A lot Smoother Installation - VMPlayer Tip

I reinstalled the CUCM Publisher last night and the install went a lot smoother than a few months back when I attempted to install it on ESXi on an old HP server. VMPlayer worked surprisingly well even though it's not as convenient as VM Workstation.

The only issue I ran into was getting connectivity to the network which was a combination of things. It didn't like my trunk port on my switch so I changed it to an access VLAN (VLAN 100) for my server subnet. I also had to play with the VMPlayer network settings, once I changed my VM to following connectivity was established:

Network Adapter Settings:
1. Network Connection set to bridged mode
2. Check mark "Replicate physical network connection state"
3. Select the "Configure Adapters" button
4. Select only the Ethernet port or whatever port you use for connectivity, un-select the others.

Tonight I plan on installing the Subscriber and I have to get my hands on Unity Connection still from some where. I have a CUPS 6.0 DVD so hopefully that works when the time comes. At some point I need to run to Walmart or somewhere to pick up a crossover cable, I don't have good tools to make my own.

Rebuilt my Lab with PICS!

Finally got around to rebuilding and configuring my lab again, it's been a very busy year with a lot of changes. I have the majority of the basic configuration finished, I'm using the same design as my last lab before I had to give all of my equipment up. The only thing that I'm missing is a cross-over cable for my Branch IP Phone since I'm connecting it directly to my branch router. I believe this is the reason why it's showing as not connected, at least I hope. I'm using OSPF for the WAN

Not pictured is my beefy work laptop that's 8 core with 24 gigs of RAM or some thing crazy like that. I'm hoping I can get away with VM Player but I may have to go with some of the higher end VM solutions like Workstation or ESXi with a dedicated server if I run into to many snags.

My job role changed pretty drastically and I may not be touching voice as much as I did in the past, I'm being moved to the design and implementation space for my company. There will for sure be enough phone stuff to keep me occupied but it may only be 25% of my workload instead of 80% like my previous gig.

I'm thinking of finishing the CCNP: Voice track and then start moving sideways to CCNP R&S and then the Design tracks. maybe even Data Center stuff depending on how much deeper we get into it at my company.

Knocked out first CIPT1 Chapter

I'm off to a decent start but it could be a little better, I finished up the first chapter out of 16 from the official study guide. I looked around quite a bit and besides the quick reference book there isn't much study material for this exam besides going through one of the training vendors. Once I'm reimbursed for this first test I'm going to invest it into a Skeletek rack with all the goodies like cable management.

Passed the CVOICE Test!

It's about time! It took me a little longer than I expected due to a lot different outside variables but I finally got over the hump on this one. It took the following to get me through:

Books:
Cisco Voice Gateways and Gatekeepers
Cisco QOS Certification Guide
Cisco (CVOICE) Foundation Learning Guide (Kevin Wallace)
Sybex CVOICE 8.0 Study Guide

Videos:
Kevin Wallace 1 exam a month (1ExamAMonth.com)
IPExpert CVoice videos

Other:
Mnemosyne's
Forums
Lab's...a bunch of labs
Colleagues
Real World Experience


By far the hardest exam I've taken so far and there's 4 MORE to go before I'm certified. I can finally get back to building out my lab though. Hit hard on QOS, CUBE/Gatekeeper, VOIP Calculations, and Voice Signaling theories.

About Ready for the Retake!

After a hectic 4 weeks including business travel and settling into the new house; I finally finished the last 3 chapters of the Sybex CVoice book. I'm going to review and go over study notes for the next 3-4 weeks and hopefully have the CVoice scheduled and PASSED this time around. There's a good 5-6 network projects going on at the same time right now. 2 VoIP migrations and even 1 PBX migration happening within the next 6 months.

The PBX migration starts next week, I'm working with an outside consultant for this one. I finished the new dial plan to integrate them on to our CUCM yesterday. There's also multiple MPLS and IPVPN turn-up's happening around the globe. I have all the networking hardware I need to make my voice lab, I just need to purchase a rack for all this stuff and cable management. I'm looking at Dell 2950's for my VM environment, can't wait to have the lab built, but I'm looking forward to how much more I still have to spend for it lol.

Three More Chapters Until Test Retake

I'm starting to make some head way through the last book I picked up for CVoice. I'm hoping to have the last 3 chapters finished in another 6 weeks, it all depends on how busy I get at my gig. Right now I'm working my way through the H.323 Gatekeeper and CUBE chapter. Followed by the oh so famous QoS chapters. Looks like I won't be able to rent any lab time through INE for the entire month of July due to book camp weeks. That's alright I'm already planning and designing my new and improved lab, I plan on even getting a comm rack this time around!

INE Labs and a Quick MGCP Tip

Slowly but surely I'm making through the Sybex CVOICE book, I'm about 65 percent of the way the through. I've been going through the hands on labs in the book as well, utilizing the INE rack rentals since I'm unable to access real equipment at the moment. I'm not going to lie, just figuring out how to connect to their labs have been difficult...for me. I tried the VPNless method and the Cisco VPN client methods so far. Using the VPNless method I couldn't connect to a lot of the equipment for whatever reason. When using the Cisco VPN client, it seemed to work a lot better but I couldn't access anything else outside of the the lab rack.

