Adding MGCP FXS Ports to H323 Gateways

[travlmoore]

Currently all of our Gateways are H.323 gateways.  Due to a business requirement we are now going to be enforcing our users to use forced authorization codes to place LD calls.  In order to facilitate this on our analog phones it seems the only option is to use MGCP gateways.

From what I understand we can run multiple signalling protocols on voice gateways.  We have a variety of gateway models but by and large most of these gateways are VG224 models.  I think what I would like to do is keep the current h.323 dial-peer and voice-port settings for the PLAR emergency phones that we have on these gateways and only change the analog phones to MGCP. 

Most of the route patterns to these h323 gateways look like this... 102[0-5] and then the dial peers on the individual gateways route to the appropriate voice port like this...

dial-peer voice 1020 pots
 huntstop
 destination-pattern 1002
 port 2/21

The Voice port config looks like this...

voice-port 2/21
 timeouts interdigit 7
 description tie pr 1520
 station-id name PTRM 1020
 station-id number 1020
 caller-id enable

My plan is to create the MGCP Gateways in CUCM as wells as the DN's... in this example x1020.  I will then enable MGCP on the gateways.  After that my assumption is that I can individually remove the Voice-port and dial-peer configurations and then add the MGCP dial peers with the port and "service MGCPAPP" commands.

My other option is to redo the entire gateway at the same time and schedule after-hours down-times to make the change.  I want to avoid this if possible as we have 40+ gateways that need to be changed.

Basically I just need some guidance or confirmation if my plan will work or if there is a better way to do this?  Are there any caveats or known issues I should look out for when running multiple signalling protocols on the same gateway?

Thanks,

Trav Moore

[Aaron Harrison · Accepted solution]

Hi

There's no problem with a hybrid setup using both H.323 and MGCP. CUCM just sees the gateway as two devs - one h.323 endpoint, and a bunch of mgcp endpoints.

You can configure the GW for config-download from CUCM, and it will then download config and peers from there as you configure and reset it in the CUCM GUI.

Just ensure that you know which ports must be kept H.323, and don't configure those in CUCM.

It may be easier to go 100% MGCP to avoid such admin issues - e.g. someone less knowledgeable than yourself coming in and configuring what looks like an 'unused' port in CUCM, and killing off the h.323 port..

Regards

Aaron

[travlmoore]

Thanks Aaron,

I was wondering about the MGCP ccm-config command but was worried it would re-write the entire h.323 gateway to MGCP.  Good to know that it won't and that this is a potential option.

I actually do prefer the idea of only having one signalling protocol (I would like to go all SIP if not for the FAC codes needed). Unfortunately any maintenance that I do that impacts end-users requires a lot of after-hours scheduling and maintenance alerts.  These gateways have a combination of fax-machines, PLAR's (emergency phones and overhead paging), and analog phones.  Maybe eventually I can migrate all of these ports to MGCP.  For now the analog phones are the only ones that must be converted and if I can quickly convert them without anyone noticing aside from the minimal reset in CUCM then this would be ideal.

Thanks!

[travlmoore]

Thanks again Aaron!... Also I had one more quick question.... Is there anyway for CUCM to configure a description for the dial-peer that is automatically created when using the ccm-config command?

For example - 

dial-peer voice 99920 pots
 service mgcpapp
 port 2/0

Is there anyway to predefine a description for this gateway through call manager that would be updated through the XML config or do I need to go to the gateway and add it manually myself.... Basicly I would like the actual extension for the phone included in the description for the dial peer like this...

dial-peer voice 99920 pots
 description x1020
 service mgcpapp
 port 2/0

Thanks,

Trav Moore

[Aaron Harrison · Accepted solution]

Hi

I'm afraid not - you'll have to do that manually. 

The port is only identified by an MGCP endpoint ID on the gateway, and CUCM doesn't push the description or line info into the config.

Aaron

[travlmoore]

Thank you