Python for Network Programming

The era in which a network engineer only had to manage or configure one device at a time is quickly disappearing. With the growth of network devices, the adoption of cloud, and the desire of companies to be more flexible for a competitive edge in their market, the old ways of performing network management do not work anymore.

If you examine the way devices have been managed for 20 years, you can see that there has been no good way to manage machine-to-machine communication with the network. Usually, device configuration by network engineers generally looked like the process below:

How to enable Early Offer in SIP Trunk CUCM?

One of the most frequently asked question, when connecting Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) to Public Switch Telephony Network or to any other VoIP system with a SIP Trunk, is how to configure SIP Early Offer media negotiations for this SIP trunk. By default, CUCM SIP trunks send the INVITE message without an initial offer (Delayed Offer). CUCM has the following three configurable options to enable a SIP trunk to send the offer in the INVITE message (Early Offer). Let's see what all these options are.

What are Media Termination Points (MTPs) in the CUCM Environment?

Today we are going to discuss a topic, which confuses the newbies a lot, when they start working with Cisco Collaboration devices. It will be about one of the Media Resources, namely about Media Termination Points (MTPs). The beginners are always confused about the purpose of MTPs.  Why we would need an MTP and how it is different from transcoder? The concept of transcoder is pretty straight forward - when there's a codec mismatch between two endpoints (like G711 / G729), a transcoder will be used to "translate" the codecs.  But why MTP?

SIP Early Offer vs Delayed Offer

The most visited page in my blog is CUCM SIP Trunk to ITSP connection. From time to time my readers and students ask me to explain what the difference between the Early Offer and Delayed Offer in the SIP signaling is. Let's say your ITSP want you to use SIP signaling with Early Offer in the SIP Trunk. How can you be sure, that your SIP trunk really works in Early Offer mode?

CVP Scripting Part 1 (CVPS1) Course at Knowledge Club Slovakia

Many people, who work with Cisco UCCE/PCCE, ask me questions about developing IVR applications for  CVP VXML Server. These are so called Call Studio (or just Studio) Applications. In order to provide all the answers, several years ago I created my own developed CVP Scripting Part 1 (CVPS1) course. The course was presented by Knowledge Club Slovakia for CVP Admins in order to provide the additional information about developing VXML Call Studio projects. We will be happy to assist you, for your corporate customers or individuals who are interested in all CCE Solutions. And today I'm going to share some information about this training to you.

UCCE/PCCE ICM Components Processes - Administration Server (AW)

Our tour into ICM processes would be incomplete, if we, of course, don't mention some words about the ICM Administration Server and Data Server (AW). Earlier we discussed Router, Logger and PG processes. The AW Server is the main interface used for ICM configuration, providing the ability for configuration changes as well as real-time reporting. A database resides on the Administration and Data Server, which contains a copy of the configuration information contained in the Logger. 

UCCE/PCCE ICM Components Processes - Peripheral Gateway (PG)

The next part of our UCCE/PCCE story is about the ICM Peripheral Gateways or PGs (click ICM Router Processes or ICM Logger Processes to find appropriate information). ICM PGs provide the data interfaces between the ICM Central Controller and foreign devices (peripherals), such as an ACD (CUCM), IVR system (CVP), or any other device that distributes contacts such as calls, email, or web.

UCCE/PCCE ICM Components Processes - Logger

Let's continue our conversation about the ICM components processes (the beginning is here) and now it's time to discuss the second component of the ICM Central Controller - Logger. It goes hand in hand with the Router, and it is also called the database server. The Loggers are also always duplexed and are associated with a Call router. Therefore, we have Router A and Logger A, Router B and Logger B, and so on. These database servers are our SQL database servers providing storage for configuration and real-time information.

UCCE/PCCE ICM Components Processes - Call Router

Hi all, 

When you troubleshoot issues in Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise, you will definitely have some problems related to its brain - the ICM. Of course, in order to find out where the problem is in your ICM, you have to collect logs and analyze it. However, the ICM components have their own internal processes. To know which log to collect, you have to understand the roles of the processes on every ICM components. These skills will greatly enhance your understanding of the Cisco Unified CCE solution and will aid in troubleshooting simple problems. We will start from the main component of course - and it is the ICM Call Router. 

Soure Port 5060 on Cisco CUBE for your SIP trunk connection to an ITSP

Recently, one of our students encountered a problem when connecting his CUCM to a telephony provider (ITSP) via a SIP trunk. Between the CUCM and the ITSP, a CUBE gateway was installed, as expected. The problem was the following: when making an outgoing call to the ITSP, CUBE sent a SIP INVITE, however, the provider did not respond to this request in any way, and no response messages were received from it.

Of course, the first thing to do in such a situation is to check which transport layer protocol (TCP or UDP) is configured on the gateway. However, in this case, the ITSP requested SIP messages to be sent with UDP transport, but Cisco gateways by default send all SIP messages with UDP, i.e. this was not the cause of the problem (you can control it with debug ccsip messages command). After talking with the provider's engineer, it was found out that they expect communication to the SIP gateway with the Destination Port = 5060, but they would also like to see Source Port as 5060 as well.