I'm sure this has more to do with me than anything else to be honest with myself. The racks are designed for people prepping for CCIE so in the back of mind I feel as though my comprehension of the technology itself is preventing me to wrap my head around on how to correctly connect to their equipment. I may be wrong though, at least I'm able to accomplish what I need so far. I believe over time I'll become more familiar on how to properly connect to everything. If not I'm not afraid to ask for help.

MGCP TIP:

I'm sure most of you know this, in order for MGCP to work correctly and pull the XML file from CUCM, the name on the voice gateway and the CUCM must have the same exact name!

Well it was bound to happen but I'm finally broken in at my new job and made my first mistake that caused downtime for a few sites. I was tasked with installing a template on all of our gateways which included giving them our domain name.

The official syntax for this is ip domain-name domainname; the use of this command changes the name of the Cisco device. So if your device host name is called Gateway and you add the domain name to the device i.e. ip domain-name contoso.com, the official name for the device is now Gateway.contoso.com. Even though the device considers Gateway.contoso.com to be its name, the host name will still appear as just Gateway when you're staring at the CLI.

Unless you changed the name to Gateway.contoso.com on CUCM as well, it will not know how to reach this device. The trickiest part about this is that it doesn't rear it's head right away, Our gateways didn't use the new name until exactly 12:00 AM the following Saturday after I gave them their new domain info. Watch out for this!

Almost Ready to Buy Rental Time

I've been slowly working through the Sybex CVoice book while also getting acclimated to my new job role. I'm about half-way through the book and I should be plunking down some cash to rent some lab time from INE pretty soon.

Cisco SAF Videos for Free on INE

I'm just writing this note to remind myself that I can view the INE videos on SAF for free.

http://blog.ine.com/2012/04/18/call-control-discovery-via-service-advertisement-framework-part-1-of-6/

 I still have a ways away before I start truly studying on this topic but I'm going to need all the help I can get. In other news, I start a new role as Network Engineer (may not be the official title) in a week for a global company. I'm pretty excited but nervous at the same time, I should be able to soak up a ton of knowledge from this new opportunity.

I have to give back my 2821's and I'm not in a position to spend $1400-2000 to replace them. Plus I would really need to get the 29xx models at this point in time. I'm going to start renting lab time because this will save me time, money, and physical space.

I've Been Hitting the Books Slow but Steadily

It's been a very busy month both personally and professionally. I would be lying if I said failing the CVoice exam didn't make me just want to give up on certs all together. With that said I still managed to finish QoS book and I'm working my way though the Cisco Voice Gateways and Gatekeeper book. I then will finish that up with the Sybex CVoice book and start labbing again. The QoS book grew my knowledge A LOT but I def. couldn't take everything in but that doesn't matter because this books goes above and beyond the QoS material I've read in the official book and even the test I failed.

I hope to sit this test again in the next month or so depending on what my $$$ funds look like.

Failed a Certification Test for the First Time Ever

Well long story short, I had my CVoice test scheduled for today and I failed miserably by almost 100 points. I needed a 790 out of 1000 to pass and I only managed a 694. When it came down to it, I wasn't prepared for the questions that were going to be asked on the exam. The material I was using to study wasn't adequate enough to get me through. The thing is that there isn't much material for the CCNP: Voice to begin with so I'm not sure what else to do besides go through the book again and schedule a retake for some time in the near future. My hands on is where it needs to be but my theory isn't.

You have to know ALL of the mathematical formulas, how to convert DSCP to decimal, Make sure you have a very good understanding of QoS (Specific QoS books), and find some outside material to understand CUBE more if you don't work with it. This was an expensive mistake, I'm pretty down right now, I'm going to go through the material and focus on the areas I did horrible on and go from there. The practice exam questions I was using from Cisco's learning network website and the official book aren't nearly as difficult as the exam.

Configured Gatekeeper's for the First Time

I finally did something that I was dreading to do for a long time...configure a H.323 Gatekeeper. It wasn't to bad but I will need to lab it again before the test I'm sure. There's just a slew of commands to remember to get everything up and working properly between the endpoint and gatekeeper. Even the instructor in VOD I was following along with was having issues getting everything up and running. He spent about 25 minutes troubleshooting what turned out to be a codec mismatch issue between dial-peers on two different gateways lol.

I'm having this weird intermittent call issue with my gatekeeper and phones though, I wonder if it has something to do with the voice-class codec I have configured but I may be wrong.

