Best practice for Collaboration (Voice and Video)

[Joshua Learn]

What are the best practice recommendations for running Cisco Collaboration (Voice and Video) on Meraki gear?  Are there recommendations based around Quality Of Service?

[colo · Accepted solution]

Great question. Yes, there are best practices. You can find this on the documentation.meraki.com website.

A Cisco Meraki wireless network has the intelligence built-in with deep packet inspection to identify voice and video applications and prioritize the traffic using queuing and tagging to inform the rest of the network how to handle your voice traffic. Below is a summary of the best practices to provide the best voice quality over wireless.

1. Perform a pre-install RF survey for overlapping 5 GHz voice-quality coverage with -67 dB signal strength in all areas.
2. If possible, create a new SSID dedicated to your voice over IP devices.
   1. Set Authentication type to 'Pre-shared key with WPA2'
   2. Set WPA encryption mode to 'WPA2 only'.
   3. Enable '802.11r' fast roaming.
   4. Enable '5 GHz band only'.
   5. Set Minimum bitrate to '12 Mbps' or higher.
3. Enable Bridge mode. If you cannot provide a VLAN across the entire floor, use Layer 3 roaming.
4. Enable 'VLAN tagging' and assign a VLAN dedicated to wireless voice. If you cannot dedicate an SSID to voice, assign a VLAN dedicated to wireless.
5. Set a 'Per-client bandwidth limit' to 5 Mbps with 'Speed Burst' to limit all non-voice traffic
6. Set a 'Per-SSID bandwidth limit' to unlimited.
7. Enable 'Traffic shaping' on the SSID to prioritize all voice traffic
   1. Create a traffic shaping rule for 'All voice & video conferencing'
   2. Add 'Custom expressions' for the IP and ports used by your servers hosting Microsoft Lync / Skype for Business, Jabber, or Spark
   3. Set the Per-client bandwidth limit to 'Ignore SSID per-client limit (unlimited)' from the drop down.
   4. Set PCP to '6'
   5. Set DSCP to '6 (WMM Voice)'
8. Verify the Voice VLAN is tagged correctly.
9. Verify your uplinks and Switches have Quality of Service defined with the maximum PCP and DSCP values
10. Verify DSCP trust is enabled on switch ports to APs and uplinks
11. Verify your Windows Group Policy to ensure your devices are tagging application traffic with DSCP (not on by default)
12. Verify your voice server configuration to ensure Microsoft Lync / Skype and Call Manager have DSCP enabled (not on by default)