When there’s trouble in the network, and voice services are suffering, those in need will call upon you, the networking superhero! As a superhero, you use your x-ray vision to zoom in to the microscopic world of voice packets, to perform a Wireshark packet analysis, and to investigate the malfunction and make things right. Then you will be hailed as the liberator and protector of the network!
Continue reading Wireshark Packet Analysis – A Preparation for VoIP AnalysisCategory: Unified Communications
Keeping you dry in the pool of Unified Communications.
Using SPAN Port Mirroring for Wireshark VoIP Troubleshooting
When I encounter a problem on a VoIP network that needs troubleshooting, I just wish that I had microscopic X-ray vision, like a superhero who is able to peer into the subatomic level of things.
It would be so advantageous to be able to instantaneously see what is going on with transmissions on the network.
When you experience voice quality issues, one way or choppy voice, or call setup problems, it would be great to be able to see, are the voice packets arriving? How are they arriving?
What kind of signaling is getting through and what is being blocked and where?
These are questions I wish I had instant access to, and this is what port mirroring is all about.
How to Solve Cisco IP Phone Voice Quality Issues. The step by step guide.
You get a call from a user stating that they have experienced poor voice quality issues with their Cisco IP phone.
Your mind goes numb, your palms get sweaty, and your eyes glaze over. What do you do? Where do you start? It’s so much easier to deal with problems where something stops working completely, rather than trying to resolve an intermittent fault such as bad voice quality.
Why are poor voice quality issues so difficult to tackle?
It’s usually because there is a myriad of different causes, and the methodology to investigate those causes is not always readily or intuitively clear. For voice troubleshooters, it is important to have a battle plan in place to quickly zero in on causes of voice degradation and to diagnose, identify, and resolve them as quickly as possible.
This article will focus on this battle plan so that you can identify the problem quickly, and determine the first troubleshooting steps, which are often the most difficult to decide upon.
Continue reading How to Solve Cisco IP Phone Voice Quality Issues. The step by step guide.
Cisco Voice Translation Rules. The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need.
Hey UC Pros! The need to interoperate across organizational and logical borders with different numbering requirements exists since the very beginning of the digital telephony.
Whether you interconnect with a SIP ITSP or your own legacy PBX, you will likely need to manipulate digits you exchange on both ends.
In Cisco IOS (and IOS-XE later) running either CUBE or Voice Gateway, Voice Translation Rules and Profiles come to a play to help you get things done.
In this article, we are going to demonstrate how this powerful feature works in general and how it applies to most common interoperability scenarios in real UC world.
Let’s begin.
Continue reading Cisco Voice Translation Rules. The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need.SIP Response Codes Explained
Why don’t we start with some trivia?
Did you know that SIP response codes are based on HTTP/1.1 response codes?
Actually, SIP response codes are the extent of the original HTTP ones and even define a new class with more response codes. I’ll let you know which one when we get to it.
That said, not all of the HTTP codes are relevant and mapped to SIP response codes, so if you know some HTTP, don’t expect to find them all in this list.
Continue reading SIP Response Codes Explained
Cisco SIP Gateway configuration: The Ultimate Guide
Connecting the Cisco IOS Voice Gateway to CUCM via SIP has been the preferred way to do it in the past couple of years.
The slowly dying H323 protocol (ISDN based) is not being developed anymore while SIP (HTTP based) became the industry standard for VoIP. So whenever PSTN connection is implemented via an IOS Voice Gateway, the choice should be really between SIP & MGCP.
This is how it’s done, step by step, using SIP.
Continue reading Cisco SIP Gateway configuration: The Ultimate Guide
How to punch SIP One Way Audio in the face
And why should you punch it in the face?
To be honest, mostly revenge…
Because one-way audio and no audio problems hurt.
Really bad.
Especially when they hit you by surprise, as they usually do.
Install vCUBE on VMware Workstation Player
Need to setup a CCIE Collaboration lab?
Want to practice your SIP skills?
Need to run a PoC with ITSP integration?
Don’t have a spare ESXi server?
No worries.
This is how you install a vCUBE on virtually any PC using free software.
Build pro IOS configs. FAST.
Cisco Meeting Server training requirements
Since Cisco has bought Acano in late 2015 and turned it into their leading product for video conferencing, a lot of questions has been raised on both commercial and technical fronts.
Continue reading Cisco Meeting Server training requirements
5 Steps to ace Prime Collaboration Assurance deployment
Prime Collaboration Assurance deployments (PCA) became very popular since Cisco has started giving it away for free (standard version) with new orders. It is indeed a great tool for those who are willing to make the effort and make it so.
Are you?
Continue reading 5 Steps to ace Prime Collaboration Assurance deployment