Always Troubleshoot the Obvious

I wasted 90 minutes in today's lab troubleshooting an issue that the IOS told me might cause the issue to begin with. I upgraded my 2821 lab routes to a newer IOS 15 version so that I can lab some Gatekeeper scenarios. I knew about this problem in the past but by default, the newer IOS versions (at least voice specific) enables a configuration to prevent Toll-Fraud. It's called ip address trust authenticate which requires that all IP addresses that attempt to place calls to a gateway be added to a list that allows the call to be place.

Now while I knew about this I figured it wasn't enabled since I already had configured my router and looking in my running-config this command was no where to be found. I went ahead and issued the no ip address trust authenticate command under the voice service voip configuration and sure enough I could place H.323 calls again.

Prepping Hardware and Software for CIPT1

While I'm preparing to schedule my test for CVoice and hoping for a first time pass; I'm also getting my ESXi server ready for CIPT1. I already have the domain controller installed along with the CUCM 8.5 Publisher server. I'm hoping that I have enough time today to get the CUCM Subscriber started. I will say that it's very tricky getting CUCM install up and going and it's quick to error out if your system doesn't meet it's "hardware requirements"; at least in VMware.

I used the following template settings to get this to work:

Linux Red Hat (32-bit)
1 Virtual Processor
2 GB RAM
80 GB Hard drive (SAS 0:0)

I believe it's picky about both the OS settings and the hard drive settings the most. Once the Publisher was up and running I took a snapshot, shut her down, decreased the memory to 1 GB and booted her back up. Cisco gave an error message about them not being responsible for me not using the recommended equipment but it booted right up!

Download My Mnemosyne Flash Cards for CVoice

I uploaded my Mnemosyne Flash Cards for CVoice on the infamous techexams.net forum. You can grab it here if you're interested:

Shawn's CVoice Mnemosyne's

As mentioned you'll have to rename the PDF extension to XML and then import it into the Mnemosyne program in order for this to work.

QoS Policing and Configuration

Well I'm nearing the end of the very last chapter of CVoice and after this week everything I study will be review until the test date which I haven't scheduled quite yet. I still have about 20 hours worth of CVoice video material I'm going to go through along with a review guide along with my Mnemosyne before I schedule the test and plunk down $150 bucks.

The last chapter was QoS Policing and configuration which wasn't quite as dreadful as I thought it was going to be. I think that's mainly because there's not a lot of detail you can put into 1-2 chapters compared to the previous CCVP which had a whole book and exam dedicated towards it! The picture above shows one of the token bucket configurations used in CIR (Committed information Rate) when trying to manage/police data traffic sent from CPE to the LEC.

There have been a lack of updates on the blog due to the crazy dead lines and traveling that I've been doing as of late. Sometimes I don't really get to study until 8pm or so which leaves me a dead tired (too lazy) to post a topic. I'm still at it though and I plan on keeping at the pace I'm at throughout the rest of this year unless life happens, which it usually does.

About Ready to take the CVoice Test

I'm away from home still so I haven't been able to study like I want; however I've been watching IPExpert videos and finishing up the last few chapters in the Cvoice book. When I get home next week, I will finish up the last QoS chapter, and then start reviewing preparing on my first take on my path to CCNP: Voice

Configuring Digit Manipulation

Spent about 3-4 hours labbing many different call routing scenarios and testing out as many technologies as I can. Along with cleaning up and configuring some high availability scenarios between both my HQ and Branch site in case the WAN goes down. I also setup correct caller-id information over PSTN so instead of just sending out the extension CLID (Caller-id) info it prefixes the area code and CO code as well.

Tomorrow will be another long session, going to deep dive into TEHO, site-codes, Toll-Free Bypass, and if I have time basic over of Class of Restriction (COR) but I'm betting I'll be worn out by time I get to that section.

I want to knock out the rest of this chapter before my employer ships me out to Houston, TX to begin provisioning our new remote DR site. I'll be out there for at least two weeks and I'm afraid I'm going to loose momentum if I can't get good lab time in so I want to get to the upcoming theory chapters ASAP. Thankfully I'll have plenty of IPExpert videos to go through and if I time it right I should be able to complete the Gatekeeper and first QoS chapter while I'm away.

70 Hours Completed

Well I think I finally put in at least 60 hours total studying over the past 5-6 weeks. I'll probably be about ready to sit for this test about 60 more hours in. I'm 450 pages into my CVoice book currently on Chapter 5 and I went through at least 10 hours worth of training videos so really I probably put about 70 hours in. I finally received the IPExpert videos so I'm going to go through those and try to lab what I can with the exercises they provide. I went through the older CBTNuggets material and a lot of Kevin Wallace material. I'm also still creating and going through my Mnemosyne's, I have over 115 flash card questions now.

My current phone network is about 80% complete, I can call from one site to the other via the WAN but not the PSTN yet. Also I haven't configured my branch site to make calls through the PSTN but everything is good on the HQ and the PSTN (plus vice versa). I'll be testing and throwing up voice translation profiles/rules on my branch router tomorrow. Voice Translations always give me a headache looking at the syntax ever since I first encountered them in CCNA: Voice. I'm going to be diving deep into this until I can wrap my head around the common regular expressions:

My IP Phones are Finally Alive!

