CUBE, SME or Both?

[john-guy]

In planning for the future is it necessary to use CUBE and SME to connect PBXs with a SIP interface and PBXs with a H323/IP Trunk card?  Our CallManager dialing plan and overall design is solid however the many translations between the CUCM and PBXs are full of translations.  In addition the communication between locations are connected by voice tie-lines.  The goal is to connect our CUCM system with 10 digit dialing with the PBX side of the house with four digit dialing and trunk access codes.

Should CUBE be used to aggregate all our PBXs into a "clean" dialing plan or simply create the PBX as a SIP or H.323 gateway in CallManager with Route Patterns?

[skilambi]

John

Check this out, this should give you a good primer on SME/CUBE and possible designs. CUBE is an interface point to the SIP when using SIP and consolidating your many invidividual PSTN lines. SME servers as central routing engine allowing you to better consolidate your dial plan and also provide features such as SNR, mobility to PBX that otherwise may not have it

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Unified_Communications_Manager_-_Session_Manager_Edition

Also check out some videos by Darryl Sladden on the forums on SME/SIP

Thanks

Srini

[john-guy]

Hi Srini,

First of all thank you for the link to CUCM/SME.  Since we're replacing all Voice Tie-Lines with IP Trunking Cards (H.322) or SIP Cards to traverse our WAN I wonder if CUBE is still a good option?  Each PBX has two routes, 1st out the PSTN and 2nd over our WAN to the destination PBX or CallManager.  Since we're not consolidating PSTN circuits maybe SME can manage all the H323/SIP trunks from our PBXs along with managing the dial-plan.

Quick example...  PBX-1 has a SIP interface which we can connect to CUBE or SME to make the appropriate translations.  PBX-2 has a H323 IP Trunk Card and it can connect to CUBE or SME too.  It appears CUBE is not required and SME can fulfill this requirement to manage our dial-plan is 10 digits for CUCM and  4 digits for our PBXs.  Can you recommend a SME configuration guide.

Thank you,

John

[skilambi]

John

Yes SME is for more immediate importance as a central routing engine. The SIP or H323 cards can talk to SME which can then route to your leaf nodes. CUBE is more important when interfacing with the outside provider to do SIP translations, address network hiding etc. There are also many more SIP enhancements coming in SME as a part of the 8.5 release so if your PBX is not listed in the link below then testing becomes very important to ensure features work with SME 8.0

Check out the config guides for SME with various PBX models and it should fit very closely what you are trying to do

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/ns340/ns414/ns728/interOp_ucSessionMgr.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/ns340/ns414/ns728/networking_solutions_products_genericcontent0900aecd805bd13d.html

Thanks

Srini

[dbrittin]

Hi,

In addition to Srini's excellent help, if you would be interested in joining the Cisco Collaboration User Group, there's a technical briefing on "Configuring SIP Trunks for PSTN Access" scheduled for next Wednesday July 21st.  The speakers are SIP experts Christina Hattingh (Technical Marketing Engineer) and Darryl Sladden (Product Manager), along with their team members for Q&A.  It's an interactive briefing via Cisco WebEx, so a good forum to ask questions about your project.

Collaboration User Group membership is free and open to all Cisco customers.  Visit the Cisco User Groups space in the Collaboration Community (or direct URL is www.cisco.com/go/cug) to learn more, join, and register for the briefing.

Thanks,

Denise Brittin

Cisco Collaboration User Group Manager

[john-guy]

I joined CUG... thank you

[tshakour]

Hi there -

Here are a couple of resources that can help you design this:

TechWiseTV: SIP, Session Management (SME) and Cube episode.

Technology Workshop on SIP, Session Management (SME) and Cube.

I think both of those will be helpful for you. Wade and Darryl are the experts on this stuff and present clear scenarios and such.