New to company who has an "idle" Cisco C20 - now what?

[jfraser01]

This sounds like a really basic question but I just joined a company to help them with their technology (mostly software development) that has a beautiful Cisco C20 setup and was paying a company up until about 1 year ago a crazy amount of money to support their system.  They dumped that as they were struggling for money and the value just wasn't there.

Basically we have 2 remote employees and 5 remote sites, none of which have any video equipement to speak of except Windows PCs with Cameras built in.  We are moving towards Office 365 and Lync IM.

What can I actually use this system for and which free or paid services do I need to get some use out of this system?  I've just played a bit trying to connect it to some free SIP services but so far all that doesn't seem to be working and maybe that is expected  Once in a while I'll get a SIP registration success but most of the time I get two errors:

ERROR: SIP Profile Registration

SIP registration failed: Unable to connect to <IP ADDRESS>. Verify SIP configuration and connectivity to SIP proxy.

WARNING: Default Call Protocol

The default call protocol is set to SIP, but system is not registered on that protocol. The system may not be able to make any calls. Please either change the default call protocol, verify that the protocol is enabled, or verify the SIP configuration..

Sometimes I'll get it to this point:

ERROR: SIP Profile Registration

SIP registration failed: Failed to send. Verify SIP configuration and connectivity to SIP proxy.

WARNING: Default Call Protocol

The default call protocol is set to SIP, but system is not registered on that protocol. The system may not be able to make any calls. Please either change the default call protocol, verify that the protocol is enabled, or verify the SIP configuration..

Any thoughts on where to go next?  I don't mind paying for service but I can't afford $1000/month.  If I need to sell this equipement and just get a computer with skype in the conference room I'll just do that.

Thanks alot for your assistance!

[Wayne DeNardi]

The first place you should go would probably be the Cisco Web site and check out some of the Maintain and Operate Guides for the C20 - the Administraor Guide will give you some good information:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/collaboration-endpoints/telepresence-quick-set-series/products-maintenance-guides-list.html

Some of the options will be different between different versions of the TC software you have installed on the endpoint - you will need an active service contract to allow you to upgrade to a different major version than you are running (minor versions have traditionally been free).

There are a number of security advisories around for software versions before TC6.1 - if you do a qucik search on the internet, you'll find many links to these.  This one in particular may be of value to you:

http://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20130619-tpc - you should be able to get an upgrade to TC6.1 if you don't have an active service contract on your endpoint.

Wayne
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[Kelvin Machakaire]

You can use the C20 for video communication with users sitting on the remote sites with PCs that have built in cameras. Since you don't have BE6K, the remote users will connect using Jabber Video the free service hosted by Cisco.

Download the software client and Sign Up for service using the following link:

https://www.ciscojabbervideo.com/home

Please rate useful posts

//Kelvin

[jfraser01]

Thanks Wayne,  I have TC 6.1 installed already and apparently also have a service contract in place (until July 2014) so I requested TC 7.0 under that.

I'm still confused by the type of service (if any) I need to actually be able to make a video call with someone.

As Kelvin pointed out, I realize that people with web cams on their computers can create free accounts with Cisco Jabber but I'm still confused how to "get the C20 online" so that someone outside can actually call into it or I can call out to a free jabber account.

I did read through the guides and understand that they are a few different protocols that the C20 supports from H.323 to SIP but I'm unclear what I need to look for in a SIP provider to determine if my device is supported etc.  If you notice my original post, I've tried a few (granted free) SIP providers without luck.

[Kelvin Machakaire]

Its very simple. All you need is a public IP address or DNS address on C20 device. To dial into the system users with Jabber Video clients would have to dial "jabber@public_ip_address" and the call goes through

Also don't bother yourself looking for a SIP service provider unless you have got a good reason. The C20 can act as a standalone device meaning you can run it without any server infrasture placing calls between systems using IP addresses

Please rate useful posts

//Kelvin.

[jfraser01]

Thanks Kelvin you have been extremely helpful!

Here is where I am at.  I have this setup as 192.168.0.70 on my network that has a public ip of 206.9.112.100 (not real but used as example).

Since I have a cisco jabber client setup on my PC IP address 192.168.0.50 I just typed into that interface: jabber@192.168.0.70 and was hoping for a ring.  No dice.  Does it really have to be the public IP because it's going through a jabber service?

Does it need to be exposed to the open internet for services like this?  If so, which ports do I open and route?  I found this link but wanted to run it by you first:

https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-23227

The last thing I want to do is open up a bunch of ports if I'm not on the right track.

