FastTrack Training. "Network Basics." "Fundamentals of telephony." Part 3. Eddie Martin. December 2012

About a year ago, I noticed an interesting and fascinating series of lectures by Eddie Martin, which is incredibly intelligible, thanks to its history and real life examples, as well as colossal experience in teaching, which allows us to gain an understanding of rather complex technologies.



We continue the cycle of 27 articles based on his lectures:

01/02: “Understanding the OSI Model” Part 1 / Part 2
03: “Understanding the Cisco Architecture”
04/05: “The Basics of Switching or Switches” Part 1 / Part 2
06: “ Switches from Cisco ”
07: “ The area of ​​use of network switches, the value of Cisco switches ”
08/09:“ Basics of a wireless LAN ” Part 1/ Part 2
10: “Products in the area of ​​wireless LANs”
11: “The value of Cisco wireless LANs”
12: “The basics of routing”
13: “The structure of routers, routing platforms from Cisco”
14: “The value of Cisco routers”
15/16: “Basics of data centers” Part 1 / Part 2
17: “Equipment for data centers”
18: “The value of Cisco in data centers”
19/20/21: “Fundamentals of telephony” Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3
22: Cisco Collaboration Products
23:“Cisco Collaboration Product Value”
24: “Security Essentials”
25: “Cisco Security Product Software”
26: “Cisco Security Product Value”
27: “Understanding Cisco Architectural Games (Overview)”

And Now Twenty-First of them.

FastTrack Training. "Network Basics." "Fundamentals of telephony." Part 3. Eddie Martin. December 2012

Communication Manager CM is a central element of everything we do. And plays an important role for voice transmission.

What is Jabber? I expected this question from you! I wait for him every time I start talking about telephony. Initially, Jabber was the name of a company that created its own, non-standard protocol, which was simpler than the traditional protocol used in SIP. The traditional protocol was not effective enough in this case.

Jabber created a separate protocol, which was a more adaptable and thinner client, easily used on networks. Cisco acquired Jabber in 2008. Their Jabber protocol has become the standard XMPP protocol that provides instant messaging and reports the user's presence on the network, and it is still used as the main protocol for this purpose.

Jabber is now a serious software client that Cisco uses on your devices. If you have a computer phone program, it uses Jabber for Windows, if you have a MacBook, it uses Jabber for Mac OS, if you have an iPhone, then it uses Jabber for iPhone. There are Jabber for iPad and Jabber for Android. It is a universal client for all mobile and stationary devices with any operating system. In fact, Jabber is a whole line of products that allows voice messaging. I use it on my MacBook and I can receive a voicemail message, and with the help of another client I can get a video to it, even after a month. I think that the next version of Jabber will acquire this feature and will also be able to work with email video messages.

We must download Jabber if required by the CM communication manager, otherwise we do not need it.

Jabber also works with video, but in real time like Skype, when I, for example, talk to my wife through the MacBook. We can say that this is an analogue of Skype by Cisco. Often people incorrectly call Skype a client, this is wrong. You cannot take Skype and put it inside our telephone network. Does a client need to know your IP address? Not. Simply log in to the server.



Suppose I take my iPhone, it is located on the right in our picture, logs in to the system and dials a person with an IP phone on the left side of the picture. My client interacts with SMS, his client also interacts with SMS, and the communication manager connects us. If I want to talk with another subscriber located outside our corporate network, SM determines this, creates a secure “tunnel”, that is, a secure channel, and I call this subscriber as if he belonged to our network.



So, Jabber is our client. I note that there are no perfect clients for either Mac or Android.

What is WebEx? Where is he in this picture? He is in the cloud! He needs a cloud service company. This is a serious product, thanks to which we can create conferences and share our desktop, it also reports on the presence of the user. It provides video broadcasting solutions and allows you to record this event. In fact, we have as many WebEx centers. This is the Meeting Center, which allows you to organize video bridges. We can share documents. Then follows the training center Training Center. What is the difference between these centers?



In the training center, I can do whatever I want to organize a conference. Here I can create small groups of people, test their work, I can quickly select people into small groups and then also quickly return them to a common group, I can instantly launch conferences. This is really a very powerful tool.



Next, we have the Support Center. It provides technical assistance, monitoring the health of your laptop and organizes the access of a remote assistant to your desktop, if you need it.

Our WebEx also has an Event Center. Suppose I have a new product that I want to introduce everywhere, and I want 5,000 people to become familiar with it. I want them to buy my equipment. Do I need to fly to all these people and offer it to them personally? No, I just join the center of events and create my own market there. I see my customers there and even can check if they are happy with the purchase according to the reviews they leave. This is a great thing for organizing trade.

