SIP in higher education

[(Dennis Baron)]

A small change in process - we will no longer review minutes during
the calls.  Notes will be sent to the mailing list - please send any
corrections or follow-ups to the list.

                        Dennis

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SIP.edu Conference Call May 12, 2005

*Attendees*

Dennis Baron, MIT
Karl Krueger, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute 
Jeff Kuure, Internet2
Richard Machida, Alaska
Leo O'Shea, Boston College
Megan Pengelly, Columbia
Matt Runion, University of Oklahoma 
Ben Teitelbaum, Internet2
Chris Norton, Texas A&M
Mike Van Norman, UCLA
Garrett Yoshimi, University of Hawaii
Dave Zimmerman, Berkeley

*Discussion*

Today's call is devoted to implementation comments and questions. The
call begins with Mike Van Norman discussing UCLA's SIP implementation,
which has recently been announced campus-wide. There is still some
question regarding the number of users reachable, as each department
maintains their own DNS servers. Mike also asks if there is a
preference for dialing by 11-digit or by the local 5-digit
number. Dennis mentions that there does not seem to be a consensus;
5-digit is the current setup at MIT, but 10-digit dialing also works
for most numbers. Overlap regarding numbers is not difficult to
configure.

Mike says that UCLA also does both 5- and 10-digit, but is wondering
which number should be published. Dennis responds that MIT's goal was
to make SIP dialing as much like PBX dialing as possible. Hawaii also
does 5-digit dialing but may add 10-digit as well. The SIP.edu site
(http://mit.edu/sip/sip.edu/) and cookbook contain more information
about number mapping and campus directories.

Ben discusses his idea for managing the SIP.edu website content,
specifically campus implementation notes. He suggests that each school
maintain their data at a specified location, in a structured format
(comma-separated or XML are suggested), in order to decentralize the
process and make updates to the website easier.

Megan from Columbia asks about SIP registration at other
institutions. Columbia's IT department is currently doing client
registration on an experimental basis; the CS department runs their
own separate SIP setup. Both are using Columbia's LDAP software.

UCLA is done with their recent SER trial. The are currently using SER,
and will use Asterisk soon in addition to whatever the upcoming trial
will use. Their current Cisco 5300 gateway is showing its limitations,
so they are looking at Asterisk or more recent Cisco hardware.

Dennis and Karl have been experiencing problems between MIT and
WHOI. Calls to Woods Hole are being blocked, and returning 403 or 404
errors. The Cisco gateway retries each call 13 times for each blocked
attempt. No other call participants have experienced this, so more
investigation of the gateway is required.

Chris Norton mentions that his Cisco phone during the recent workshop
- phones would reboot when called - has been solved. It turned out to
be a power issue in the hotel meeting room, not a software issue.

Dennis mentions that there have been questions regarding the
scheduling of a meeting in conjunction with the Internet2 Member
Meeting and not with Joint Techs. In response, a meeting will be
planned after the upcoming Joint Techs in Vancouver, possibly on
Thursday and Friday.

Matt Runion asks about the PIC-SER trial. Oklahoma was planning on
using PIC-SER for their SIP rollout; should they do the trial first
and the full implementation afterwards? The consensus seems to be that
this is a good strategy, and could be a way to continue seamlessly
after the trial. Or two SERs could be used, one for the trial, the
other for SIP.edu.

Meghan asks if she should participate on the PIC calls. Ben says that
there is no real need.

Finally, Ben mentions that there is a draft cookbook section on Cisco
gateways available and asks for reviewers.

The next call will be May 26.