[Wayne DeNardi]

Yes, the "external" Jabber client needs to dial an internet accessible address (ie, your public address), it won't work trying to dial your @192.168.x.x addressing.

You'll need to port forward the ports in that document to your C20, otherwise the traffic isn't going to get past your router to the codec.

If you do a search in these forums, there are plenty of posts in these forums discussing the same sort of things (getting a codec to talk to the Internet and.or Jabber) - check out the ones for the SX20 which is effectively the same thing as your C20: https://supportforums.cisco.com/search.jspa?peopleEnabled=true&userID=&containerType=14&container=1&spotlight=true&q=SX20+jabber

Wayne

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[jfraser01]

thanks Wayne. Since all my traffic is on the intranet. and I'll never have more than three or four clients are there options for my Windows Server to host Aesop gateway?

[Wayne DeNardi]

Hi John,

If you're using the free Jabber site/client, then all the traffic is essentially going out of your network, to the cloud, then coming back in.  There's no way of using the public system internally.  You'd need to look in to having a proper internal Jabber deployment for that ($$$).

If you're needing a low cost option, for software based clients for only a few users in your organisation, and want to base it on a Windows Server, you'd probably be better off looking at using Microsoft Lync.  This, however, won't really help with your C20.

Wayne
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[jfraser01]

that makes sense. I'm definitely looking at Lincoln Skype as well but I'd really like to leverage the investment this company made so long ago in the Cisco equipment. What's the lowest cost option to enable this device? Is it the WebEx teleconference for $99 per month?unfortunately the nearly $4,000 per month bill that we were getting won't be possible with the new company structure.

[Wayne DeNardi]

As much as I hate to say it, as I'd prefer to use the proper Cisco Video Conferencing kit any day over Lync, if you only have the single C20, and as it's an end of sale product (and woth less than the $4k per moth you were paying to support it previously), you're probably going to spend more $ trying to get it to work than it's worth, especially if you want the interaction with your other systems (Lync).

If you just want to keep it there for use to contact only external companies, then that's fine - do a basic configuration on it for H.323 and SIP and set up the appropriate port forwarding on your router. 

Wayne
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[jfraser01]

Wayne, I know this topic is several months old but I was off on other things for a while.  I have now exposed the cisco c20 on a full public address (50.244.XXX.115) and even gave it a dns name video.mydomain.com

I have cisco jabber on my computer and tried to connect to c20@50.244.XXX.115 as well as c20@video.mydomain.com and neither seem to connect.  I get "call denied".

I've telenet on the ports and confirmed they are all open.  I've actually given in a fully open public IP while I work on it to 100% take the firewall out of it.

If it matters, I can actually get to the web interface using the same external address so I know the device is there and publically exposed.

Default call is "SIP"

Under Network services both H323 and SIP are on.

I do have it registered with a SIP:

URL 1: sip2sip.info

Proxy: proxy.sipthor.net

It did successfully register so I also tried to call my sip2sip.info address and that also failed.

I'm out of ideas really.

Finally, does anyone have a good recommendation for a SIP service provider that would allow this to be much easier?

[Chris Swinney]

Hi jfraser01 ,

I feel like I'm beginning to sound like a sale person here but we are looking at StarfLeaf as a hardware/cloud VC provider especially for low cost endpoints (such as schools). StarLeaf were the Codian team who used to make the MCU's that are now sold by Cisco (Tandberg bought Codian, then Cisco bought Tandberg). The stuff just works, and after trialing a LOT of VC kit and services out there (including Lync and Free Jabber), we really like this system.

However, back to you C20. If you have Free Jabber, have you tried simply dialling the IP address you have exposed? I can't remember if the has to be in a URI format but if it does, try "anything@Public_IP_C20". As mentioned previously, if its publicly accessible you shouldn't need to register with a SIP provider, however, Free Jabber supports both SIP and H.323, so you could even turn SIP off.

Let us know your results.

Cheers

Chris

[jfraser01]

Hi Chris, yes i have cisco jabber account and tried to dial c20@50.244.XXX.115

This is the public IP and the device can be accessed and even administered from it.  I dial and I get:  Call denied.  It is a dedicated IP that was free and I allocated solely to this device.

My guess is that I have some settings incorrect on the unit itself to not allow this.  Thoughts on that?

[jfraser01]

Update: It might be my cisco jabber that might be broken.  I signed up for services at sip2sip.info and entered the public IP and I get connected.  the only issue is no video.  I suspect the sip provider itself has an issue with video.

I try the exact same URL in Cisco Jabber and get nothing.

In jabber the Internal Server URL is is: https://boot.ciscojabbervideo.com/endpoint/configuration

External Server and SIP domain are both blank.