Configuring an Hardware Conference Bridge

Today we'll try to set up a lab with hardware resources in order to successfully create a Meet-Me Conference

The hardware I used here is :

HP Server with ESXi 5.0 on board

Cisco Unified Communications Manager 8.0 on ESXi

A Switch Cisco C3550

A router Cisco 3825 with two PVDM2-64 modules on board

A Cisco IPPhone 7945

A Laptop running Windows Xp Professional and Cisco IP Communicator

The Network Architecture is the following, sorry if it's just a drawing, I'll try to upload a proper diagram as soon as I get Visio, or other Design software.

The addressing scheme is :

Voice Network : 192.168.15.0/24, where .1 is the Gi0/1 interface on my 3825 Cisco router and the .2 is the IPPhone (provided by DHCP server configured on the router). You can see "VLAN 15" between brackets because I usually configure a proper VLAN Voice for my IPPhones, but since this is just a quick example with only one device, I connected my 7945 straight to the Gigabit 0/1 interface on the router.

The addresses here :

.1 Gigabit0/0 of 3825 router

.2 The IPPhone

Management Network : 10.0.0.0/8, used to connect almost everything, associated with VLAN 99, the IP Addresses here are the following :

.100 My router 3725, configured to perform InterVLAN routing

.101 Management IP address of my C3550 switch

.102 Cisco 3825, DSPFarm

.39 My Laptop (And CIPC)

.200 Management IP Address of ESXi

CUCM Network, 192.168.13.0/24, with VLAN 13, where

.1 default Gateway, on interface gi0/0.13 on 3725 router

.2 Publisher, virtualized on ESXi

.3 Subscriber, virtualized on ESXi, not used in this post

The proper configuration I made in order to configure my hardware conference resources are the following, again on both CUCM and router sides.

Router side :

We need to enable sccp service on the interface we wanna use to communicate with CUCM. Here is Gigabit0/0 :

sccp local GigabitEthernet0/0

sccp ccm 192.168.13.2 identifier 1

sccp ip precedence 1

sccp

We need now to configure a DSPFarm profile :

from config mode :

voice-card 0

dspfarm

dsp services dspfarm

Go back now on config mode an type :

dspfarm profile 1 conference

description DSPFARM Per Conferenze

codec g711ulaw

codec g711alaw

codec g729ar8

codec g729abr8

codec g729r8

codec g729br8

maximum sessions 4

associate application SCCP

in this way we allow all those codecs to be used on our conference (we can have a maximum of 4 conferences)

As a last step we can now Associate the DSPFarm profile with CUCM :

sccp ccm group 1

description DSPFARM

bind interface GigabitEthernet0/0

associate ccm 1 priority 1

associate profile 1 register DSPFARM

we can now save the configuration and exit. Here is a partial show of my 3825 router configuration: 


hostname DSPFARM
!
!
ip dhcp pool DHCP_POOL
   network 192.168.15.0 255.255.255.0
   option 150 ip 192.168.13.2 
   default-router 192.168.15.1 
!
!
voice-card 0
 dspfarm
 dsp services dspfarm
!
!         
interface GigabitEthernet0/0
 ip address 10.0.0.102 255.0.0.0
 duplex full
 speed auto
 media-type rj45
!
!
!
interface GigabitEthernet0/1
 ip address 192.168.15.1 255.255.255.0
 duplex auto
 speed auto
 media-type rj45
!
router eigrp 100
 network 10.0.0.0 0.0.0.255
 auto-summary
!
!sccp local GigabitEthernet0/0
sccp ccm 192.168.13.2 identifier 1 
sccp ip precedence 1
sccp
!
sccp ccm group 1
 description DSPFARM
 bind interface GigabitEthernet0/0
 associate ccm 1 priority 1
 associate profile 1 register DSPFARM
!
dspfarm profile 1 conference
 description DSPFARM Per Conferenze
 codec g711ulaw
 codec g711alaw
 codec g729ar8
 codec g729abr8
 codec g729r8
 codec g729br8
 maximum sessions 4
 associate application SCCP
!
!
gateway   
 timer receive-rtp 1200
!
!
!
end

CUCM Side :

We need here to register a conference bridge resource :

From CM Administration Platform, go to Media Resources > Conference Bridge

Choose Add new

From Conference Bridge Type Menù, choose Cisco IOS Conference Bridge

 Save and exit. As we can see now, the DSPFarm router is added and registered

We can now navigate on Media Resources > Media Resource Group, and add a new Media Resource Group, where we'll select our dspfarm as a Selected Media Resource

Save and navigate on Media Resources > Media Resource Group List, where we will add a new MRGL containing our MRGCf, just created

We can now save the configuration and assign this MRGLCf to our Device Pool

Ok, it is almost done. We need now to create a Meet-me number. Go to Call Routing > Meet-me Number/Pattern, and create a new number (pay attention here, it must not overlap with our number plan)

I chosed 801. IEEE is not involved here :) Now everything is configured and we can test it.

I firstly used CIPC. Go Off-Hook (press New call softphone), and navigate between your softkeys in order to find "Meet Me". Please be sure that your Softphone template have it.

Once that you press Meet-me button, you can see on your Diplay "Enter Number". Enter now 801, you'll see on the display that the conference has been joined.

Repeat these last steps with all the devices you want (no more than 15), but they must have a device pool configured with that MRGL, or this MRGL must be configured directly on the phone.

For a more detailed procedure please refer on the official Cisco Website, here