Gatekeeper opportunity

[james_be_81]

Hi everyone,

I have a customer with one CUCM 7.1.5 cluster with +30 sites with MGCP gateways accross EMEA.

Customer also have +10 standalone sites (CME/CUCM) but this number will soon increase with more CME to be installed soon.

All sites have PSTN breakout (PRI or BRI)

Customer would like to

- enable call routing between CUCM cluster and the standalone sites trough the IP network.

- centralized dial-plan solution

Considering the following :

- No E.164 dial plan configured yet.

- No TEHO should be implemented. External calls should alway breakout localy.

- Customer has gatekeepers gws with licenses ready to be used.

- CAC must be implemented.

- No upgrade of the CUCM is acceptable (means no SAF...)

- No additional hardware or licenses is acceptable. (No CuBE)

=>What's the added value of using gatekeepers instead of configuring those standalone sites as H.323 gateways in CUCM cluster?

Without being a gatekeeper expert, I cannot see any added value or feature I would miss if I centralize all the routing on the main cluster, I could even make use of AAR which would not be the case using gatekeeper.

BR

James

[karmakar]

Hi James,

The main functions of a Gatekeeper are -

- Centralized H.323-based dial-plan administration

- Call admission control (CAC)

- Bandwidth management

- Address translation

- Call accounting

Of course, try not to over-engineer the network. If the customer's needs can be met with CUCM + H.323 gateways, then that is the best way. If you see value in bandwidth management, address translation or call accounting, then go for the GK path.

A few months back we also made the GK licenses free. They are now part of every voice bundle on ISR-G2.

Thanks,

Abhi.

[bkhanal1971]

As Karmakar rightly explained, one of the great benefits of using GK is that you don't have to create dial-peers in your CMEs as numbers are resolved by gatekeeper. The number of dial-peers will be a big pain when the number of sites grows beyond a few.

Thanks

[james_be_81]

Thanks Abhi, Thanks Badri,

Badri, you say there is no need of dial-peers in CME as numbers will be resolved by GK, but how would you send request to the GK without Dial Peers ?

e.g. You have 3 CMEs,

A. Extensions 1000

B. Extensions 2000

C. Extensions 3000

I would expect to have two DP in each CME pointing to the GK.

A. DP 2000 / Destination 2000

A. DP 3000 / Destination 3000

no ?

[bkhanal1971]

James:

If you have 3 sites with a CME in each, you will need only one dial-peer per site pointing to GK. Taking your example of 3 cmes with extension 1000, 2000 & 3000, I would  create the DP as follows in each CME.

dial-peer voice 1 voip

destination-pattern [1-3]...

session target ras

codec g7xx

Hope it helps.