I finally configured basic DN's for my IP Phones on both my HQ and my Branch router. I also configured a simple VoIP dial-peer so that I can place calls between the two sites. I can even dial my analog phone at the HQ site from all of IP Phone too without any issues. I'll be wrapping up Chapter 3 in the CVoice book by this weekend and then it's on to the Dial Plan chapters. I'll be configuring my PSTN router to emulate the PSTN finally as well. I'm estimating that I'm about 50 hours deep into my studies so far. Probably another 70 hours or so in and I'll probably be at the point were I'm prepping to sit for my first ever Cisco Professional level exam!

Two Weeks of HE Double Hockey Sticks!

Well about halfway into my studies for CVoice, it hit me that I didn't have near enough flash memory (only had 64MB) to install both IOS 15 and CME 8.x. So I went on a long, I mean long hunt to find Compact Flash that would work with my routers. I even contacted a Cisco Engineer Manager in my local area to see if there was any official memory I could borrow but with no luck. I needed at least 256MB, I went to at least 3 different local chains like Target and Best Buy but they just don't sell CPFlash any more.

I searched my office some more and found a decommisioned router that actually had a 1 GB CPFlash SanDisk card in it but the tab to eject the flash card was broke so I used a flat head screw driver and pretty much destroyed the card when I finally got it out. I finally hit eBay and plunked down a little money and I was able to to get two 256MB cards that actually worked!

I spent my entire study session today (3 hours) getting the new flash cards installed with IOS 15 along with CME 8.0 and very basic phone info. I of course hit a few snags but it wasn't too horrible now that I'm looking back on it. I didn't want to go to far in the book without getting CME configured so I spent a lot of my days catching up on CVoice videos I had which helped re-enforce a lot of the topics I've learned so far. I of course did my Mnemosyne's as well. If you look above you'll see a successfully registered 7940 phone.

CME Overview and Basic Lab Configuration

I went over the first dozen pages that gave a very high level overview of CME. I spent most of my time prepping my CCNP: Voice lab with basic network configuration. I created the voice/data vlan's, assigned IP's, configured router-on-a-stick, DHCP, and etc. I also spent a lot of time figuring out how I'm going to get CME onto my routers. I don't have near enough flash so I'm going to go ahead and see if I can purchase some at a local store. 64MB just won't cut it, especially when the IOS version 15 takes up 50MB alone! I have most of the bare bones configuration I need so once I have the flash installing CME 8.x will be a breeze...hopefully.

CVoice Chapter 2 Complete

I knocked out Chapter 2 today and I'm already almost at the half way mark in the book. The first two chapters presents a lot of theory so it makes since as to why they're probably the longest. This chapter dived into the voice signaling protocols along with some examples of how to use them. The hardest part to digest in this chapter was the fax theory (it always is). Never the less it's time to start digging into CME again finally starting in Chapter 3. I created my Mnemosyne's for chapter 2 as well so I knocked out quite a bit just today.

Mnemosyne's and Chapter Completion

I finished CVoice chapter 1 along with the review questions, I only missed one question and honestly I think it was worded poorly...oh well. I forgot about this flash card tool called Mnemosyne's, I decided to start creating flash cards for every chapter I finish. This is something quick and easy I can study while at work during any short breaks or downtime I have. I'm 160 pages in, Chapter 2 begins tomorrow!

Crossed the 100 page Marker in CVoice

I knocked out about 30 pages in the CVoice book today. The topics covered the various types of controller configurations using T1's, E1's, BRI's, and PRI's. I also went over a brief overview of Echo and Echo cancellation. There were a bunch of examples of different controller scenarios and I attempted to tackle as many as I could. For some reason I didn't have BRI commands available on my routers but that's alright as I doubt I ever use this in the real world. Once all was said and done, I threw back on the original configuration and placed my test calls. The next section dives into DSP's, I'm 128 pages in so far, the book is a little over 600.

Traditional Call Signalling Overview

I was only able to get an hour in of study this evening due to performing some after hours work on our CUCM. I'm going to be enabling dependency records so that I know what ties to what. For example knowing what configurations depend on a specific device pool or calling search space (css). I'm wanting to get rid of our call configuration for one of our remote sites that's been shut down months ago but I had a lot of troubles figuring out what was tied to what.

I eventually went up the hierarchy in my head of how you configure things in CUCM from what little knowledge I have. I removed everything from the regions, locations, device pools, etc  for this site but there's still two css's that I can't figure out what's calling out to it. I'm also going to provision some of the region settings for our new remote site since configuring regions can drop calls currently in progress.

I was able to knock out about 10 pages today along with jotting notes down about the signaling types related to Supervisory, Addressing, and Informational. I left off going over the various E&M signaling from immediate start, wink-start, delay start and the different Types I-V used with Supervisory signaling. I won't be studying tomorrow as I will be doing an after hours upgrade on our Unity Connection servers. There's a good chance I may not study Friday as well depending on how much I want to have a social night that night!

