pre-installed, you will need to do some CLI tinkering for the backup process to work correctly. I suppose something was missed in the build. Anyway, in summary:

1. SSH to the Cisco VCS 
2. Login as root
3. Create the /tandberg/persistent/oti and /tandberg/persistent/management folders
4. Logout 

Example:

wolverine:~wjb$ssh root@10.3.9.20

root@10.3.9.20's password:

~ # mkdir /tandberg/persistent/oti
~ # mkdir /tandberg/persistent/management
~ # exit

Getting an Upgrade License

This was a new one on me. I am used to upgrading other Cisco Collaboration applications but have only applied an upgrade to the VCS under the Tandberg regime. The process is pretty simple. First, go to http://www.cisco.com/go/license and log in using your CCO account. From here, you should scroll down to the section under Product Authorization Key (PAK) and RMA License Transfer. You will see a "tab" option called Tandberg Software Upgrade & Look up.

After clicking the Tandberg Software Upgrade & Look up select the "Register for a Tandberg Software Upgrade License" link. You will need the Serial Number and MAC address from your VCS unit. Enter that data, click on the GetVersion button and then the rest is self-explanatory. 


NOTE: You may not see X7.1 listed in your entitlement drop down [I saw X7.0(y)] versions only). Just pick the latest X7.0, the license key will work fine and dandy.


Read More
There is a good discussion on the Cisco Support Community where Martin provides a good jump point for looking at X7.1. Of particular interest, Cisco provides an OVA for VCS. Yes, that's right vVCS! More on that later.

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Thanks for reading. If you have time, post a comment!

Troubleshooting FindMe Alias Forbidden Error on Cisco VCS

I just wanted to dump a quick blog on using FindMe configurations on the Cisco Video Communications Server (VCS) Express Starter Kit. I was doing some testing with FindMe and realized pretty quickly that I may want to RTFM a little more. I thought the quick troubleshooting exercise may be of interest to someone out there in bitLand! 

ATA 2012 Conference

I will be attending the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) 2012 annual conference in San Jose, CA. This will be the first time I am attending this conference. ATA is an organization that advocates promoting the use of advanced remote medical technologies in healthcare delivery. 

The annual international meeting and exposition (now going on its 17th anniversary) is a gathering of the best and brightest in the healthcare industry. It provides an opportunity for healthcare professionals to network and get in tune with the latest trends in policy, process, technology, etc. 

To be honest, I'll be a little out of my element. I am a pure techie. I am participating in this event because I believe that to build a sustainable solution in any environment you must first understand the use case, the needs of the people who directly interface with or rely on the solution you are building. It does not start with technology, that is secondary. I believe that if you try to engineer the use case around your technology, you have already failed.

If only it were that simple. Whenever I talk to professionals in the healthcare industry about what they need and what they are looking into, the ideas are endless. These are exceptional people with exceptional ideas and I look forward to taking part in the event, even if it is a bit role! 

If you are planning on attending the conference let me know via comments or email.

Content Sharing and Video Communications

I was recently pondering my first opportunity to design and deploy video communication solutions [back when it was known as Videoteleconferencing (VTC)]. I was thinking about what people wanted from the technology. How they wanted to interface with the technology and the other video users out there over their ISDN (H.320) or IP (H.323) networks. Lots of things about the technology have changed, but the use case has not. People use video for the promise of interacting with people visually over a great distance. Moreover, people want to collaborate over video. 

In this blog, I wanted to go on a tour down memory lane with the collaboration aspect of good ol' VTC IPVC telepresence(?). Whatever you want to call it, here we'll call it video. We are going to discuss the ITU-T's T.120 and H.239 Recommendations as well as the IETF's Binary Floor Control Protocol (BFCP) and associated proposals.