There are many zones in Cisco TelePresence products; so many, in fact, that there is a lot of confusion about the different zones and their uses. This post should help clarify the many zones and their uses within Cisco TelePresence products.
Read moreCalling Search Spaces (CSS) is the second component defining a class of service, and I like to make an analogy by comparing them to your desk drawer. Remember back when you put all your phone books in your desk drawer or on a shelf. A CSS is nothing more than a collection of partitions, or phone books. So if you have the Dallas partition in your desk drawer, then you could call Dallas numbers, and if you have the Chicago partition in your CSS, you could call Chicago numbers as well. But if you don’t have the Dallas partition in your CSS, then you can’t call the Dallas numbers. It is that simple. A Calling Search Space is just a collect of partitions.
Read moreClass of Service within Unified Communication Manager (UCM) is a way of controlling which phone numbers a particular device can call. For example, do you want the phone in the lobby to be able to call a long-distance number? Normally, we would not want this to be possible, and restricting the phone numbers a particular device can reach is used extensively within most corporations. Cisco Class of Service is achieved by implementing two components that allow great flexibility in this area. These two basic components are called Partitions and Calling Search Spaces.
Read moreThis is another topic of heated debate, and it changes from network to network, but I found a simple approach that works in most cases. Since I have four queues and four classes of traffic, I need to categorize my important traffic into four classes. Strictly for explanation purposes I took some liberty in defining four categories of traffic that are very effective in both large and small networks. These classes are: Real Time Protocol (RTP), Network Management (NetMgt), Business Critical, and the Default.
Read moreQuality of Service (QoS) is a topic that causes a lot of debate and confusion in the networking community. Over the years, I’ve seen many implementations that were not effective for various reasons, mostly because they were either over-engineered or they fell short and did not protect the critical flows adequately. As a result, I found an approach that is very effective and quite simple and provides a QoS policy that is “just right” and can grow if required. The goal of this series of posts is not to teach you the ins and outs of implementation but to educate you enough about QoS so that you can build a QoS policy that is just right for your network.
Read more