Cisco WebEx Telepresence Quick Start Guide

[Shams Rishad]

Hi,

I'm a CCNA (200-125) and I'm totally new to collaboration. I have been assigned to deploy SX10, SX20 at a client premises. Client has also bought WebEX Named user licences and I also see cloud storage as well as CMR cloud. There is no CUCM.

I'm looking for help as to how I can go about this. I am totally new to these stuff and I have a very little time to deploy all these. What I understand is that client will have the telepresence units at two different premises, will connect using public IP from ISP. And that we have to integrate WebEx with those telepresence endpoints, for which we need CMR (Collaboration Meeting Room).

Please help and advice how can I go about this. Attached is the list of products.

Thanks in advance.

Rishad

[Patrick Sparkman]

CMR Cloud is a part of WebEx Meeting Center.  When a user has CMR active on their user profile in WebEx, anyone with a video endpoint can dial into their WebEx MC meeting.

It appears you don't have any type of on-premise call control (ie; CUCM, VCS/Expressway), so you'll be dialing directly into WebEx Meeting Center, which is supported using H323 on the endpoints, see Vivik's reply in SX20 as standalone to help get the endpoints configured.  Recommend you do not put the endpoints on a public IP address, or else you'll experience toll-fraud calls, should put them behind your firewall using NAT and/or restrict your firewall to only allow calls to/from WebEx, see How Do I Allow WebEx Traffic on My Network.

Also recommend you look at the Cisco WebEx Meeting Center Video Conferencing Enterprise Deployment Guide (WBS31 and WBS32), it speaks about using call control, but it will help regardless.

[Shams Rishad]

Hi Patrick,

Thanks a lot for your guidance. Since I'm totally new to collaboration (I have a background in IP Surveillance Cameras and Access Control Systems) and I'm finding it very difficult to get a grasp of the architecture.

I've seen people referring to "WebEx Enabled Telepresence", probably this is what I am looking for.

I would really appreciate if you could give me some guideline/resource link on how to start about all these as a complete beginner.

Thanks

Rishad 

[Patrick Sparkman]

CMR Hyrbid (aka WebEx Enabled TelePresence) uses a combination of on-premises and cloud conferencing, where it creates a SIP call between one's on-premises conference bridge (either MCU or TelePresence Server) and WebEx Meeting Center.  If i'm not mistaken, you have no on-premise infrastructure, so this option will not work and will need to reply solely on the cloud for multiparty conferencing.

Take a look at the Cisco Collaboration Preferred Architectures, it's a collection of guides that can help you understand the different aspects of video conferencing, there are also other guides and resources for WebEx at Cisco Collaboration Help.

[Shams Rishad]

Hi Patrick,

Thanks a lot for your help. I've been through the resources and it seems difficult for me to understand, as there are so many concepts I believe I am supposed to know before and the audience of the documents are supposed to know the basics.

As I know neither, I only have a good understanding of associate level routing and switching, which I don't think has much to do with collaboration.

Considering a complete newbie, who is assigned to deploy CMR hybrid (WebEx Enabled Telepresence), with only SX10, SX20, and WebEX Named Users along with cloud storage and CMR cloud, what is the best way to go for me? How much I must know before I can successfully deploy the system? Where should I start? Please help. I have searched a lot in YouTube for walk-throughs, but no luck. 

Thanks so much for your cooperation.

Rishad

[Patrick Sparkman]

As I mentioned in my previous reply, you can't do CMR Hyrbid (aka WebEx Enabled TelePresence) because it requires you to have on-premise call control and conferencing hardware, which you don't have. With a WebEx subscription with CMR, your SX10 and SX20 endpoints can connect to meetings hosted in WebEx Meeting Center.

Cisco WebEx Meeting Center Video Conferencing

How Do I Enable the Meeting Center Video Conferencing in Site Admin

[Shams Rishad]

Thanks a lot!

Okay, I have understood that CMR Hybrid is not possible without on-premises call manger or hardware like that. You are totally correct that our end customer has only bought SX10, SX20, WebEx Named Users (I don't know what that is either), and CMR cloud and cloud storage.