The training center also helps to collect useful statistics, for example, how many mail messages you send.

Jabber is a federated client, it is designed for federated networks where anyone can log in and create their own node. Users of this client can exchange messages using different servers.

WebEx cloud service is free to interact with Salesforce cloud service. We also provide our customers with the Jabber SDK development kit so that they can integrate the client into their SAP business automation systems.

The architecture proposed by us has unlimited possibilities. We can add more and more applications to it. We have a virtual server application compatible with any other applications.

I note that a Jabber user can be placed outside our federal network and our firewall, and he will still work with our corporate client. I can use this client on different servers.



Now we will return to our old scheme. I will draw a CM communication manager, a switch, a router, a PC with Jabber, an IP phone.

Cisco once acquired the Norwegian company Tandberg, which designed and manufactured video communications equipment. Cisco has long been engaged in the development of video transmission tools. If you recall, in the late 90s, Cisco created AVID - an architecture for voice, video and integrated data. I have seen many sold voice systems, but I have not seen sold video systems. This video equipment scares me a little, I am a specialist in networks that mainly use voice. Tandberg has made great strides in selling video systems. This has become very important and today everyone needs systems for transmitting video.

Let’s take another look at how this was integrated into our solutions. SM establishes a connection and monitors calls. But suppose you have the largest video device for conferences on three screens — the TX 9000 or CTS 3000. This is an Immersive device that creates a 3D surround image to capture the user. I will depict it in the upper left part of the figure, and to the right and above the switch I will place a video input device, without which our three screens are useless. This is a codec and image decoder. It is connected via a switch to the CM communications manager.



We know that CM controls voice flow. But he also controls the video stream. Add the MX 200/300 business video system on the left. It has one screen. To process such an image, you need your own video codec, I will draw it on the upper left of the switch. He is also associated with SM.

Add another personal video device of the EX 60/90 series with a screen diagonal of 21 or 24 inches. What is located outside of it? A codec that is also associated with a communications manager.

Thus, we can connect all these video devices to the CM in the same way as we connected the voice devices. However, the video transmission process is somewhat different from the voice transmission process. How do we arrange a video conference? We can inform the participants about it through Outlook. Suppose I want to arrange a meeting with you three, but first I want to discuss important things with one of you.



I create an agenda, or a schedule of visits. Suppose I want to talk to the first person in a room with three screens. I am creating a meeting, the participants of which will be me, he and a room with screens.



I have a schedule as an appointment, you have it as an invitee, and what is a schedule for a room with screens? Tandberg’s application called TMS - Telepresentation Management Kit. It controls the room, or rather, the video device placed in it. This application is a schedule or equipment schedule.

When I send an email, it gets into the email inbox, and TMS replies that it received this email and made a schedule of all your video equipment and a schedule of the rooms in which it is located. There is a tablet in the room with our three screens, and if you go there at the appointed time, you can see the inscription on its screen: "Your conference is here." She was posted there by the Communications Manager SM. You press the button on the tablet and thereby send a CM signal that the conference has begun.

After receiving the signal, the CM turns to the TMS with a request what is needed for the meeting. TMS replies that it is necessary to connect the room with three screens and the room where there is an EX screen. This establishes the connection we need between the participants in the meeting.



If someone tries to occupy this room and send an application for holding a conference there, TMS will inform that it is currently busy and it is impossible to hold a meeting there. He is responsible for using all rooms for video conferencing. Conference scheduling is possible through Google video presentation services such as Coogle Talk. TMS is a server application, a virtual server. It is sold like any software product.

So, we had the first meeting and now we want to start the conference, now with the participation of three people and two rooms. I send an invitation to the participants and send a room request to TMS. But there is one problem. If 2 people participate in a conversation, data transfer is simply organized between them. But if 3 people participate, it is necessary to create a video bridge. We connect two infrastructures with a device called the MCU, a multipoint conference module. This module is designed to create video bridges.



It is based on equipment for displaying and broadcasting streaming video and is managed by TMS. An MCU is hardware, or hardware, that can play the role of a software server. This is expensive equipment, one MCU module costs 60-80 thousand dollars. Thus, if we need to combine several video broadcasting points into a common network, we need an MCU. This is a dispatcher who changes the direction of video communication in accordance with our needs.

