Ask the Expert: Cisco Expressway

[Monica Lluis]

This session will provide an opportunity to learn and ask questions Cisco Expressway and features such as Mobile Remote Access (MRA), DVO-R, Cisco Jabber Guest and B2B.

Ask questions from Monday, April 4 to April 15, 2016

Featured Experts

Aditya Gupta comes from Backbone TAC UC Team background where he worked on troubleshooting on the UC products. Currently working with Cloud and Managed services and handling the key accounts for Cisco in Unified collaboration and Telepresence domain and He holds Cisco Certification  CCIE (#44733) in collaboration.

Aashish Dua is Network Consulting Engineer with Cisco Advanced Services and works in Cloud Collaboration( HCS) domain, prior to this, he worked as technical lead for CUCM team for TAC Backbone Centre in Bangalore and successfully catered to Complex troubleshooting scenarios and customer escalations in unified communications.
He holds special interest in Unified Collaboration domain and Virtualisation, he is a CCIE collaboration and a technology enthusiast.

Find other  https://supportforums.cisco.com/expert-corner/events.

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Please be sure to rate the Answers to Questions

[KY_]

Hi Aashish,

Those guide is deployment application but i must say that is not enought for training guide.

Is there a any training /lab resource  for  expresway or  MRA.

Thanks

[Aashish Dua]

Hello Kemal,

You can request your Cisco SE to give you partner resources lab access and or you can use the lab hosted on dcloud which is dcloud.cisco.com.

To access dcloud lab you should have cisco.com ID and your Cisco SE may help you get there.

in addition to this, you can use the VOD resources at ciscolive.com, below was a great session on expressway presented in Cisco Live Milan event,

https://www.ciscolive.com/online/connect/sessionDetail.ww?SESSION_ID=82081&backBtn=true#.VwU6aBx3gxw.link

Thanks,

Aashish Dua

[nawaz.pasha]

Hi Aditya/Aashish,

Want to know if Expressway is similar to proxy and it just handovers the traffic in a secure tunnel or it also does the transcoding or conference or does the MCU takes care of this ....

I want to know the difference between Cisco Video phones can directly register to call manager and even jabber can register directly to CUCM inside the network...So, is the job of Expressway only does proxying the traffic to call manager and end devices or does it do any kind of transcoding or conference. Since in Voice we have PVDM to perform this tasks...so, how this will work in Video....please guide

[Aditya Gupta]

Hi Nawaz

Yes, Expressway/MRA is kind of proxy. But a more accurate description of expressway will be VPN less VPN. Expressway/MRA gives you capability to connect your jabber and collaboration endpoints outside of the network to your inside network without the need to fire VPN or anyconnect solutions, in a secure way. It gives you secure traversal without the need of a separate VPN connection.

Roles, such as transcoding, conferencing needs to be handled by the respective conferencing/transcoding resources.

You can find more information about Expressway solution below :

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/unified-communications/expressway-series/index.html

Thanks 

Aditya Gupta

[monster.speaks]

Hi,

Is there a way to automate backups for the Expressway servers?

[Aditya Gupta]

Hi,

Yes, there are ways to automate backups for Expressway Servers. If you search around the greater internet , you will find some scripts that can do this work, but this is not cisco supported method.

Ideal way would be to perform backups using GUI.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/expressway/admin_guide/Cisco-Expressway-Administrator-Guide-X8-1.pdf

Thanks

Aditya Gupta

[Aaron Harrison]

Hi 

When deploying MRA with a different internal/external domain (e.g. company.com external, and ad.company.com internal) I've foudn that I need to specify the voiceservicesdomain in jabber-config.xml for proper operation.

This means that Jabber has to be connected internally on the LAN or VPN so that it can get the TFTP jabber-config.xml before being able to connect externally.

Is there not some means to supply the jabber-config to the clients via MRA - similar to allowing access to web services with a HTTP whitelist? After all jabber-config is also available from CUCM TFTP via HTTP over TCP 6970...

Thanks

Aaron

[Aashish Dua]

Hello Aaron,

For now i believe there is only one traditional option which you spoke about, jabber has to be connected on premise( can be via VPN) to get the updated jabber config file to get the domain added in the "voiceservicedomain".

Someone asked me the same in Meet the engineer in Cisco Live Berlin as well but for now this is the option.

Thanks,

Aashish Dua

[Aaron Harrison]

Disappointing! But thanks for confirming it's the only option.

[Aashish Dua]

Hello Aaron,

I am keeping an eye on the advancements in this and will make sure to update you as soon as there is any change in this.

Thanks,

Aashish Dua

[Aashish Dua]

Hello Aaron,

On second thoughts, there is one "workaround" ( not officially supported), details below, please let me know if that helped.

• Add this as a parameter when you install Jabber via the Media Services Interface (MSI):
  

  msiexec /i CiscoJabberSetup.msi VOICE_SERVICES_DOMAIN=domain1 CLEAR=1

OR

• Navigate to %APPDATA% > Cisco > Unified Communications > Jabber > CSF > Config, and create this jabber-config-user.xml file in the directory:
  

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <config version ="1.0">
   <Policies>  <VoiceServicesDomain>domain1</VoiceServicesDomain>
   </Policies>
  </config>

Please let me know if this helps.

Thanks,

Aashish

[john michael marie rodriguez]

Hi

When deploying QoS settings on the Expressway C, no matter what tag value we use, the DSCP value gets tagged to a value of 0.

Is this a defect?

If yes, how long can we expect an update for a fix?

And is there a workaround while we wait for the fix update?

Many thanks!

[Aashish Dua]

Hello John,

Yes, the below enhancement defects are open on this, for now, the expressway does not tag the DSCP and the value is set to Zero,

https://bst.cloudapps.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCuq07295/?reffering_site=dumpcr

https://tools.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCus34643/?reffering_site=dumpcr

Unfortunately there are no workarounds for this as of now to do the markings on Expressway itself.

I would recommend to subscribe to the defects above so if there is a state change you will get  auto notification.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Aashish Dua

[ltleary2009]

I am being informed from a few of my "pilot" users of 8841/61s via MRA that only one instrument could be logged in with the  "user account" (active directory) from an ip subnet.  (In other words, if phone A was on Subnet 1 and logged in with User X creds and Phone B was on the same subnet 1 and logged in with User X creds, only one phone could be active at a time.  If, however, the 8841/61s were on SEPARATE subnets, both phones could be active concurrently with the same user credentials used.)

I have NOT tried different users on the same subnet to see if it is a user cred ,  NAT/PAT issue at the remote location, home office router,  or a limitation of the product.

Before I allow all users access to MRA with 88XX or 78XX phones or allow this to be used for small home office or Business Continuity locations could you outline what the "expected behavior" is supposed to be?

[Aditya Gupta]

Hi Bill

We haven;t been able to locate any document that describes the behaviour as expected. This definitely requires more research . We are trying to dig some information regarding this and will update soon.

Thanks

Aditya Gupta