CUPS 8.6 Federation: Where to start?

[Joshua Engels]

HI Everyone,

We currently have deployed a CUPS 8.6 server and use Jabber on all internal clients.  The next step is to get this thing working outside of our company so that we can correpsond with others using Google Talk, Yahoo Chat, and so on.  (And definitley our business partners running jabber etc.) 

I am not 100% sure where to start and am hoping you guys can point me in the right direction.  Here is what I have been told:

CUPS needs to XMPP Federation and I have seen found the steps to do this in the CUPS 8.6 configuration guide. Before I dive into this I just want to make sure that this is the course I should be taking.  Also understanding what groups this will allow us to chat with.

Thanks and have a good one!           

[Jason Newman · Accepted solution]

Josh,

So the first steps are to know who you want to federate with and what protocol you want to use with them.  Certain comapnies like google will only work with certain protocols.  For example federating with gmail.com is always performed over none-secure XMPP.  Alternatively federating with Yahoo is not currently possible with CUPS as it uses its own standarized protocol we do not yet support. 

After that you need to step through the configuration for each domain separately.  Luckily with XMPP this is fairly simple as it's setup consists of ensuring the public SRV records are available for the domain you want to federate with.  SIP is a bit more complicated and not commonly used as much except for internal federations between Lync/CUPS, occasionally we see external federations.

So for XMPP the process is fairly simple and from a high level involves the following setup steps:

1) Creating DNS SRV records which point to an ASA/Firewall accepting traffic on port 5269  (Record: _xmpp-server._tcp.)

2) Ensuring your presence server can resolve public DNS SRV records for other domains such as gmail.com or cisco.com

3) Configuring your firewall to pass incoming TCP traffic on port 5269 to your presence server.

4) Enabling/Configuring the XMPP Sevice on CUPS  (not the same as activating)

5) Activating / Starting th XMPP Federation Connection Manager

After all that is setup you should be able to federation with any external XMPP domain.  If you have any specific questions feel free to ask.

Regards,

Jason

[Jonathan Schulenberg]

Here's the full federation guide for reference:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US//docs/voice_ip_comm/cups/8_6/english/integration_notes/Federation/CUP_8.6_Interdomain_Federation.html

PS- SIP SIMPLE federation is used mostly for OCS/Lync since Cisco doesn't support Microsoft-side XMPP gateways. Be advised this requires special licensing on your ASA which is not free.

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