Couple of Things

I haven't blogged for a couple of weeks now and my typing finger is getting itchy. Please check out Post One as the reason for sharing my vast knowledge ( other than for the good of mankind of course!)I have been studying Gatekeeper off and on and almost ready to post my notes. In the mean time here are a couple of things I have run across the last couple of weeks to keep the blog active and useful.

First of all my daughter wishes to shout out that she has found a dress for her 8th grade dance! This of course will be the most important thing you read today so it is at the top.

We have implemented a couple of analog sites using H323 as opposed to MGCP. This was originally done to provide Caller ID to these sites since Caller ID using MGCP controlled FXO interfaces is not supported. What I have found is that H323 is quite easy to implement and I am seriously looking at using this instead of MGCP going forward. This will be a future blog subject on the differences between the two protocols and why I may chose to dump MGCP and use H323.

Clarus Systems makes a fine product that does many things that Call Manager does not do but should. You can use Clarus IPC to run reports on all aspects of Call Manager and run scripts to test your implementation. They also provide a tool to remotely control an IP Phone that comes in handy for troubleshooting. Clarus recently introduced an add on module to the product called Voice Monitor. This is advertised as a tool to monitor voice quality, service availability, and security conditions across the Call Manager environment. I installed it last week and what it is a GUI interface that provides SQL queries for Dummies functionality. Very useful if you have ever slogged through running SQL queries on Call Manager trying to find out who dialed 911 or may have had a bad VoIP experience. I think it can also be used as a 911 alerting tool instead of CER.

http://www.clarussystems.com/