Good stuff, thanks Richard.
The uplinks for all things data-related are handled by “CIT” on behalf of the NIH… thus we aren’t touching the trunk or the SBC directly… but funny you should mention that… we are delayed in our pilot by about 6 weeks PRECISELY because they had issues getting the SBC configured correctly. As for case studies, that’s a good question… it’s been reported to us that L3 was chosen as a provider for the pilot precisely because of the need to support Lync, but again that evaluation has happened on the CIT side… they actually host the Lync servers as well. Another NIH division (aka “IC”) has completed a VOIP pilot… but it appears this may have been using a Cisco VOIP solution… it turns out there’s a bit of a faction war going on between the data and the telco guys within the org[1]… so we may be among the first to be victims^H^H^H^H^H^H^H pilots of the L3/SIP/Lync infrastructure internally… -sc [1] Again, color me unsuprised From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Richard Stovall Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2013 11:07 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] A little afield of the normal topic - ShoreTel installation Our SIP trunks are from L3, and (knock on wood) they have been extraordinarily stable. Their SIP engineers are also excellent. One of the key things getting started is to get your session border controller configured correctly. I fully and completely recommend utilizing the vendor's support staff during that process. SIP is a really specialized beast, and it takes excellent and well trained people to make it successful. Are there any case studies for L3 trunks with Lync as the IP PBX? We moved to SIP using ShoreTel 11.x (or was it 12.x?) and it wasn't until 13.x that ShoreTel was fully baked to work with SIP trunks. Hopefully some case studies will highlight any gotchas in advance and you can at least plan for them if there are no workarounds. We got slightly burned because ShoreTel's SIP implementation was not feature compatible with their PRI-based product until 13.x. The system was still usable, but goofy things were annoying as heck. Transferred callers only heard silence instead of ringing, for example. Call recording stopped working. Yada, yada, yada. (Yes, we and our ShoreTel vendor should have known these details up front, but we were on the bleeding edge a bit...) Good luck with it. On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 9:14 AM, Steven M. Caesare <[email protected]> wrote: We are going to pilot about 30 folks initially. My understanding from the folks who handle the central network services side of things is that the SIP trunk[1] is set up for 60 concurrent calls. Their experience is that he existing PRI lines see something like 5-6% concurrent utilization… altho it’s anticipated that our usage the VOIP stuff may be greater, in that one of the primary drivers for it is to provide access for folks teleworking… -sc [1] Provisioned with Level3.. they apparently do some things[3] much more cleanly than Verizon[2] [2] Color me unsurprised. [3] Such as E911 service From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Richard Stovall Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2013 9:01 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] A little afield of the normal topic - ShoreTel installation What is the size of your pilot (user base, I guess)? How many concurrent call paths? On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 8:13 AM, Steven M. Caesare <[email protected]> wrote: We are just getting ready to pilot VOIP with a SIP line with Lync 2010 initially...moving to 2013 in the latter part of the pilot.... We have the gear coming from Polycom for the most part... I'll be happy to share experiences. -sc > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] > On Behalf Of Phil Brutsche > Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 4:27 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] A little afield of the normal topic - ShoreTel > installation > > (Catching up with old threads) > > It is absolutely, 100% doable. > > One of our clients @ $OTHERJOB uses Lync 2010/2013 as their phone system with > a Cisco 29xx as the voice gateway; PSTN > connectivity is via PRI. > > Lync talks to the Cisco router via SIP. > > -- > Phil Brutsche > [email protected] > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] > On Behalf Of Kurt Buff > Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2013 9:18 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] A little afield of the normal topic - ShoreTel > installation > > That is an intriguing thought. > > Given that we have an EA, it might make a very case to argue for dropping > ShoreTel. > > I think I'll do a little research on this topic. > > Kurt > > On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 6:13 PM, Michael B. Smith <[email protected]> > wrote: > > I run into this all the time for various Windows-based telephony and UM > > systems. Cisco used to be this way also. Don't > know if they still are. Two of the other vendors I work with are. > > > > Lync has Enterprise Voice and it can be a complete replacement for a PBX, > > given an appropriate gateway to the PSTN. > > > > Asterisk also has patching issues, don't let anyone fool you there... as > > far as I have seen, Microsoft does this better than > anyone else. > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: [email protected] > > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Kurt Buff > > Sent: Friday, July 19, 2013 7:01 PM > > To: [email protected] > > Subject: [NTSysADM] A little afield of the normal topic - ShoreTel > > installation > > > > All, > > > > We are using ShoreTel for our phone solution. Works well. > > > > I have just recently upgraded from 10.2 to 11.2 to 12.3, after I moved it > > to a new VLAN - that was a bit of a late night... > > > > However, it's running on an ancient SuperMicro server, on Server 2003 R2. > > > > It's time to move it to a new Dell machine, running 2008 R2, and to get to > > the current version of 13.2. > > > > I've looked at the prerequisites for installing 12.3, and am appalled at > > what they suggest, and was hoping for a bit of > feedback from anyone here regarding this. > > > > Here's what they want me to do: > > > > o- Turn off the firewall - disable all of the profiles (Domain, Public and > > Private), then turn off and disable the service. > > o- Turn off the Base Filtering Engine (disable the service) > > o- Set DEP for essential Windows programs and services only > > o- Turn off UAC > > o- Do not apply patches released past a certain date, stating > > "When releasing a new build, ShoreTel publishes build notes > > listing the Microsoft > > patches that are certified against the build. ShoreTel also > > highlights software > > changes required by the Microsoft patches. Note that no > > additional Microsoft > > updates should be applied to your ShoreWare server between > > ShoreTel builds. If > > you install Microsoft updates between ShoreTel builds, they may > > have an adverse > > effect on your telephone system. > > Disable Microsoft updates until you review the detailed > > certification provided with > > each release." > > > > > > If you are running ShoreTel, have you run into this, and how do you protect > > your ShoreTel environment, other than > firewalling the subnet that it's on? > > > > To me, this seems like egregiously broken software, requiring me to reduce > > the security of the server to near zero. > > > > Thoughts appreciated. > > > > Kurt > > > > >
