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August 13 - Issue 48
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MCS Forum is an independent forum on
Microsoft Communications Server & UC-Unified Communications.
Microsoft is a trademark of the Microsoft Corporation.
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Our Sponsors
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Visit Our Sponsor
Call 303-594-1694 for more on Vimenture
Click here mention PromoCode MCSTEL - ask for John Cognata
SOFTEL Communications Inc. specializing in the development and delivery
of best-in-class IP telephony, unified communications, contact centers,
and speech self-service solutions. From simple single site to complex
multi-channel, multi-modal, multi-platform, enterprise implementations,
SOFTEL provides full life-cycle professional services, consulting,
design, application development, solutions integration and
implementation services that focus on reducing operational costs and
improving business performance.  Click here or call 303-594-1694 |
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Greetings!
Welcome to the MCS Forum.
A new look for a new era in unified communications. In you would like to see your products highlighted, reviewed and presented here or in other publications such as:
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Increasing SIP Performance with E-class SBCs
including animated tutorials
Here are two aspects of increased performance in SIP networks.
More paraphrased than just a direct quote
from VoIP Performance Management and Optimization (book review below) by Ahmed, Madani and Siddiqui
Cisco Press ISBN 1-58705-528-7 but nevertheless good information:
As more and more traffic is routed toward
the SBC, the VoIP SP-Service Provider should introduce traffic-optimizing
schemes for the SBC.
Click here for animated tutorial
Two of the most
commons options are:
- Introduction of load balancers (through a
SIP Virtual IP or VIP) to front an SBC server farm. This enables high availability for the SIP
traffic along with the flexibility of dynamic growth through the additional
servers in the SBC server farm.
- Dynamic "on
demand" SIP proxy routing networks configure as needed to route
traffic. That is, a SIP proxy cluster in
the network that does the routing to HA-high availability SBC VIP based on
geographic location of the terminating number.
Click here for animated tutorial |
Eight Critical Network Security Architectures for SIP Applications Part 2 - Types 1-8
This is a review of various network architectures for network-secure SIP applications.
Type 1 - Dedicated IP Pipe for SIP
Type 2 - Merged MPLS-Pipe with LER Tagging SIP
Type 3 - Merged IP pipe with SIP-Aware Firewall (SAFW)
Type 4 - Separate IP Pipe for SIP with Existing Non-SIP Firewall and SIP-Only Firewall (SOFW)
Type 5 - Merged IP Pipe with Incumbent Non-SIP-aware Firewall, No DMZ Port and SIP-aware Firewall
Type 6 - Looks like Type 5 but Merged IP Pipe with Incumbent Non-SIP-aware Firewall, No DMZ Port and SIP-aware Firewall
Type 7 - Merged IP Pipe with Incumbent Non-SIP-aware Firewall with a DMZ Port
Type 8 - Merged IP Pipe with Incumbent Non-SIP-aware Firewall
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Death of Avaya More Like What Mark Twain Said
OPED by Thomas B. Cross
Speaking of Avaya rising like the Phoenix -
their contact center solution integration with Facebook is way beyond anything
that MS will likely have in the near time and with more than 500,000,000 users
is a great new platform for any business. Speaking of platforms, of course the PBX is a dead platform like Wang
Word Processors were decades ago, however, media gateways and SBC-Session
Border Controllers are going to take a lot of skills than MS is not training
for or equipped to do. SIP is also far
more vulnerable to security attacks that most are also equipped to handle.
Bottom line - MS has yet to announce a
release date and so until its available, then before there can be a "Clash
of the Titans," MS needs to "release the Kraken."
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"One
Softphone Size Can Fit Nearly All"
One Softphone for Nearly ALL Platforms
"One Size Can Fit Nearly All"
IS-phone is a second generation voice over IP telephony
application, which offers IP telephony (audio/video) features smoothly
integrated into nearly all platforms - PBX to Web. It enables corporate
telephony (coupled to your IP PBX), presence, audio/video conferencing and
advanced click-to-dial from your Lotus contacts or LDAP directory, buddies,
emails or documents. is-phone provides key advantages of simplicity,
flexibility and attractive pricing exposed by pure software solution.
IP-PBX certified on IBM, Avaya, Broadsoft, Apple
AdTran/Objectworld, Alcatel-Lucent, Asterisk, BroadSoft, Cisco, Comverse,
MetaSwitch, Mitel, NEC Sphere, Nortel, OpenSIPS, Siemens, SIP Express Routers,
SIPfoundry etc. If your platform is not listed, click below and I will check on
it. In addition, a web page solution is available without regard to any
browser. This are just two examples.
Click here with
PromoCODE - MCSISO and will get you even more. |
Get Real - Live Meetings - "Better Than Being There"
Can you tell this is not live?
For more than 30 years, I have been literally around the world seeing video
teleconferencing systems. Two days ago I saw something that was innovative,
effective and engaging. I call it LMT-Live Meeting Technology. Key Benefits Eye-to-Eye and "Real Life" - LMT systems align the
camera at the eye level of the participants through the usage of a patented
display system incorporating a special image technology. Other systems
that place the camera outside of the image area are not capable of achieving
this alignment and therefore do not have true eye-to-eye contact.Seriously can you tell this is not live? Lifesize interaction - This
system achieves true depth of field without the usage of special glasses by
generating a life-size image of the transmitted participants that appears
physically in front of a backdrop. The 3D TelePresence systems deliver an
astonishing sense of presence within the three dimensional setting of the room
for natural communication.