"With a WebEx subscription with CMR, your SX10 and SX20 endpoints can connect to meetings hosted in WebEx Meeting Center." as you said, can you please show me some guidelines? How should a newbie like me proceed to deploy this? Consider I know nothing about these concepts.

Thanks for your patience.

Rishad

[Shams Rishad]

Also, do you reckon that it is a prerequisite that the knowledge of CCNA Collaboration will help? Or someone who wants to work on these devices doesn't necessarily need certification content knowledge?

TIA

Rishad

[Patrick Sparkman · Accepted solution]

Named Users means you have a certain number of licensed accounts, and those who have accounts can host meetings. Anyone can join as a guest, but hosts require them to have an account.
CMR Cloud is video conferencing within Meeting Center, while cloud storage is for meeting files and recordings.
To enabled CMR, refer to the links provide in my earlier replies.
CCNA Collaboration doesn't contain any information regarding WebEx, it does contain some information about endpoints though.

[Shams Rishad]

Hi Patrick,

I've come to end user's premises and I've connected the two Telepresence units (SX10, SX20) to a switch. Connected all the peripherals as well, and have assigned IPs to the TP units. We are not using remote, we are using Touch 10s with each of these Telepresence units. I have been able to successfully pair the Touch 10s with the TPs and all the IPs are reachable (ping is okay).

I've also configured the TP units, following your reference to Vivek's reply in Standalone Configuration, as well as have set the default calling protocol to H.323.

But when I try to call from one TP to the other, it says "couldn't connect call". Can you please help? These two units will eventually be installed at two remote locations, with IPSec/GRE to ensure reachability. I thought it would be a good idea to connect these two in an isolated LAN first, since I'm completely new to this. Looking forward to your valuable advice on how to make these two talk.

I have also provisioned the WebEx service, and will configure the CMR later.

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Rishad

[Shams Rishad]

Update: SX10 can call SX20, but SX20 cannot call SX10, it says "Could not place call to h323:192.168.5.x (IP)"

[Patrick Sparkman]

Glad you were able to get one of the endpoints to connect to the other.  Is the SX20 configuration different than that of the SX10?  Are you using DHCP or static IPs, if static, be sure to specify DNS servers.

[Shams Rishad]

Hi Patrick,

I believe the configurations are identical on both SX10 and SX20. And yes, I've been able to call from one another (standalone).

I've also been able to provision WebEx account. However, after creating a test user, I discovered that we cannot delete a WebEx user after creation, only can deactivate. Our end user has bought 5 user accounts, did I essentially just waste one account? Or I can use any 5 active users at any given point of time?

Also, even though I've been able to place calls (H.323) from SX10 to SX20 and vice-versa, I've failed to join any webex meeting from my TP.

Scenario: I've configured static NAT on the private IP assigned to SX10, so now I'm able to access SX10 from anywhere in the world (IP: 43.240.103.174). When a WebEx Meeting is started, a video address is provided, such as: <meeting number>@asrotex.webex.com. But when I dial from my SX10 on that video address, it says "could not place call to h323:578826731@asrotex.webex.com.

And in my call log of SX10 (viewed from browser) it says: Network Rejected.

Call ID	29
Remote number	h323:574931816@asrotex.webex.com
Callback number	h323:574931816@asrotex.webex.com
Display name	574931816@asrotex.webex.com
Direction	Outgoing
Protocol	H323
Call rate	3072 kbps
Call type	Video
Encryption type	AES-128
Booking ID
Duration	0 seconds
Start time	2016-09-26T03:12:13Z
End time	2016-09-26T03:12:13Z
Disconnect cause	Caller not registered
Disconnect cause code	16 (Q850)
Disconnect cause type	NetworkRejected
Occurrence type	NoAnswer
Is acknowledged	Acknowledged

Audio	Transmit	Receive
Packet loss	0/0 (0%)	0/0 (0%)
Max jitter	0	0
Video	Transmit	Receive
Packet loss	0/0 (0%)	0/0 (0%)
Max jitter	0	0

Please help me on this. Thanks for your support as always.

Rishad