Addressing Challenges Specific to Multi-Site Deployments

Deploying Unified Communications Manager to geographically diverse sites adds a number of challenges not experienced in single-site deployments. The primary new challenges are:

  • Bandwidth usage and call quality over WAN links
  • Availability during WAN outages
  • Call routing to the PSTN, especially for emergency numbers
  • Potential for overlapping dial plans

After the cut, we will take a brief look at each of these issues, and some ways to to overcome them.

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Configuring Local Route Groups

Local Route Groups were introduced in CUCM 7 as a cleaner way to configure PSTN routing for multiple sites. Prior to Local Route Groups, the only way to route calls out a local gateway was to configure a partition for each site, and configure the various PSTN patterns in each one. With local route groups, you can tie a route group to a device pool, and then send route patterns to a route list that includes the “Standard Local Route Group.” Calls matching that pattern will then use the local route group configured for their device pool.

Configuration  example after the cut.

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