 FREE - Tele/Skills Communications
Solutions
In the spirit of this
concept, I am excited to help promote the concept of "Live Meeting
Technology." With each system, you will receive at no additional
charge, onsite one full-day of training from "award-winning" industry
experts.
The training class includes
- Introducing and Integrating Real "Live" Meeting Into Your
Organization
Topics included are:
- Setting the Context for
Meetings
- Project
Initiation
- Guide to Successful
Meetings of Any Kind
- Enhancing Communications
- Roles and Functions of
Participants
- Beyond Communications,
Move Minds, Not Matter
- Successful Business
Applications - Saving Time, Increasing Revenues, Reducing Cycle Time
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Tele/Presence Forum & Summit
Polycom, Cisco and global leaders in tele/presence come to Boulder.
Courtesy: Cisco
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Domestic & Global Network Services
Bandwidth and other Communications Services
Vimenture has teamed with TECHtionary to provide data,
internet, conferencing and other network services including:
- MPLS-Multi-Protocol Label Switching
- Ethernet - Metro
- Hosted Servers - Cloud Computing
- Telecommunications Bill Audits
- Security Assessments
- International Connectivity
- Voice Over IP - SIP Trunking
- Conferencing Services - Audio
- Professional Services - Planning, Integration, Consulting
Click here and
mention
PromoCode OCSVIM. |
MCS Knowledge Source
Click here for Next Hop from MS -- "Whether you're new to Office Communications Server and Unified Communications,
simply looking for some helpful hints, or trying to get some serious
information, we'll help you find what you need."
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TECHtionary Announces training on two
CompTIA certificate programs.
For complete details click here.
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Onsite SIP Course Get SIP Smart
"Proxies are signaling - Media servers
are content"
For SIP Course details click here.
 SIP Trunking is one of the
first complete books to planning, evaluating, and implementing high-value SIP
trunking solutions. Most large enterprises have switched to IP telephony, and
service provider backbone networks have largely converted to VoIP transport.
But there's a key missing link: most businesses still connect to their service
providers via old-fashioned, inflexible TDM-Time Division Multiplexed trunks.
Cisco® authors show how to use Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP) trunking to
eliminate legacy interconnects and gain the full benefits of end-to-end VoIP.
Written for enterprise decision-makers, network architects, consultants, and
service providers, this book demystifies SIP trunking technology and trends and
brings unprecedented clarity to the transition from TDM to SIP interconnects.
The authors "separate the true benefits of SIP trunking from the myths and
help you systematically evaluate and compare service provider offerings. This
book includes detailed cost analyses, including guidance on identifying
realistic, achievable savings." SIP Trunking also introduces essential
techniques for optimizing network design and security, introduces proven best
practices for implementation, and shows how to apply them through a
start-to-finish case study.
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Book Review
"VoIP Performance Management and Optimization"
By Adeel
Ahmed, Habib Madani,
Talal
Siddiqui.
For Cisco Press details click here.
There is really nothing about
this book I don't like except that it is only on paper, not electronic. That
is the only negative think I can say about this book and if you are serious
about VoIP (SIP) performance, QoS, security, monitoring and infrastructure
integration (hardware) and more, then you need to read and know everything that
is in this book. And like what my mom
said to me a long time ago, "if you think you know what's going on, then
you are really full of s##." Seriously there is just too much really
good information to mention in less than 300 words (trying to keep in
brief). Here's one of my favorites: on
page 262 "signaling traffic is also vulnerable to attack, including Spam over Internet
Telephony-SPIT. SPIT leverages SIP proxy
impersonation to sent unsolicited bulk messages to SIP endpoints. VoIP phishing (vishing or fishing) involves
CallerID spoofing and then call rerouting to dummy IVR systems for further exploitation
of the SIP call processing resources." This one of the many great "actionable" tutorials you will find in the
book.
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Sales Performance Improvement
 Cross Passes Microsoft Partner Network Sales and Marketing Competency Assessment for Unified Communications 
helping improve sales (job aids, marcom),
proven performance and results are always
available click here.
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TECHtionary Knowledge Source
Click here for TECHtionary -- World's First and Largest Animated Library on Technology with more than 3,015 animated tutorials.
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MCS
Forum provides classroom and webseminar training as well as a non-production
environment for those IT departments without additional equipment, budget or
time. This allows planners and users to test ideas, dial in and dial back
out, IM file transfers, remote desktop sharing, video conferencing, run
scenarios, review logs, break linkages and learning about new telephony
features and network access. MCS Forum is also designed for both the
system integrator/consultant who wants to learn about MCS without having to
build their own system as well as the enterprise customer who doesn't have the
time, resources or knowledge to develop one. MCS Forum Labs are
designed to be "hands-on" or "over-the-shoulder" with
experts available for Q&A and classes for feature-specific review.
About MCS Forum
MCS Forum is a vendor-independent
laboratory environment designed for learning, technical guides, knowledge
resources and online "live" services. MCS Forum provides
planning, project management, consulting, training, case studies, white papers,
speaking engagements, market/customer research, network planning and other
services.
Click here to contact.
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