Much Better Study Session!

Thanks to the help of a co-worker I was able to resolve the issues I was having with my PRI configurations. I knew it was something to do with clocking but I was just too annoyed to research it yesterday. Apparently there's a command called isdn protocol-emulate that is used to make a Cisco router emulate as the CPE or as PSTN switch basically. I threw this on my router I'm using to emulate the PSTN (go figure) and did away with the T1 CAS's and provisioned them back as PRI ISDN lines. Sure enough the circuits came right up without any issues.

After messing with that and placing test calls, debugs, and etc. I was able to knock out 18 pages in the CVoice book, way better progress than yesterday. I'm also going through old CBTNugget videos on CVoice as there's some good refreshers on traditional telephony. My plan is to listen to one of the videos first thing in the morning time permitting. We're about to bring up our new remote site so I'm going to be knee deep in configuring Cisco devices and creating the dial plan in CUCM. This should be some good experience, we also plan on doing some clustering over the WAN by bringing up a CUCM subscriber at this new site, also good experience!

Horrible Study Session

So to start off with, yesterday I made some decent progress. I knocked out about 30 pages of reading yesterday along with buying two cheap analog phones to test out POTS dial-peers using the PSTN. Today however was a complete mess, I wouldn't say I didn't learn anything but I made it through 1/2 a page of reading! The rest was spent troubleshooting Layer1 and 2 issues with just about every WIC card I had. From the FXS card that wasn't compatible with the Cisco 2821's all the way to ISDN layer two issues with my PRI configuration.

I gave up on PRI for now and went to T1 CAS but even that gave me a lot of issues. I spent an hour trying to get one analog phone to talk to each other, something that should be rather simple. I eventually got one end to call the other but not the other way around. It took another twenty minutes to figure out that the E&M signaling type was mismatched on both ends. Somehow I blew out my entire T1 configuration on both ends (I was frustrated to say the least) and spent another hour getting the configurations just right so that the routers were able to match dial-peer configurations to their respective ports.

I pretty much wasted 3 hours on a simple configuration but I guess in the end I gained some troubleshooting experience. I just 10 minutes ago was able to make a call to both analog phones from both sites. I'm using the PSTN router as my remote site for now since I don't have a 2800 compatible spare FXS card or a spare $150 to purchase one. I'm 43 pages in to the book so far, I'm hoping to make up for lost progress tomorrow.

CCNP Voice Home Lab Nearly Completed

I retrieved most of the items on the list that I talked about yesterday, the last thing I really need for the CVoice is an analog phone. I'm thinking that I can go to Radio Shack or Walmart and buy a cheap $10 analog phone without any bells or whistles. I attached a picture above of how it looks physically, it's not the cleanest looking but it should get the job done. I had some weird issues with the HQ 2821 router not booting the startup-config. after being annoyed for 30 minutes, I looked it up online and somehow the registry setting was set to skip the NVRAM during boot-up. My guess is that this was the router I had to use password-recovery and I just forgot to change the settings back, either way it took all of 30 seconds to fix the issue.

I also read 13 pages in the CVoice book and wrote down notes between the differences of the four call-signaling protocols H.323, SIP, MGCP, and SCCP. I attached a picture above of my lab setup, there's still an analog phone and a dedicated VMWare server for the unified applications that I'm missing. I'll start putting together the VMWare server after I pass CVoice unless for some reason I absolutely need it, I don't see this happening though.

Setting up the CCNP Voice Lab Progess

My first day in of fully committing to the CCNP Voice certification is off to a great start. I'm building my home CCNP: Voice lab based on a modified version of Kevin Wallace's Voice lab design. The modified version is pictured above, I may add an extra switch for the branch site and an extra IP phone if needed; I also may add an extra branch site. I still need the following to complete the home lab and then I'll snap a few pictures of my final design for this certification:

• 1 T1 cross over cable (PSTN router to branch office router)
• 3 Cisco IP Phones (Maybe 4 if I decide to borrow an additional switch)
• 1 IP Phone Power Brick (There's no PoE on the Cisco 28XX Gig ports)
• 2  Seven foot long Ethernet cables (For the HQ IP Phones)
• 1 Analog Phone (Hoping I can borrow this from someone)

I spent an hour or so setting up the physical equipment, cables, and basic network configuration. The longest part was provisioning the T1 controllers for the pseudo PSTN network using PRI connections. The HQ router didn't even see the VWIC card it had to configure it. After a quick Google search it jogged my memory of the card-type command and specifying if it was going to be a T1 or E1 controller. I'm surprised that I was able to configure the PRI ports all from memory, very good start to this long journey ahead.

I also went ahead and started my Safari Book subscription once again and read the pre-face for the new CCNP CVoice book by Kevin Wallace. I'm so glad that there's FINALLY material to study for this certification. I upgraded both Cisco 2821 routers to IOS 15.x already and I've downloaded a few different CME 8.x versions and a COP file for CUCM 8.0 for the later tracks. I'll proabably wait until around chapter 3 in the CVoice book to actually start installing and configuring CME but we'll see how impatient and anxious I get before hand.

