Content

| Summary

Corporations are looking for strategies to integrate disparate networking technologies over a single common network infrastructure. This trend started many years ago.

Cisco AVVID Solutions are heavy in design and include:

- IP Telephony IP Video Conferencing Wireless / Enterprise Mobility Security / Virtual Private Networks
- Content Networking
- IP Contact Centers
- Storage Networking

Familiar applications such as voice messaging are also easily integrated into the AVVID environment.

A new breed of IP-enabled unified-messaging solutions allows users to access both voice mail and e-mail from a common server.

IP multicasting is the transmission of an IP data frame to a host group, which is identified by a single IP address. Because of the host group is identified by a single IP address rule, the IP multicast contains a specific combination of the destination MAC address and a destination IP address.

Because of its unique capability to send out a single data stream to multiple clients, IP multicast technologies have become the transmission methods of choice for most multimedia applications.

Multicast routing protocols fall into two categories: dense mode (DM) and sparse mode (SM). DM protocols assume that almost all routers in the network will need to distribute multicast traffic for each multicast group. SM protocols assume that relatively few routers in the network will be involved in each multicast. The hosts belonging to the group are widely dispersed, as might be the case for most multicasts in the Internet. SM protocols are recommended for use in today’s networks.

IGMP is used between hosts on a LAN and the router(s) on that LAN to track of which multicast groups the hosts are members.

PIM is used between routers so that they can track which multicast packets to forward to each other and to their directly connected LANs.

Cisco CallManager is the software-based call-processing component of the Cisco IP telephony solution and essentially the heart of the IP telephony solution. The key benefit of CallManager and the supporting applications is that special-purpose voice processing hardware is not required. Supplementary and enhanced services are seamlessly added without incurring major expense.

IP Telephony Designs include Single-Site Model, Multiple Sites with Independent Call Processing, Multisite IP WAN with Distributed Call Processing, & Multisite IP WAN with Centralized Call Processing.

A trust boundary should be maintained in the wiring closet. If necessary, move it down to the distribution layer on a case-by-case basis, but avoid moving it down to the core of the network. This advice conforms with the general guidelines to keep the trust boundary as close to the source as possible.

IP phone connectivity, backup power, & IP addressing are considerations of IP Telephony design.

Line cards may be purchased that are capable of applying power to the IP phone. If IP phones are deployed using the existing switches, line cards capable of applying power should be installed. Alternatively, the external Cisco power patch panel could be used to power the phones if powered line cards are not available for the switch. As a final option wall power could be used.

The Catalyst software can be easily configured to support enhanced features such as Auxiliary / Voice VLANs.