The CUCM 6.1 moan

We recently upgraded to CUCM 6.1 and 6.0 - and the main reason for this was the fact that 6.0 was full of bugs. 6.1 is no better sadly and we still have "interesting" things happening:

• Pressing the DND button leaves a "???" on the phone screen.
• Call Pickup Group notifications have randomly stopped working (for certain people)
• Calling certain numbers results in a "fake display" appearing on the phone screen in the CLID area.
• The BAT tool is still a bag of crap.
• Sometimes faxes stop working randomly.
• System slowness

Grrrr! They're fairly minor issues but if I can try to sort them, will post up!

Been a while!

As always a busy guy, and have been installing 6500's over night for customer's and a few other bits and bobs. I also got to go on a Palmersport day which was incredible! Being able to drive a single seater sports car similar to a Formula 3000 car was just mind blowing - though I proved I had a lot to learn if my driving skills were to be as high as Louis Hamilton!

Just a word to say that I treated myself to an IBM X41 Tablet PC! I found myself using the UMPC less and less due to the speed of the unit and I can now safely say that the X41 has replaced my T60 in the office! I can now grab my PC and start writing when a support call comes in. I also plonked Vista SP1 and it's pretty quick (suprisingly!).

My ex missus went a bit mad though and decided to snap my UMPC pen (lol!), so if anyone knows where I can buy an Asus R2H Stylus please let me know!

Handy hint for 6500 switches

If you're looking to find out the serial numbers of SFP's installed in your chassis, but can't be bothered to find out by unplugging everything, you can use the following command in IOS. This doesn't include CatOS (it's a different command). Don't forget to no shut your interfaces before checking:

show idprom interface gigabitEthernet 1/1 include Vendor SN

The include part is optional. :)

Getting intimate with some 6509 switches :)

Well it had to happen - I finally got my hands on some real expensive kit! Allow me to show you:


The kit arrived on pallates, lots of them! And blimey they're huge!





After we finally shifted through all of the boxes we were left with 4 beasts (3 pictured):





Once we had all of the components unwrapped we started to assemble the chassis. I didn't include any pics of the dual 6000W PSUs (Hot swappable, dual input, essentially made up of two 3000W PSU's internally) because they were quite boring. The box can be powered up from a single input on a single PSU. The below Sup720 with 10Gigabit Fiber however, is definitely not boring:

The Sup720 is made up of a a PFC and MSFC for both forwarding and routing engines. All intelligence of the chassis is run from here, and the box won't boot without it installed. The box also won't boot without a fan tray:

The Sup720 can only be installed in slots 5 or 6 of the 6509 switch. Notice from the pic below that the backplane for slots 5 and 6 is wider than all the others. Slots 1 and 2 buses are wider too (apparently for when Sup cards used to reside in these slots) however no advantage can be gained by installing any cards in these slots.

In the other two slots we installed some new 48port Gigabit line cards and 24port SFP Gigabit line cards. Each SFP card had 14 Fiber SFP's installed in it. We had both cards set up with a DSFC which means that they are able to make their own decisions (instead of using the PFC on the Sup720). Which ultimately means less pressure on the Sup card.

Fully loaded baby! Time to play!

First post in a while!

So I doubt I have many avid readers but I may as well update on personal things too. I guess that's what it's for!

Since the ISDN word problem I set up a cucMBE system for u customer, broke up with my girlfriend, did another job in Scarborough (God it was cold), and finished up with a job today in Illinois USA. One busy guy!

I have a couple of bugs to write up here but I felt that sorting out my expenses and other affairs was more important! We also take delivery of 4 6509 switches tomorrow! Fun! Can't wait to get hold of those!

We are now a Nokia accredited partner so hopefully will update soon on some advanced phones to come into the office. Check back soon for that.

Mike out.

ISDN (wierd) problem

Well today I discovered an odd issue with a new customer network. For some reason, if the External phone number mask on a phone was anything else than what was deemed "valid" such as when (example numbers used):

Trunk number: 01234 115115
DDI number: 01234 115200
Valid EPNM to send is "200"
Invalid number such as 01234 115200 results in CLI presented to called party as 01234 115115.

...then the call would not complete. IE, if I sent 01234 115200 to the PSTN then the following symptoms would occur:

• IP Phone gets busy tone
• My mobile phone would ring out for half a ring, presenting 01234 115115 before hanging up. Odd!
• What's more is the debug isdn q931 from the Cisco router:

*Jan 26 09:01:29.606: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: Applying typeplan for sw-type 0x12 is 0x0 0x0, Calling num 01234115200*Jan 26 09:01:29.610: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: Applying typeplan for sw-type 0x12 is 0x0 0x0, Called num 07989163892*Jan 26 09:01:29.610: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: TX -> SETUP pd = 8 callref = 0x0117 Bearer Capability i = 0x8090A3 Standard = CCITT Transfer Capability = Speech Transfer Mode = Circuit Transfer Rate = 64 kbit/s Channel ID i = 0xA98399 Exclusive, Channel 25 Progress Ind i = 0x8183 - Origination address is non-ISDN Calling Party Number i = 0x0081, '01234115200' Plan:Unknown, Type:Unknown Called Party Number i = 0x80, '07989163892' Plan:Unknown, Type:Unknown*Jan 26 09:01:29.822: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: RX <- CALL_PROC pd = 8 callref = 0x8117 Channel ID i = 0xA98399 Exclusive, Channel 25 Notification Ind i = 0xE8*Jan 26 09:01:33.614: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: RX <- ALERTING pd = 8 callref = 0x8117*Jan 26 09:01:33.654: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: TX -> DISCONNECT pd = 8 callref = 0x0117 Cause i = 0x80AC - Requested circuit/channel not available*Jan 26 09:01:33.830: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: RX <- RELEASE pd = 8 callref = 0x8117*Jan 26 09:01:33.834: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: TX -> RELEASE_COMP pd = 8 callref = 0x0117