I'm going to use the following web link: http://blog.ine.com/2009/01/18/configuring-a-pstn-dialplan/ for a general idea on setting up the PSTN router. I'm pretty sure that the Cisco 1760 that I'm using will be more than efficient for this job.What's going to make it or break it for me through this certification will be how much I can stick to a study plan, consistency is going to be the key I think. I'm wanting to get 16 hours in a week of study time. Two hours on the weekdays and Three hours on the weekends, I'm going to use a timer to keep me on task and of course lots and lots of Coffee!

1ExamAMonth and More Studying

I went through about 25 pages on additional Presence design along with viewing a few CCNP: Voice videos regarding basic dial peer configuration on 1examamonth.com. It was all just review really from CCNA:Voice material, I'll keep going through the free videos on the website and I may purchase or see if my company can purchase the full training videos. I'm also looking at the IPExpert training videos but they're twice as expensive.

CUPS (Presence)

I went over about 30 pages in the SRND Guide regarding presence and best design practices. I have a little over 250 pages to go until I move onto the actual certification books and start digging in into my home lab setup. I should be getting the second 2821 put together later this afternoon and I think I should be all set. I'll borrow a few Cisco IP Phones from work and maybe buy a cheap analog phone from the Goodwill or something. MY 1760's have a FXS/FXO cards already so I can always shuffle them around where needed.

Thousand Pages Read, 300 More Until GO Time!

I finally crossed the 1,000 page mark in the CUCM 8 SRND guide (1356 pages total). I spent the last few days covering Unity and the design recommendations associated with it. As I near the end of the guide, I'm starting to finally acquire the hardware and plan out the materials I need for the CCNP: Voice. My company is letting me borrow two 2800 series routers loaded up with all the PVDM's and VWIC's I would ever need. I might need to buy another FXO/FXS card though.

I plan on using one Cisco 2821 (pictured above)  as a Voice Gateway for the HQ and the other for the branch site. I'm going to use one of the 1760's as the PSTN network hopefully, and maybe the other for a 3rd branch site. I'm thinking I can get through CVoice cert without the dedicated ESXi server loaded up with CUCM, Unity, Presence, and maybe UCCX. It seems that CVoice focuses more on the gateway's and CME (Call Manager Express).

I would love to hear any suggestions or recommendations about this lab setup, it's hard to find other people going for the new updated cert since there's not a lot of material for it like the CCNP: R&S.

CUBAC

 I studied up on CUBAC which is short for Cisco Unified Business Attendant Console is an application designed specifically for receptionist to answer and dispatch calls. This requires a standalone server for the application itself and then integration with CUCM using CTI, AXL API and the Cisco TSP driver for call control. We currently use this in my work environment, when it works it's flawless but it likes to flake out every once awhile. 9 times out of 10 when there's issue with the program, simply logging the receptionist completely off attendant console and back on resolves whatever issue there is.

Music on Hold SRND

I'm currently going through the best practices section regarding music on hold (MoH) using unicast, multicast, or both to stream audio media. This section also covers best practices depending on your network environment, such as competently centralized VoIP network, multi-site network with centralized call processing, our multi-site network with multiple clusters.

In my current work environment we currently use unicast for MoH and our environment has centralized call processing with multiple remote sites. We actually used to use multicast for MoH because it's obviously more efficient but we ran into a Cisco Call Manager bug with our previous version 7.x. We have since upgraded to 8.X but whatever TAC engineer we were working with recommended unicast over multicast when possible. Seems as if the SRND says otherwise, again for obvious reasons.

Cisco Unified CM and LDAP Connectivity

I spent the last few days reading the SRND chapter regarding CUCM and synching with LDAP. This is what we currently do in our environment since upgrading from 6.x to 8.x. Before we synchronized with our AD environment, it was a very manual and painful experience adding or changing user accounts in the phone system. Especially when we would provision new remote sites. It also makes administrating all of the different unified communication components alot easier since there is pretty much a single log in for all of our equipment. We even had security consultants come in and configure our ACS device to synch with AD so that we could log into all of network devices with our single Windows Account login, very efficient!

Inter Cluster Trunks (ICT)

I'm currently reading through the section regarding inter cluster trunks in the SRND guide. More specifically H.323 and SIP trunks between Unified CM Clusters. Nothing to detailed and pretty high level overview on recommendations regarding ICT's directly between clusters or using a Gatekeeper. I also went over high availability, load balancing, and the newer features that CUCM 8.x offers. I'm still drawing up what my CCNP: Voice lab is going to be or even if I decide to go for the cert still. VoIP is growing so fast and there's a multitude of different vendors out there, especially with SIP, it's hard to imagine spending 1k-3k for a very vendor specific certification. We'll see though

UPoE - Universal Power over Ethernet

I was able to listen in on a webcast regarding the new UPoE and I decided to take a few notes, I've written them below:

• UPoE is setup to currently provide up to 60W of power for many types of devices rather than just phones. We're talking about PC monitors, Thin Clients, even LED lights.

