Centralized IPT design

[thisisshanky]

I am in the design phase of a new project and would like to hear some inputs on the same. I will have callmanager cluster, unity (with fo), meetingplace express, mobility manager, ipcc express (with ha) all centrally colocated in a data center. No phones in this location (may be 1). All offices (including the corporate and branch offices) will be connected back to this Colo via MPLS.

Calls come into each branch or corporate office via local T1 PRIs. This includes callcenter calls. The call is backhauled (say via MGCP) back to callmanager cluster. If its a call for the call center, its sent to IPCC for further decision.

To keep the blend of codec's used in this case, i was thinking of using one codec g729 across all locations (rather than relying on a lot of transcoding resources)

Some of the challenges/questions I have are,

a. It would be preferrable to use g729 across the wan from each remote site.

b. IPCC can only do g729 or g711 at one time, so if g711 is used in IPCC, a trancoder resource will need to be used each time a callcenter call needs to be terminated on the IVR.

c. Unity can do both g729 and g711. Is it preferrable to install g729 at Unity Install time ?

d. Are there any caveats / gotchas with Meetingplace Express and g729 ?

e. AFAIK Mobility manager does only call routing and no media termination. So the codec used wouldnt really matter. Will it ?

Appreciate everybody's input on the above.

Sankar.

[Chris Deren]

Sankar,

I did a simliar deployment with IPCC Enterprise minut MeetingPlace. I used CRS installed as g729, the only drawback was queue MOH streamed from the CRS server, but if you use Hold step in the script and use MOH multicast at the remote branch this should not be an issue. Another alterante is to use G711 for the cti ports so all call center calls are g711 while phone-phone calls are g729, if you hae enough bandwidth.

I installed Unity as g729 and did not have any issues nor complaints.

Chris

[thisisshanky]

Chris,

Great thoughts on MOH streamed from flash. I could find a supporting document for Meetingplace Express that it currently supports only g711 and to use g729, the calls will have be transcoded.