SIP in higher education

[Ben Teitelbaum <>]

I've set up a new way of joining the SIP.edu calls...

sip:

Give it a try for today's call.

-- ben



 (Dennis Baron) writes:

> Call tomorrow, Thursday, 3/24/05 2:00-3:00 EST (UTC-5)
>
> Agenda
>
> - Minutes from 2/17/05 and 3/3/05 meetings - All
>   See below - any corrections?
>
> - Deployment updates - All
>   
>   Updates from Hawaii and Harvard and others?  Any of the other Cisco
>   schools have updates?
>
> - Cisco SIP Proxy Promotion - Doug Walsten
>
>   Doug will tell us about the CSPS package that Cisco has put together
>   for schools implementing SIP.edu.
>
> - As always, let me know if you have any other items for this or
>   future agendas!
>
>                      Dennis
>
> Thursday 2:00 PM US/Eastern (UTC-5)
> To join the call, do one of the following:
>   a. Dial +1-734-615-7474, or
>           +1-800-392-6130, or 
>           +1-866-411-0013 and enter access code 0153458, or
>   b. Call 
> sip:,
>  or
>   c. To have the system call you, click here:
>           https://edial.internet2.edu/call/0153458
>
> --------
>
> SIP.edu Conference Call February 17, 2005
>
> *Attendees*
>
> Dennis Baron, MIT
> Jeremy George, Yale
> Candace Holman, Harvard
> Jeff Kuure, Internet2
> Richard Machita, Alaska
> Mark Spencer, Indiana University
> Ben Teitelbaum, Internet2
> Doug Walson, Cisco
> Garrett Yoshimi, Hawaii
>
>
>
> *Discussion*
>
> Today's discussion begins with Mark Spencer detailing Indiana University's
> SIP implementation. Using products by Interactive Intelligence
> (http://www.inin.com), the university has set up a Windows Server 2003
> based SIP proxy server. User information is retrieved from a SQL Server
> database (as opposed to an LDAP directory) and calls are routed through
> an Interactive Intelligence gateway. A web interface allows call plan
> configuration. The software license allows for basic routing and an
> unlimited number of sites for $200. For $5000, other services, such as
> client registration, are available. Currently, the university is using
> the less expensive option and has had no difficulties.
>
> Thought has gone into allowing client registration, but this has led to
> political discussions about SIP usage on campus and debate regarding
> billing for SIP service. SIP is being thought of as a possible POTS
> migration, but again policy issues and questions about service between
> the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses will have to be resolved.
>
> Following this, Candace mentions a new problem with Harvard's SIP
> implementation. Past issues with the Avaya LDAP plugin have been
> discussed before; the most recent problem occurred following an upgrade
> from CCS 0.35 to 0.38 - following this upgrade, everything stopped
> working. Downgrading back to 0.35 has restored service. Candace has
> advised to avoid upgrading to 0.38 if it can be avoided.
>
> Dennis then discusses his complete conversion to SIP as he is no longer
> using his ISDN phone. He also mentions a recent configuration mistake with
> setting up dial peers which was causing a 3-second delay in all SIP calls.
>
> Candace, Garrett, and Dennis then recount their recent tests of the
> eyeBeam SIP client (www.xten.com), which does IM, video, recording,
> and presence. The client does conference calling with audio mixing,
> offers a variety of audio codecs, and offers high quality audio and easy
> account switching. An SDK is also offered (for Windows only), and there
> are Mac clients as well as an audio-only Pocket PC client.
>
> Finally, Richard asks about help with gateway configuration issue. This
> leads to requests for Cisco people to do a configuration demo, both from
> the gateway and the PBX side of the equation.
>
> The next call will be on Thursday, March 3th.
>
> --------
>
> SIP.edu Conference Call March 3, 2005
>
> *Attendees*
>
> Dennis Baron, MIT
> Chris (?), Oregon
> Arthur Gaylord, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
> Jeremy George, Yale
> Candace Holman, Harvard
> Karl Kreuger, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
> Jeff Kuure, Internet 2
> Bruce Mazza, Avaya
> James Stormes, Cisco
> Mark Spencer, Indiana University
> Ben Teitelbaum, Internet 2
> Yul Pyun, University of Hawaii
> Mike Van Norman, UCLA
> Carlos Vincente, Oregon
> Mike West, Avaya
>
> *Discussion*
>
> Today's call begins with a reminder about the upcoming workshop, to be
> held on Thursday, May 5 and Friday, May 6 after the spring Internet 2
> Member Meeting.
>
> Following this, Candace talks about Harvard's progress with the Avaya LDAP
> plugin. Avaya provided a .so for Linux systems which is configured using
> a text config file.  Small changes must be made to a few other system
> files as well. The plugin, which only works with Avaya systems, can be
> configured to use multiple LDAP servers, to do lookups based on criteria
> such as phone number or email address, and to set phone prefixes, among
> other things. In addition, the configuration file enables an organization
> to set criteria for zero or multiple query results. It currently supports
> multiple domains, but does not allow queries to different LDAP servers
> based on domain. However, this could change in the future.
>
> Candace concludes with a mention of Harvard's privacy policy - currently
> only 20,000 employee records can be queried, and only those from employees
> who agree to have their email and phone number made public. Candace
> has submitted plugin troubleshooting documentation for the SIP.edu
> cookbook. Harvard hopes to make SIP available to the campus soon,
> hopefully by next week.
>
> Regarding the cookbook, requests are made for a generic section on dial
> plans, as well as a best practices overview.
>
> Finally, Art and Karl discuss Woods Hole's configuration system for
> SIP devices. The WHOI administrators have moved towards storing server
> and host configuration information, including those for SIP phones,
> in databases and automating as much as possible. In addition, users are
> granted as much control over phone configuration as possible  via a Web
> interface. Devices and user IDs are not treated separately right now -
> for example, there is no way to turn off a specific user ID for a device,
> such as when a user goes out of town. But they are looking into allowing
> users to control call processing - sending calls to a lab first, for
> example, then to their desk, and finally their cell phone.
>
> The goal is to unify device configuration and user information. For any
> phone configuration, the database can generate a configuration file
> - the phone starts up, gets an IP address via DHCP, and is served a
> config file based on its MAC address. SIP passwords are not necessarily
> transmitted securely, but there are only limited things that can be
> done with this password. H350 was explored for device configuration,
> but was too complicated. SIP phones are considered to be just another
> host on the network, and use the same DHCP server and configuration
> database as everything else.
>
> The next call will be on Thursday, March 17th.
>
> --------
>
>

-- 
Ben Teitelbaum   http://people.internet2.edu/~ben/