Cisco Telepresence 3241 ISDN Gateway.

[anish.gupta11]

Hi,

I am new to Telepresence.  We have Codian MCU, TMS, VCS-C&E. We are doing a migration and their tech lead is requesting to remove ISDN gateway. My Client wants to get rid of 3241 ISDN gateway and asking to use CUCM.  I am not sure what we should do or what 3241 does in specific and how can we migrate it . Please help

Regards!!

[Nick Halbert-Lillyman · Accepted solution]

The 3241 gateway provides a gateway between your IP based endpoints (which will register to CUCM in the new solution) and legacy ISDN video calls.  The 3241 is end-of-sale/end-of-life fairly soon, but is still the best solution for IP to ISDN video calls available.  That said, the client may decide that they no longer need ISDN video calls as it's a legacy capability.

You may be able to use a Cisco router based solution for your video calls, but this would likely be more difficult and not really considered best practice, so I would recommend that you either do away with ISDN video caslls entirely or keep the 3241 gateway in the new solution.

[anish.gupta11]

Hi Nick, Thanks for your reponse. Could you please elaorate more.

[Nick Halbert-Lillyman]

I'm not entirely sure what else there is to say - ISDN is a legacy technology and very much on the way out.  If your customer decides that they want to continue to use ISDN video calls, you should inform them that it's possible but that support for ISDN is tapering off and there's not really a "best practice" way to achieve it as the best solution (ISDN 3241) is approaching end-of-life and router based IOS gateways do not perform the function as easily.  Please let me know if there's any other specific informaiton on this you are after and remember to rate and/or mark useful responses as correct.

[anish.gupta11]

Hi Nick, Then what they should be using for ISDN replacement. Can we use VCS or Telepresence Server/MCU?

[Wayne DeNardi]

The Last Date of Support for the 3241 is 31 May 2022, so you have a number of years to keep using it until it's no longer an officially supported device.  

As others have said, in most places ISDN is a legacy technology and disappearing from equipment of many types, not just Cisco devices.

The major Telecommunications Carriers where I am in Australia are even starting to phase out ISDN from their networks - ISDN services will no longer be able to be ordered starting 30 June 2018, with the final exit date expected to be in 2022.

There is no "replacment" product, as in the future there will be no need for ISDN at all - people will use more modern communication methods over the IP networks such as SIP.