In addition, the MCU provides video device compatibility in a meeting. Suppose a few people use high-definition screens with HD 1080, while someone uses a standard screen resolution. MCU provides video transcoding. It receives signals from two screens with HD mode and converts them into a signal suitable for playback on the standard screen of the third conference participant. Conversely, a standard video signal is converted for display on a high-resolution screen.

This device supports the simultaneous operation of up to 188 HD screens in a single video conference. You can order the required number of MCUs when purchasing the entire TMS complex, depending on how extensive video conferencing is planned.

It is possible that with a large number of MCUs, we will need to call an administrative assistant to help TMS. This software application, called Conductor, or “Conductor,” manages the MCU infrastructure.



An important property of this equipment is the protection of video conferencing from unauthorized access, that is, encryption of video signals. It depends on the company’s policy: for example, I won’t be able to organize a videoconference between the CFO and the CEO if it is not encrypted. In this case, streaming video is encrypted throughout the entire image transmission channel.

The MCU can be located anywhere on the floor or on the ceiling. The video processing technology of the communication manager is the same as the voice processing technology. All our video devices are network devices that are managed by the communication manager and TMS according to the schedule.

All this infrastructure is located behind a firewall that protects clients. I will draw an element of the hierarchical cellular structure of HCS outside our network and connect a router to it.



So, there is no difference between managing products that are located within our network and managing external products.

The HCS framework is proof that the Cisco architecture works. We have non-traditional partners who want to provide voice communication services to customers. They never worked with our architecture, but they are willing to invest in our server platform UCS and virtual servers on which they download their applications. I mean companies that usually worked only with data transfer, for example, AT&T and Verizon. This is our modern policy of cooperation - we open the door for them to new technologies.

Thanks to this, we increase our sales. For example, if within three years the growth was 100%, 50%, 30%, this is very good. I will show in the figure two Contact Center Contact Centers from the HCS structure and our network.



Why are contact centers important to customers? Because they get technical support here, and for us, attracting new customers is directly related to our income.

We have 2 types of contact centers: CCX Express Contact Center is an application server and can process 450 agents, and the CCE organizational contact center can scale the contact center to process 7,000 agents. CCE combines several servers.



You will never hear about contact centers from IT professionals. To learn about SS, you need to contact the business unit of the company. Avaya has always been the global leader in contact center operations, and now, after merging with Nortel, they have further strengthened their position.
Do you know what has happened to Avaya customers in recent years? This company went in the development of a communications service in its own way and created large PBXs. Nortel had its own version of PBX called Symposium. However, there was a big difference between them, as between Ford and Chevrolet - you cannot like both brands of cars at the same time, but give preference to one.

And now all these people who are accustomed to traditional telephony got the bad news - old technologies are leaving the market and will no longer be supported. This gave us a great opportunity to intervene in the process with our decisions. Users were given the choice of staying further with Nortel or choosing Cisco.

What served as a new driver in the development of contact centers? Video! Customers wanted to have the ability to video conferencing for 10 or 20% of their staff, and we began to provide such an opportunity for at least 15% of the company's employees, that is, for the senior management.
Avaya, in partnership with Microsoft, created Rad Vision, but they did not have any network resources to develop their technology.

Once again I note that you need to conduct a constructive conversation with clients to find out their specific needs and the specifics of business processes. If we recall levels 8, 9 or 10, then cooperation with customers is the highest, 10 level, our religion. Clients do not want changes, they hate them, but the problem is that the industry itself is changing, it must change. So, we must explain to them these changes, talk about the risks that they bear, we must be honest with them in order to reserve the first place in this area.

Another reason customers like contact centers is the ability to upgrade them. And to upgrade the traditional telephone network is simply impossible, it can only be completely replaced.

If there is a contact center outside our network that we can use as a host, this will be an example of partnerships with the owners of this CC.
There are peak periods when providers need to expand their network capabilities. For example, annual mass filing of tax returns by April 15th. To keep the network at peak load, customers can take advantage of our shared hosting solution and scalable virtual server anywhere.

Back in 2001, I’ll say that then Cisco was an anvil, such a huge heavy piece of metal on which horseshoes are made. Everything that Cisco has complicated in its time, we now have to simplify. Figuratively speaking, then Cisco cut down a lot of trees, I mean electronic trees, and where one solution needed one tree, Cisco took six. But over time, we simplified it. We must explain to our customers how they should want to communicate, how to turn the past into the future, and who will help them best in this.
Cisco has a long and successful history because we have been at the forefront of advanced telephony technology. We created IP-telephony and transformed it into a unified equipment for collaboration, provided mobility and video communications, it was we who developed an advanced strategy for the development of the entire vast communications sphere.



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