• Power over Ethernet has had the following time line so far

1. 7W of Inline Power beginning in 2000
2. 15W of PoE beginning  in 2003
3. 30W of PoE+ beginning in 2007
4. 60W of UPoE beginning in 2011

•  I didn't know this but RJ-45 is a universal socket, this is the only type of connecter that is used by the entire world.
• UPoE uses all 4 Ethernet wire pairs with 15W running through each pair for a total of 60W. It should be noted that data WILL work just fine using UPoE over the Ethernet cable.
• To determine safety with the new UPoE technology. A test was conducted using a bundle of 100 cables with maximum UPoE power sent through them. They were able to determine that there are no dangers of handling this additional wattage over the Ethernet cable. Also the heating temperature only increased by 10 degrees when comparing the 15W bundle with the 60W bundle.
• CDP is used by Cisco devices for power negotiation while non-Cisco devices use LLDP

Configure the Network CCNA Lab Scenarios is now FREE

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Cisco Briefing Bytes - New Cisco 4500 Life Cycle

This morning I was able to attend a small conference regarding the future for the Cisco 4500 platform along with the present. The 4500 series currently comes in 3 flavors, small (4503), medium (4507), and big (4510). Below I'll highlight briefly what I've learned and what I thought of the presentation.

Presentation:
The presentation was in a small conference room at my local Cisco office featuring models of all the latest and greatest offerings from the Unified Communications world. Our presenter was very knowledgeable, it was only me and two other guys who attended but the questions we shot to him he was able to handle with out skipping a beat. The presentation was the perfect amount of length for the product, 30-45 minutes long with Q&A time.

4500 New Features:
There are a ton of new features but I'll quickly list what caught my attention below:

• Software WLAN Controller using a Supervisor Slot
• Supervisors now use Dual Core CPU's
• Internal VRF's (Allows multiple independent routing tables to be created) up to 64
• Energywise Power Management
• UPoE (Universal PoE) 60 Watts per port to power not only phones but also other network, computer equipment that are becoming PoE enabled such as monitors, Thin Clients, etc

Software:
4500 will use the new IOS-XE for its operating system, it sits on top of a Linux Kernel which allows it to take advantage of the dual core CPU and allows separate software to be run. WireShark comes installed by default and allows packet capture for not only the Control Plane but for also the Data. Also new to the new chassis and supervisors is the VSS (Virtual Switching System) that behaves very similar to HSRP on routers in which there's one IP to manage multiple switches in an active active state. the endpoint isn't aware that there are 2 or more physical switches and only sees it as one; this allows for  very High Availability.

Current Capabilities:
The presenter went over things the current 4500 chassis can do, in our case we use 1 WS-4510-E. There's a feature called ISSU that allows upgrades on the Supervisors without having to physically reload the chassis or Sup which causes downtime. Something else I had no idea about is what's called EEM which is a built in editor that seems to be pretty feature rich. There's even a GUI that can be used for the editor.

Licensing:
Like everything else that's moving to the new version 15 IOS, the new IOS has every feature set installed but you're unable to use them until you license them.  By default the 4500 IOS comes with LAN Base but in order to enable IP services you'll have to purchase a license to turn on the IP Base features.

The New CCNP: Voice Certification is Expensive...For Me

Now that I'm preparing to deep dive into the CCNP: Voice track, I'm in the very early stages of figuring out what hardware, software, etc I'll need to get through the entire exam. At the very minimum I'll need to cough up at least $2,000-3,000 dollars I think. Sadly when I put together my CCNA: Voice lab before the new update I used all equipment that isn't compatible with the new version 8.x that Cisco is currently on. I have a few 1760 routers and possibly even some VWIC's and some other stuff that I might not be able to reuse. I should of done better research of the long term and what will be needed.

Oh well lesson learned, I'm going to either borrow equipment from work or purchase a few 2801's and a beefy PC to through all the Cisco Software on in a VM environment. I need a new PC any ways, it's about 4-5 years old lol. I can obtain IP phones for both Type-A and Type-B easily, my work laptop for Presence testing and other random things. I'll need to buy some cheap analog phones which is simple and other random things. I'm going to go off of this good diagram which is a HQ, one branch, and a PSTN router for external calls. If absolutely needed I'll buy equipment to make a 2nd branch office. Hopefully this will get me through everything. I'm estimating about 18 months of study time give or take. Cisco changes certification requirements so much that if I'm going to tackle this I need to start now rather than later. It would suck to get 3/4 through the CCNP: Voice and have to start over due to an update to the track.

