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As most of you may or may not know, Cisco currently only provides non-bootable Unified Communications ISO images on CCO for download. These ISOs are listed as being provided for “upgrades” and hence will not boot.
 
The only difference between these non-bootable images and a bootable disc is that the bootable disc includes a boot sector file.   Fortunately, this boot sector file can easily be extracted from a bootable disc and then injected into your non-bootable ISO.  To accomplish this, you will need to use some sort of ISO image software such as UltraISO, MagicISO, PowerISO, etc.  I prefer to use UltraISO for its ease of use.
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Cisco IP Communicator (CIPC) requires a sound card be installed on a PC in order to install or open. Under normal circumstances, this completely makes sense. However, in other circumstances (demos/labs), PCs are actually virtual machines … and do not have sound cards. In these situations, the engineers/trainers/etc are more concerned with dialing than actually hearing audio.

In order to use CIPC in a virtual machine, install Virtual Audio Streaming – a virtual sound card tool from ShiningMorning.com prior to installing CIPC. This software will install virtual audio drivers on your VM which allow CIPC to install and have dialing capabilities. Unfortunately, CIPC will still only allow one instance to run at a time…unlike IP Blue. I have tested this with VMWare ESXi but it may also work with other VMWare products.
 
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This tutorial will show you how to create or convert an existing audio file and save it in CCITT u-law – 8KHz 8bit Mono format for use in Cisco Unified Call Manager Express (CUCME), Cisco Unified Contact Center (UCCX) or Cisco Unity Express (CUE). This has always been an easy task with the Windows Sound Recorder that came with Windows XP. However, the sound recorder that comes with Windows 7 does not work the same.
 
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This tutorial is a continuation of the virtual voice lab series. In this tutorial, you will add a dial-plan to the PSTN router that was added in the first part of the PSTN simulation lab. (more…)

Occasionally, I have run into the issue when turning up a PRI that ring back is not heard when placing an inbound call. Caller only hears silence until the called party answers. This seems to be more prevalent with smaller Telco’s who don’t have a lot of experience with PRIs.

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This tutorial is a continuation of the virtual voice lab series. Unfortunately, the virtual voice lab has been a “work in progress” much longer than I had hoped it would be when I started it two years ago. In this tutorial, you will add a new router to your GNS3 topology. It will connect it to the HQ, BR1 and BR2 routers to simulate an Internet connection and the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

There is one caveat to this PSTN simulation… GNS3/Dynamips is not capable of simulating traditional analog or digital circuits. We will be simulating an Internet Telephony Service provider (ITSP). ITSPs have become increasingly popular in the past ~5 years. Basically, the PSTN router will route incoming calls to the branch routers and received outgoing calls from the branch routers over a SIP or H323 trunk.
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Adding a custom background image to a Cisco IP Phone can be tricky. You can use Cisco Phone Designer or you can use the following instructions to upload backgrounds to the dedicated servers so the users can choose a background from the phone.
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If you work on Cisco IPT environments, you have probably ran into a situation where you wanted to make a call through a gateway to test the PSTN connectivity, test translation-profiles or as a process of elimination, you wanted to eliminate the CUCM cluster.  The Xlite SIP softphone is a great tool for such tests. You can make calls through an IOS gateway without making any new configuration changes to the gateway itself or to the CUCM cluster.

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Since passing my voice lab, I have had several requests from candidates asking to me provide a list of the equipment I used in my home lab. As I stated in earlier posts, during my V2 studies and due to not having a Catalyst 6500 w/ 6508, or a VG248 in my lab, I subsidized my study sessions with rack time from Proctor Labs. I would mostly do this during full mock lab sessions, and then utilize my own rack during everyday study.

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Well, it has almost been three weeks since I passed the Voice lab, and I have to say, as much as I love to study and learn, it has been nice not having the pressure and spending every free minute in the lab or reading! Sure over the past few weeks I have still cracked a book almost every night, but I have also been spending some well deserved time just hanging with my family and doing things like playing video games with my boys. Fun stuff!

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