Call Manager 10.5.x & Cisco 2900 voice gateway - MGCP - PRI to SIP trunk

[sprintership]

Experts,

I do have Call Manager 10.5.x and Cisco 2900 voice gateway. I wonder if there is any license needed for upgrading to SIP trunk.

Also if other requirements are needed as well. 

What about SIP security? Simple SIP port forwarding and IP authorization between SIP provider and my firewall? 

[Ritesh Desai]

Hi,

For 2900 to support SIP TRUNK from telco, you will require CUBE-STD licenses to support calls. 1 call 1 session. So if you are expecting 10calls per second including Incoming and outgoing then you require 10 CUBE-STD trunk licenses.

2900 is EOL declared long back. You need to check with TAC whether CUBE licenses for ISR 2900 is provided.

Regards,
Ritesh
Please rate helpful post.

[sprintership]

is there any way to check in the system if that license exist or this is virtual license? 

[Jaime Valencia]

The kind of licenses you require are RTU and are paper licenses, so no, you will not find them in the GW, Only the most current releases use smart licensing and then you can get a count of how many sessions you can have. ISR G2 have been EOS for many years (since 2017)

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/routers/2900-series-integrated-services-routers-isr/eos-eol-notice-c51-737831.html

So it's not possible to buy any kind of licensing for those ISRs right now. Also, they will no longer get any SW maintenance and vulnerability support by the end of the year. 

If you want to buy CUBE licenses, you would need to buy a new ISR 4K, or use vCube.

Your CUCM is also no longer receiving any SW maintenance since early this month, you really need to look into upgrading to current releases.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/unified-communications/unified-communications-manager-callmanager/eos-eol-notice-c51-741767.html

[sprintership]

Thank you for explanation. new router is pracy like hell so in order to keep existing 2951 can i use vCube? Is this just virtual license? 

CCUM 10.5 upgrade to 11 is possible and not an issue. 

Thank you so much. 

[Jaime Valencia]

Reach out to a local Cisco partner WITH voice specializations to discuss your need of a CSR 1000v with vCube in it to get details of what you need to order and options to deploy it.

CSR 14 is due before the end of the year, and then 11.x will become EOS, you want to target 12.5 for any upgrade right now.

[sprintership]

Thank you Jaime,

I looked at prices of 4K version and some of them are not that expensive. My current one is 2951 and wonder what performance should I pick from 4K - I see 4351 in good price and it says performance 200Mbps - I do have about 300 phones and probably 15 calls at time is max - I wonder if I should go with something better or even cheaper

I have also 8 port module in 2951 - is that would be ok for new 4K ?

[sprintership]

If I look at thios:

https://blog.router-switch.com/2017/04/upgrade-your-cisco-routers/

2951 is comparable to Cisco 4351 ISR  - I see prices about 3K as well as 5K for same product. Does it have to have specific OS or feature in order to use SIP trunk (besides CUBE which is separate) ?

[TONY SMITH]

Depending on when and how the voice gateway was ordered, it may be come with some CUBE licensing included.  There's no way to tell by looking at it unfortunately.  Is the gateway on Cisco support?  If so then it would show up as "FL-CUBEE-5" or similar as a minor item in the support contract.  I just checked a couple of our customers' and as a quick sample I found one 2921 CME/SRST came with 10 CUBE sessions, one came with 5 and a 2951 didn't include any.

[sprintership]

no no no !!!!

I do have Smartent on 2951 so Cisco replied:

"As we can see that we have the uck9 as permanent:

Index 3 Feature: uck9
Period left: Life time
License Type: Permanent
License State: Active, In Use
License Count: Non-Counted
License Priority: Medium

CUBE is part of the UCK9 package on Cisco Routing platforms and is a Right-to-Use (RTU) license. There is no licensing file to install to use the CUBE feature set.

Yes, there are limitations for the number of calls supported and that varies on your router model.
2951 will support 600 calls. Here is the screenshot for cube supported platforms: graph not included.

You also asked for the cube-T STD, So cube-T STD is a standalone and CUBE-T is CUBE-trunking which is One trunk session license. This interfaces with your ITSP. A typical scenario, where you register your phones to your CUCM and connect to ITSP using your SIP Trunk."

So we have  UCK9 so our equipment is capable do 600 SIp sessions based on 2951. But for god sake there is another CUBE-T STD needed for ITSP SIP trunk provider. 

1. Is this included in UCK9 or this is separate license? 

if separate

2. One CUBE-T STD license for one SIP trunk connection - point to point between my 2951 and their external IP, if I have another external SIP provider I do need second license - am I right?

