Bridge networking

[jeff.singh_2]

We are providing a 500 user UM system with failover.

We will also require Bridge networking between Unity and an Octel system(at this stage customer has not specified that they require dual integration only internetworking).We have also ordered two bridge servers and two UNITY-TR114U-EU cards for load sharing and connecting to the legacy system.

Can somebody please advise what the user to port recommendations are for the Brooktrout card, i.e will one card in each be sufficient(I assume its 4 port per card). I dont know at this stage what the migration path and the load across the cards will be - this will probably have a bearing on this ? Also can we use failover for the bridge servers or only share loading as we have initially thought.

Any advise appreciated.

TIA

J

[Ginger Dillon]

Hi Jeff -

I may not have the definitive answer you are looking for, but I do have experience with the Unity bridge and multiple Octel voice servers in our environment. I have some thoughts on your post ... you mentioned you want to network Unity to an Octel system. Are there more than one Octel server in your network? Check out this link to the Unity bridge networking guide http://www.cisco.com/en/US/customer/products/sw/voicesw/ps2237/products_installation_and_configuration_guide_chapter09186a008022fbdb.html#wp1450697

It mentions "For installations with more than one Bridge server, each Bridge server is configured for messaging with a subset of the Octel servers." In our environment, we have one Unity bridge (with a 4-port card) and one of our Unity servers is designated as the bridgehead server that contains all of the Octel node definitions. From your post, it sounds like you only need a single bridge server. I don't know if it is possible for a single Octel server to communicate with multiple Unity bridge servers, obviously you'd need a second pilot number to dial the other bridge server. The guide included in my post should help with your design requirements. On our Unity bridge, we have one port enabled. We experience light traffic though, maybe one or two messages a month, with 700+ subscribers on the Unity server. There is a super tool, which I've yet to use but which is highly recommended for analyzing the traffic. It's called BANANA, Bridge Analog Network And Node Analyzer, which is designed to assist with monitoring and troubleshooting analog communication between the Bridge and the Octel nodes in the analog network. It can be downloaded from www.ciscounitytools.com. We may increase the number of ports we have on the bridge server as we deploy additional Unity servers on our network and will use this tool to help us gather that data.

Regards,

Ginger

[jeff.singh_2]

Ginger,

thank you very much for your reply, its very useful,

Regards

J