VOIP E911 service map user to office location CallManager

[Jason Guto]

Folks:

I am reviewing options for a new phone service and I am very new to the solution. However, what VOIP solution can I map a users to an office location, so if there is a medical emergency called from the handset location - the emergency people know where to directly go?

I have found older Call Manager documentation that appears to provide this feature; however, what is the logistics detailed in providing this server?

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/srnd/4x/42e911.html#wp1043341

[Chris Deren]

Cisco Emergency Responder is a product from Cisco you can get.

There are other 3rd party solutions which provide much more features for emergency dialing, i.e. RedSky and West (https://www.west.com/safety-services/). There may be others both most of the major players have merged with these 2 companies.

[Jason Guto]

Hi Chris,

I am reviewing Cisco Emergency Responder, RedSky and West currently; however, are these services used to map a phone/person to an office location, meaning room number? My company's Campus is at one Geological location, but what I am looking for is - fine detail, which can map a person to a office number on the campus.

Thank you

[Chris Deren]

These apps do tracking for either switch port based on CDP and SNMP, or subnet tracking.

But you need to configure them to map specific ERL (zone) to switch port or subnet.  There is no automatic way to do this AFAIK as you need to know where your switches/cubicles are connected to on the switch. CER for example will handle tracking when phone moves from location A to location B, but the switch ports that location A and location B are connected to are configured on CER side during initial deployment.

[Jason Guto]

That is what I was suspecting. I suspected - some sort of physical mapping/map of location and switch port has to be created.

Let me ask you this Chris,

How do these products couple or interact with the switching topology? Are these local services/software that is running on the local LAN, or is this a service that has hooks into the LAN and provides a service that integrates with the local switching topology architecture?

Thank you

[Chris Deren]

This products interact with switches via SNMP and CDP as well as with CUCM via SNMP to discover which ports the devices are connected to.  For CER you require supported Cisco switches if you need to do port based tracking, and if you are using non-Cisco switches since they don't support CDP your only option is subnet based which does not always map out correctly.

West and RedSky are more advanced and I believe they can do LLDP-MED, and wireless tracking as well.

[voip7372]

Verizon (our provider) does all that for us.  We don't do a thing.  It's based on the calling party number.   If a user calls out from a number associated with the Verizon SIP trunk, Verizon knows the address for that number and routes the call to the proper 911 call center.  

Of course, if the user is not physically in that office like if they're using a softphone at home or somewhere other than the real office linked to that number, the 911 call still goes to the 911 call center linked to those local numbers.  We tell the users to not use the softphone to dial 911 unless they're actually sitting in the office those numbers are associated with. 

[Chris Deren]

Sure the carriers can do that but only to the street address, if you need more granular location which is what E911 is all about and is required in many US states, then you need to track phones and maintain ALI (MSAG) database with 911 center which can be done with some providers (VZ cannot do it over their SIP solution) or via 3rd party i.e. West.

This is a very common point of confusion as service providers when they say they support E911 all they mean is they can provide street address of the location where 911 calls is made from even over centralized SIP trunks, but E911 really means ability to pinpoint to a specific location within the building i.e. SouthEast 3rd floor, etc.

[voip7372]

Right, they're just providing the address and basic info about that address (like the suite number) that we give then when we setup a new site.  That's really all the telco provides to the 911 call center currently with ISDN trunks or POTS service.  If we had a huge campus with 10 buildings and they all had the same street address for some reason, then that's another story...but then again, it would be the same scenario with old ISDN trunks too (showing just the one address, whatever address is associated with the account for that service).  So it would seem E911, for the purpose of nailing down exactly what floor/building a person is in when you have a large multi-building campus is a feature that goes above and beyond what's normally been available (assuming the customer just orders the service and installs it at one address and then distributes the phones/numbers all over the campus).  I suppose there have been enhanced 911 services that locate the caller more precisely for awhile even with ISDN (separate system/service to pay for), but we've never had an office that large so I've never had to deal with it.