Cisco As5350 Universal Gateway

[Guest jusedawg]

Hey guys,

 

We talked with Cisco today about their Unity product. Their software pretty much does all the same exact stuff yours does, but the only thing I thought sounded like a better approach was to have the Cisco AS5350 Universal Gateway get all the calls from the PSTN and then hand them off to the VG server similar to how a PBX does this. I know this is normally done through a dialogic board of some kind. Can this be done? If so, what hardware is required? This would allow the gateway to loadbalance between multiple servers if necessary.

 

Cisco's Unity product stores their mailboxes inside Active Directory, which means you have to have a Windows 2000 CLA for every mailbox and that is BS. So basically, I really hope you guys give me some good news. We would like to be able to use Cisco's name in our proposal to the governemnt and not paying M$ excess of $2 million for 20,000 mailboxes, just for voicemail capabilities which has nothing to do with Windows 2000.

 

I really need to work with you guys directly on this as opposed to talking through these forums. We will even pay you for your consulting services on the project or pay you double for your software license. Just let me know asap. I am pretty sure this will be the largest project you guys have ever done and just need a little more direct engineering support. No offense to the Admin of the forums, but I seriously doubt you wrote or designed the software.

 

Thanks,

 

Chad

[SupportTeam]

Is Cisco's Unity a full IVR platform or is it more of a Unified Messaging and Auto Attendant type application? We don’t know it well but thought that it was mainly a messaging application...

 

Regarding handing calls of from Cisco Gateway to VoiceGuide IVR just use a E1 (or T1) connection between the two - you will need to use a Dialogic D300 (or D240) card o the computer running VoiceGuide.

 

You may want to email your details to sales@voiceguide.com if you'd like us to undertake a project to create a solution for you.

 

You may want to also read:

http://voiceguide.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1977

[Guest jusedawg]

The Cisco unity product is a full IVR Unified Messaging system according to them anyways. I have not actually seen it in action, but we gettting a demo on Friday.

 

Can you explain in a little more detail about the Dialogic D240 and how it is used to get calls from the Cisco unit? Do I need one of these for every 24 port PRI that we hookup to the Cisco box or will one be able to handle as many lines or ports that the Cisco box has running to it?

 

Which one do we need Dialogic D/240JCT-T1 or Dialogic D/240SC-T1 Rev 2?

 

Does VG see this Dialogic card and the lines as it would a regular Dialogic voiceboard?

 

Any special settings that would be different than normal Dialogic operation?

 

I have also read in some other post that you guys have a specific version of VG that works with Dialogic?

 

Sorry for all the questions! I just need to make sure I completely understand how this works before we shell out $100,000 for the hardware and software!

 

Thanks for the help guys. You guys are always great!

 

Chad

[Guest jusedawg]

Here is the setup I am planning on trying to accomplish. Let me know if any of this sounds like it can't be done.

 

The Cisco AS5350 Universal Access Server 8T1 216Port IP+ IOS will be the gateway to the PSTN and handles all incoming calls.

 

I want to load-balance the voicemail between two servers running VG with 48-ports on each server. I am assuming this is going to require two 48-port VG Licenses?

 

There will be a third server running MSSQL and WWW.

These will all be interconnected with Fiberchannel or Gigabit Eithernet.

 

 

There is going to be about 16000 mailboxes, and each server will have access to all VMs because they will be stored in MSSQL. Therefore, the load of the processing will be split between the two servers with about 7500-8000 handling capacity on each server. Then if we need more capacity, all we have to do is add more PRI and another server and were good to go.

 

I am still trying to decide how to share the saved voicemail files between all the servers. Any ides would be greatly appreciated.

 

Have youy ever had anyone load balance between two or more servers before?

 

Thanks,

 

Chad

[SupportTeam]

Can you explain in a little more detail about the Dialogic D240 and how it is used to get calls from the Cisco unit?

You just basically set up the link to run ISDN or Robbed Bit type protocol across the link...

Do I need one of these for every 24 port PRI that we hookup to the Cisco box?

Ye.

or will one be able to handle as many lines or ports that the Cisco box has running to it?

No. 24 channels per T1.

 

Strongly recommend to go for D/240JCT.

Does VG see this Dialogic card and the lines as it would a regular Dialogic voiceboard?

yes, - after all that's exactly what it is using...

Any special settings that would be different than normal Dialogic operation?

No. VG does not care if the T1 connection is coming into the Dialogic from Cisco as opposed to from a telephone company directly...

I have also read in some other post that you guys have a specific version of VG that works with Dialogic?

Yes. You will be using "VoiceGuide for ISDN".

I want to load-balance the voicemail between two servers running VG with 48-ports on each server. I am assuming this is going to require two 48-port VG Licenses?

Yes.

I am still trying to decide how to share the saved voicemail files between all the servers. Any ides would be greatly appreciated.

Just modify the voicemail scripts to place the sound files in a common shared directory (can be over the network).

Have you ever had anyone load balance between two or more servers before?

The load balancing comes from the Cisco sending calls to the T1 line which is used less - you should be looking into Cisco's config to see what call routing options are available to you.