User Input on Type-A and Type-B Phones

The SRND guide describes to types of phones which are the group of phones known as Type-A and the other group known as Type-B. Type-A phones consist mainly of the older and less power phone types such as the 7912's, 7940's, and 7960's. The Type-B phones are mainly the newer models such as 7941's and 7942's. The way you dial phone numbers vary by the phone type and the the protocol used (SCCP or SIP). Cisco phones connected to CUCM are basically dumb terminals that really on the CUCM to control them.

What's interesting is that user input when dialing numbers using SCCP on the Type-A phones relays a signalling event to CUCM every time a key is pressed. Which results in CUCM sending feedback regarding the buttons pressed in real time such as dial tone, ring back, etc. However when you're using SIP on Type-A phones, all user input events are stored until the user press the # key or Dial softkey. This is similar to cell phones where you dial the entire phone number you would like to call and then hit the "send" button to place the call with the carrier.

Dial Plan Design

I ran through most dial plan design recommendations today in the SRND guide. The example above show's the model that we've adopted due to the smaller size of our network environment.

Unified CM and CME Connectivity

There are two primary ways to connect Cisco Unified CM systems and CME's between sites, that is H.323 or SIP. The primary focus in the SRND seems to be on the H.323 model which is deployed using either a Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) or what's called a via-zone gatekeeper. The important thing to note between CUCM and CME is that H.450 is used with CME for supplementary services but not with CUCM which can turn into dropped calls over a PSTN due to compatibility issues. I believe CUBE or a via-zone gatekeeper is used to mitigate these issues and act as the middle man. SRND is a pretty high-level document so a lot of things I read aren't going to really explain the reasons why or how. That's what's the CCNP: Voice books should provide for me...hopefully.

Gatekeeper Redundancy

There seems to be two different options for gatekeeper design, clustering and directory gatekeeper (DGK). It looks as if the preferred method is clustering gatekeepers together rather than creating a DGK. Using gatekeeper clustering, you configure a local gatekeeper at each site but then you make redundant alternate connection other sites. This allows for the gatekeeper to provide primary call routing for the main site along with providing alternate call routing for other locations connected to it and vice versa.

DGK depends on the Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) or by configuring multiple DGK's in your environment. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how this particular way works a little more.

Call Processing Overview

I'm on part 2 of the Unified CM SRND guide, it's a good 400 pages long so it's going to take me a while to finish this section. The last few days I went through 40 pages or so reading up on a high-level over view regarding the best ways to deploy Call Manager 8.x along with providing scalability, resiliency, and high speed performance. This is for all three flavors of Cisco Unified Communications:

Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM)
Cisco Unified Communcations Manager Business Edition (CMBE)
Cisco Unified Communications Express (CME)

Unified CM Clustering over the WAN

I went over yet another Cisco VoIP deployment model which involves configuring a CM cluster that is spread over multiple remote sites. So there is a subscriber and maybe a backup subscriber (depending on resiliency needed) at each site that is to be involved with the CM Cluster. With that you provide either local fail over or remote fail over. Local fail over provides the most resilience sense it implies that there's a subscriber and backup subscriber at each site. Remote fail over provides more flexibility since you are failing over to another remote sites CM subscriber server essentially instead of failing over to your own local subscriber. This model only requires one subscriber as well.

I also reviewed the section that discusses virtualization of all of these different deployment models using Unified Computing System (UCS) which is just all of the Cisco VoIP products deployed on a VMware system using Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) as the media for communication between them all.

Intercompany Media Engine Architecture

I had a quick study session this morning reading up more on a new feature to me called Cisco Intercompany Media Engine. I went over the call processing and how it uses IME compatible ASA's and Unified CM's to learn and place calls between enterprises. Along with our to fail over to PSTN in case of connectivity or latency issues. It's a pretty neat technology but I'm curious as to how many enterprises implement this solution currently.

Multisite Distributed VoIP Deployment

I briefly went over the Multisite Distributed VoIP Deployment section in the SRND Guide. It has very similar attributes and requirements as the centralized model except it is a lot more versatile due to having a call processing cluster at each site. That eliminates the need to depend on the WAN or whatever media of inter-site connectivity for calls as much. I also began reading about the Cisco Intercompany Media Engine which seems to dynamically interconnect different enterprise organization phone numbers and create a network similar to how internet was when it was first created. Instead of just IP services, the network is used to connect Unified Communications within all the Enterprises. There's a lot more to learn about this technology and I may be off a little bit with my understanding of it at this point in time.

VoIP Site Based Design Models

I spent sometime this morning reading through the various VoIP deployment models and how to implement high availability with each model while trying to get over this cold I currently have. So far I only went through the Campus model and the model that shows centralized call processing with multiple sites. In my current work environment we currently use the latter which is a centralized site that provides all the call processing which is then distributed to our multiple remote call centers. We're working on converting this into a more highly available solution which is a distributed model.

I plan on reading up on the other site based design guides that shows the distributed model along with a few others. I'm starting to see that there are multiple ways to provide redundancy using tools such as SRST (Survivable Remote Site Telephony), Distributed Communications Manager Express (CME), and many others.