3. What about in SIP trunk sessions? I guess UCK9 covers this. 

This confuses a lot. 

[TONY SMITH]

The relevant CUBE licences are per session, ie per concurrent call.  So "IF" your router had been one of the bundles with some CUBE licences included, for example FL-CUBEE-5 then that would licence for 5 concurrent calls whether that was all to one ITSP or split across two.

By the way although it might be able to support 600 concurrent calls, in reality the number of calls setup per second would likely be the limit.  For example I had an install where call setup rates were exceeding the capacity of a 2921 even with maximum concurrent calls of 70.

[sprintership]

Cisco replied I should be just fine with my UCK9 package and in case 2951 CUBE-T STD is not needed:

CUBE-T STD is CUBE-trunking which is One trunk session license. This interfaces with your ITSP. A typical scenario, where you register your phones to your CUCM and connect to ITSP using your SIP Trunk.

In ISR G2 routers if you buy Cube T STD license then you will only get a paper base license that will not be installed anywhere. The only difference you will see is after buying the license you will be able to put the “mode border-element” command that cisco asks for cubes.

However, Most of the basic sip-to-sip call flows will work without "mode border-element" CLI by configuring "allow-connection SIP-to-SIP" since those are common for both CUBE and CME.

So I will try it as it is now with just UCK9. 

[sprintership · Accepted solution]

ok,

Cisco replied:

CUBE-T STD is CUBE-trunking which is One trunk session license. This interfaces with your ITSP. A typical scenario, where you register your phones to your CUCM and connect to ITSP using your SIP Trunk.

In ISR G2 routers if you buy Cube T STD license then you will only get a paper base license that will not be installed anywhere. The only difference you will see is after buying the license you will be able to put the “mode border-element” command that cisco asks for cubes.

However, Most of the basic sip-to-sip call flows will work without "mode border-element" CLI by configuring "allow-connection SIP-to-SIP" since those are common for both CUBE and CME.

They confirmed I should be ok with just UCK9 and ITSP SIP trunk should be just fine without CUBE-T STD. I am not sure if it make sense to most of you or not but i am happy like hell not spending thousands in order to get SIP trunk works. 

[Roger Kallberg]

If you got this from TAC it’s actually not correct.

”The only difference you will see is after buying the license you will be able to put the “mode border-element” command that cisco asks for cubes.”

You can enter this command with just basic voice functions enabled. As others and TAC mentioned there is no actual license to put on the router for Cube. It’s a RTU licence.

[Ritesh Desai]

Hi @sprintership let me put all in one roof...

i have done migration of CC on MGCP to SIP and SIP trunking with ITSP totally. My recommended approach is downloaded the configuration files from routers, understood the call routing. prepare the dial-peer you will configure based on MGCP configuration in notepad. verfy the configuration. During migration night,  I removed the 1 MGCP trunk configuration and implemented SIP for the respective MGCP tunk. make test calls and perform the next change. Like this, the change was done successfully and customer is happy to be on SIP architecture now with less operational cost.

basis multiple threads summarizing below; 

• Cisco 2900 and 3900 series are EOL/EOSale. Coming to EOSupport soon.
• Cisco 2900 / 3900 series included RTU Right to use paper licenses where as ISR4K includes Smart licensing.
• UCK9 licenses are installed on Cisco 2900/3900/ISR4K to enable Voice functionalities like PRI configuration, voice card configuration, SIP, etc on router. By default Router is installed with ipbase license.
• When you are planning to have SIP trunk from ISP then you require Router TO BE ENABLED with CUBE functionality.
  • Enable command voice-service-voip under that allow connections sip-to-sip AND remove the rest.
  • mode border-element license capacity 100 ----> enables CUBE / SBC functionality with 100 calls capacity OR you can just use mode border-element.
  • Above command enable route to act as CUBE.
  • In CUBE its defined as session based licensing. 1 call 1 CUBE-T session license.
• For CUBE to handle calls, you need to have CUBE-T licenses purchased for calls. These are trust based licenses. if you are implementing CUBE you must buy CUBE-T licenses for same.
• Basis the Router model, CUBE licenses comes with 5 CUBE-T or 10 CUBE-T variant.
• CUBE call capacity reduces basis the transcoding between 2 call legs, debugs enabled, syslog pointing configured, etc
• In BOQ shared by Partner / vendor has ISR 4431 V/K9 means uck9 is included else not.
• CUBE licensing models refer URL here . the URL will give you clear idea of CUBE licenses.

Wish covered all the information to you in single message...