Yes that's right! The call completes, yet the Q.931 debug says the bearer isn't available! It did make me wonder whether i'd configured too many bearers than the customer had paid for, but by a stroke of luck I determined that sending the correct CLI to the PSTN allowed the call to proceed:

*Jan 26 09:04:53.326: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: Applying typeplan for sw-type 0x12 is 0x0 0x0, Calling num 200*Jan 26 09:04:53.330: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: Applying typeplan for sw-type 0x12 is 0x0 0x0, Called num 07989163892*Jan 26 09:04:53.330: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: TX -> SETUP pd = 8 callref = 0x011A Bearer Capability i = 0x8090A3 Standard = CCITT Transfer Capability = Speech Transfer Mode = Circuit Transfer Rate = 64 kbit/s Channel ID i = 0xA98399 Exclusive, Channel 25 Progress Ind i = 0x8183 - Origination address is non-ISDN Calling Party Number i = 0x0081, '200' Plan:Unknown, Type:Unknown Called Party Number i = 0x80, '07989163892' Plan:Unknown, Type:Unknown*Jan 26 09:04:53.534: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: RX <- CALL_PROC pd = 8 callref = 0x811A Channel ID i = 0xA98399 Exclusive, Channel 25 Notification Ind i = 0xE8*Jan 26 09:04:56.770: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: RX <- ALERTING pd = 8 callref = 0x811A*Jan 26 09:04:58.538: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: TX -> DISCONNECT pd = 8 callref = 0x011A Cause i = 0x8090 - Normal call clearing*Jan 26 09:04:58.706: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: RX <- RELEASE pd = 8 callref = 0x811A*Jan 26 09:04:58.710: ISDN Se0/0/0:15 Q931: TX -> RELEASE_COMP pd = 8 callref = 0x011A

Blackberries

We lost the blackberry's!

WAH

:-(

Jed get's a Blackberry...

Sadly at the moment all the techbods at Nowcomm have to carry the Support phone on a rota basis. I don't mind being on call, but when you have to carry round a Nokia E60, the embarrassment factor is through the roof! I mean, just look at it...

So as a demontration for a customer what Blackberry is like (And furthermore, how well it works with Cisco Unified Messaging - the new curve is able to play voicemail WAV attachments!) we ended up with a couple of Blackberries to play with for an undetermined amount of time. The two devices are the BlackBerry 8120...

...and the BlackBerry 8310:

Personally I felt the 8120 felt quite tacky to feel, put perhaps i'm used to using re-assuring heavy devices? Both BlackBerry's were very very light!

Once i'd figured out the interface on the 8310 (Now the support phone) I was very impressed with the features, format and battery life of the device. Though the viewing of attachments such as Excel files didnt work as well as i'd hoped. If only we had Push Email working on Windows Smartphones...

Musings...

I've spent the last few days pondering several things, such as the UMPC form factor, ink blogging, and the price of devices in the marketplace. Hmmm...

The first thing to say is there are some fantastic ink blogs out there, from the likes of Sumocat and various others - but while i'd like to give it a go it does present various problems:

• Without a decent UI (Such as the windows live ink interface) for blogger.com (Or your blog weapon of choice) inkblogging is really really painful. If i'm on my UMPC then i'd have to write the blog in OneNote or Journal and then do either a printscreen or some kind of export - and then upload it as a JPEG to the blog site. I wrote two inkblogs last night and just couldn't be bothered to follow it through. Kudos to the other bloggers out there that do all their work in ink.
• If it's all in ink, how do Search engines spider the pages??
• Certain blogs out there that use Ink just don't display things correctly.
• I like URL's in my text, but I would guess doing this in ink would prove to be difficult.

...which is a real shame!

One other trouble with what I attempted to do last night was the whole concept of printscreening on the UMPC, and further more, using the UMPC for various things that I know will be a chore.

Printscreening my InkBlog just proved to be impossible on the UMPC because the screen is too claustrophobic, and i'm finding this for quite a few things lately - even OneNote could do with the extra screen real-estate.

So is moving to the Asus R50A a good idea? I don't think so! Judging by what i've seen, even the OQO2 sized devices that everyone seems to love aren't going to cut the mustard. The only device that really fits the bill, is the new Fujitsu (P1620) unit or maybe even the older P1610.



I guess i'm still dreaming of the ultimate UMPC:

The Amtek u560

Mmmm !

A nice alternative to the Asus on my shopping list would be this little baby. I think judging by forum posts I've seen that this device has come under flak for it's specs but most people don't realise that the CPU in this platform is pretty impressive, as is the battery life. There's also been criticism for the device being a shameless rip off of the Sony device. But hopefully if the price is right then things can really start to get interesting in UMPC land. There is a hands on video of this device on the net somewhere but I cant find it!