Cisco Emergency Responder

[scooter318]

Hello Everyone

Recently I started working for a new company and they are looking at either installing CER or going with Intrado for 911 services. They wanted me to find out which one would be the best option moving forward, I've never worked with either of these solutions but I wanted to know what makes companies like Intrado, Redsky, and 9Line viable options if you already have CER installed.

[Kathy N. · Accepted solution]

The CER is a very basic e911 system and has multiple steps required to manage users and end points.  You have to work directly with your phone provider to ensure the ELINs display the correct information when calls are made.  Cisco does not have good documentation or support for CER so it is problematic getting it set up. 

I have used Intrado in the past with another phone system and it was MUCH easier to manage.  It would work in conjunction with CER but the vendor manages all your outbound ELIN information with the PSAP and they have great customer support.

Let me know if you have any other questions and good luck.

[Adam Pawlowski · Accepted solution]

Consider requirements for infrastructure support or nomadic E911.

Emergency Responder works with a variety of Cisco / Meraki products, but what's on the list is what is supported. Other manufacturers or models will essentially be invisible to the product. You can also use subnet based (Layer 3) discovery if your topology is built for it, on the wired side. There's some wireless tracking support.

Any sort of "nomadic" support is based on the tracking options it has, including wireless, as well as the use of the Off-Premise portal with another V911 provider.

IMHO, it works best when you have the Cisco infrastructure it wants, the right data on hand, and some time to maintain care and feeding of it. If you're going to be trying to gather data, build zones, support remote workers, Wi-Fi endpoints, etc I might not want to start with ER. Working with one of the other firms nets you resources to help you get everything in line with experience on how to operationalize and maintain the system as its certainly not going to be turn key outside of the most basic environments.