NLR Telepresence

Getting connected to the Telepresence Exchange

Brief background

The Telepresence Exchange is operated by the NOC and engineers of National LambdaRail, and it is located on the backbone of the network in Kansas City, Missouri. To enable signaling and media flow from your system(s) to other R&E systems through the R&E Telepresence Exchange, A SIP adjacency is established between your site and the R&E exchange using E.164 numbering for destinations on each end. Normally signaling is handled on your site by a Cisco Call Manager. You must ensure that the signaling protocols can flow unimpeded to and from the R&E exchange through your campus edge or firewall(s).

Prerequisites:

• You will need to have a working Cisco TelePresence system and Cisco Call Manager (CUCM) or the equivalent such as a Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) to coordinate call routing and signaling from your Telepresence system(s) to the R&E exchange. These should have recent code versions. the R&E exchange does not provide Call Manager services.
• You must be able to reach the R&E TelePresence Exchange from your CUCM. If you can ping or traceroute to 216.24.184.129 that will suffice.
• You should understand in detail the layer2 and layer3 network path from your end-system to the NLR or Internet2 edge, paying particular attention to devices that might slow or disrupt the flow of SIP signaling and media (firewalls or 'packet-shapers' are generally the worst potential culprits, but not the only ones.) If possible, please provide a functional diagram to us to help in identifying potential trouble-spots and troubleshooting.
• If you have questions, contact the NLR Network Operations Center at noc@nlr.net .

In addition, to complete the connection to the R&E Exchange, you will
need to provide the following:

• The E.164 number of your Telepresence system.
  • In the United States, this should be an 11-digit number conventionally of the form 1-(your area code, 3 digits)-(exchange, 3 digits)-(4-digit local number).
    • example: 1 555 555 1212
      
  • In foreign countries, this should be a validly-formed E.164 number, usually (country code)-(city code, if applicable)-(local number). Length will vary.
    
    • example (Beijing, China): 86 10 111111
      
  • You may be able to obtain a valid, unique number from your campus telecommunications organization.
• IP address of your Call Manager (CUCM) or CUBE (Cisco Unified Border Element). This will be the device that terminates your end of a SIP adjacency to the R&E exchange.
• The R&E exchange attempts to continuously verify satisfactory function of the path to your codec (or edge) using Cisco SLA. If you are willing for us to do this, we need you to enable "SLA responder" for our querier (we can give you details); please give us the IP address of your codec and the ports it's responding on.

After the information-gathering step, configuration and testing will occur.

1. You will need to make sure that the signaling/media path is open between your CUCM and Codec or CUBE and the R&E exchange in 216.24.184.128/28.
2. You will configure a SIP adjacency from your CUCM or CUBE to the R&E exchange's Session Border Element at 216.24.184.130. the R&E exchange will likewise configure a SIP adjacency from its SBE to your CUCM or CUBE.
3. You create a dial plan and implement it in the CUCM which determines which SIP adjacency to take toward Telepresence numbers that are not local to your CUCM; normally you just hand off to the R&E exchange anything that should be telepresence but isn't local.
4. The exchange will provide you with a list of E.164 numbers of other sites and their contacts as well as the exchange's multipoint telepresence switch.
5. We will also help you make some test calls to verify that everything is working.

NLR has created a TelePresence FAQ to answer your questions about what TelePresence is, how it's different from traditional teleconferencing, how you can participate on NLR, and where to find out more.

http://www.nlr.net/telepresence-faq.php

Dan Green and his colleagues at North Carolina State University have created a directory of Cisco Telepresence users, with geographic information from Google maps.  Add your own information -- please enter only your own, not other sites' information -- or look for other sites to talk with.

http://www.wolftech.ncsu.edu/telepresence/directory/

Users and administrators of NLR's Cisco TelePresence may join a listserv mailing list.  To request to be added, send a note to listserv@indiana.edu with "subscribe nlr-telepresence-l" in the text of your note.

Here is some early information for potential and present users of NLR Cisco Telepresence on getting connected to this exciting option.

TelePresence and You (3-09)

NLR TelePresence Update (3-09)

There are a number of issues getting Telepresence signaling and media traffic through campus firewalls.   This article on Cisco's website explains how to get the traffic through Cisco firewalls, which you can extrapolate for your own.  Also, the appendix in the new (May 2009) Cisco Press book Cisco Telepresence Fundamentals has extensive technical details on the protocols and ports used by each Telepresence-related protocol.

This graph shows attempted and failed Telepresence calls into the Session Border Controller in Kansas City. Samples are made every minute, but granularity of the calls is 5min. It's an indication of how many calls are coming in.