Lync 2013 , What is the solution

[tec cou]

To this day, Lync 2013 is compatible in any way?

If a customer makes a migration from 2010 to 2013, runs out of service?

How long Cisco solve this? greetings and thanks to all

[Martin Koch · Accepted solution]

One  step might be to tell your customer to complain at "that vendor" that they always change

things to the worse, I do not see a real reason why they had to remove h.263. And if they change things why

they should not be able to support a standard way of h.264, ...

We tried it at least with the 2013 client and that works with the advanced media gateway.

So it will be dependent on what hardware you have in your network.

As this is future ware topic you might not get a direct answer here in the Forum.

I would recomend to talk to your Cisco contact to get some info under NDA.

[ahmashar · Accepted solution]

Lync 2013 is not supported right now meaning if you setup in your production and get it to work, you won't get support from TAC/BU yet. you can get in touch with your channel manager on when and how this will be officially released/support, we don't talk about roadmap in here. in short Lync 2013 integration with VCS is not supported yet.

[HansAvendano2010]

Hello,

Cisco has released TC 6.2 to support H.264 SVC in its endpoints.

Please visit for more information: http://blogs.cisco.com/tag/h-264/ a great article about  this from Finn Helge Lunde | June 21, 2013:

... "Also, as part of Cisco’s strong architectural approach on interoperability we are adding support for H.264 SVC to our TC based endpoints. This means we can do native interoperability with other vendor’s solutions like Microsoft Lync 2013 and Polycom endpoints using the H.264 SVC standard."...

Hans A.

[Martin Koch]

No, thats the point ! Neither VCS X8 nor TC6.2 are released yet.

This is why I prefer (besides signed NDAs :-) to talk about whats going

on in the future, especially as things tend to change in the process till it is

released.

What I always recommend, what I also did in this thread is to reach out to

your Cisco Partner or Cisco directly what coming up!

Besides that I would say the VCS also needs to support it, if I see it right the

h264 svc sdp does not get passed through the B2BUA, ... so even if your

endpoint might support it, your complete setup would need to.

[odelapena]

Hello Martin

Please, Could you give us an update about the interoperability with MS Lycn 2013? Is there any official document from CISCO?

By the other hand. Anyone recomend a particular AMGW?

Thanks in advance.

Óscar

[Chris Swinney]

Hi Oscar,

VCS x8 is roumerd to be out next month. If you have more money than sense, the AMG is alwasy an option!!!

Chris

[Jens Didriksen]

Well put Chris :)

Also note endpoints must be on TC6.2 or higher and have Lync compatibility turned on.

/jens

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[Chris Swinney]

Jens Didriksen wrote:
Also note endpoints must be on TC6.2 or higher and have Lync compatibility turned on.

/jens

Hi Jens,

I'm not sure if this is strictly true. Once the VCS is on x8, I expect that it will work with Lync 2013 much in the same way that x7 does now with Lync 2010. You don't have to have the CODECs fully integrate with the Lync environment, mere re-direct a call to a given URL via the VCS B2BUA, and from there use search rules to connect to the standards based SIP or H.323 endpoint - at least this is what can be achieved at this moment in time.

Of course, I think that with TC6.2 you will be able to achieve a have a more integrated within a single Lync infrastructure.

Our goal was to be see if we could utilise Lync with ALL standards based endpoints for both inbound and outbound calls. Whilst we can achieve inbound connections through the VCS B2BUA into the Lync infrastructure, I don't think it as easy to achieve this on outbound calls, but this is a limitation of Lync, not the VCS.

As I understand it, Lync performs several lookups to check to see it a client exist. Firstly, it will check its own internal database, then it will check and federation that is in place, finally if will check an static routes to a given URI. In order to get outbound dialling working within Lync to a standards based endpoint, you must specify a "static route" to a given domain. Whilst this is OK for you own devices in our own domain, and perhaps even a few others, what about the other countless millions of other possible domains out there? I don't believe there is the concept of a "static default route" in Lync - i.e. you have to specify each domain individually.

For us it wouldn't be too much of an issue IF the Lync user was to dial an H.323 client as we utilise the GDS (Global Dialing Scheme) which organises H.323 devices into a global hierarchy - great if you use it, but pants if your don't. What it means is that a Lync user could dial something like "e.164@dummydom.com" - a static route in Lync would thow the call to the VCS B2BUA, and search rule could strip the domain and forward the call using the GDS and the National Gatekeeper infrastructure.

Just my tupenths worth...

Chris

[Jens Didriksen]

Fair enough - I was under the impression both x8.0 and TC6.2 would have to be in place - maybe I've misunderstood that aspect of it as a Cisco rep told me TC6.2 will not work with Lync 2013 without also having x8.0 in play, or maybe this is just for the H.264 SVC part to work. Guess we'll find out in the, hopefully, not too distant future.

It's certainly is of interest to us as we're playing with Lync 2013 at the moment, but we can't do much with it as far as integration goes due to the way it is being delivered; read Office 365, cloud etc etc. /shrug

As for GDS, we've been unable to use it for international calls for a while, calls getting denied by the domestic top-level GK, finally got a work-around in place by neighbouring to a Internet2 GK located in Washington, so at least outbound calls work.

/jens

Please rate replies and mark question(s) as "answered" if applicable.

[odelapena]

Many thanks to all.

But going one step beyond.

Has anyone an idea if BFCP and XMPP will be the stardards used by MS Lync 2013 and VCS-C x8?

At MS technet web  there is not information about BFCP. So, pretty sure, there won't be any interop to share data. Any news regarding this?

Many thanks

Óscar

[SHAWN COPELAND]

We did some testing with a RadVision Gateway and I would assume the native VCS X8 interop with Lync2013 will be a similar experience.  Content sharing from a VCS registered endpoint works TO a Lync2013 client, but not vice versa.

[Chris Swinney]

Jens Didriksen wrote:
I was under the impression both x8.0 and TC6.2 would have to be in place - maybe I've misunderstood that aspect of it as a Cisco rep told me TC6.2 will not work with Lync 2013 without also having x8.0 in play, or maybe this is just for the H.264 SVC part to work.

Nuts. You may well be right here. The VCS after all isn't transcoding the video stream, merely passing it on. That's what the AMG is for . Now. were did I put my wallet......

In which case, other "standards" based system aren't going to work either.

Jens Didriksen wrote:
As for GDS, we've been unable to use it for international calls for a while, calls getting denied by the domestic top-level GK, finally got a work-around in place by neighbouring to a Internet2 GK located in Washington, so at least outbound calls work. 
/jens

I did try to have a chat a while back with the boys in JANET (who is the organisation in the UK which maintains our National Gatekeeper) to see if they had a list of contact details for all of the know other national Gatekeepers, but not much came of it. This is unfortunately a bit like the Sony Betamax. Great idea but no one uses it. I make out like nice an simple in Wales as we use this pretty much exclusively across all public sector bodies (education, government, heath etc etc).If only the rest of the world would keep up.