Johann's Unified Communications : edge

OCS Remote Connectivity Analyzer

jkruse — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 10:19:55 GMT

A great tool for testing remote connectivity to your OCS Edge Server is now available from the UC Team.

Check it out at https://www.testocsconnectivity.com/

OCS VoIP in a disaster zone

jkruse — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 06:56:22 GMT

Massive storms in Brisbane recently left many people homeless, and in fact it was declared a disaster zone.

One of the people who had their home destroyed in this storm was my mate Bill Lockett from Dimension Data. Our best wishes and thoughts are with him and his family during this time as they rebuild.

Bill’s house lost all power and landline communications, but fortunately Telstra’s NextG network was still online.

Bill was able to use a generator to power his laptop, and with a Polycom CX200 USB handset (which in fact he had to dry out as it was in an inch of water) and Office Communicator 2007 he was still fully able to use his work phone. No special hardware, software, or VPN required. Microsoft’s adaptive RTAudio codec ensured that call quality was excellent, despite the conditions.

Nice one Bill :)

Edge Planning Tool for OCS 2007

jkruse — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:20:00 GMT

Confused about Edge Server configuration and security? The best idea is to come to UNC316: Office Communications Server 2007 Security: Architecture and Edge Services with Derrick Buckley and Craig Pringle at Tech.Ed in Sydney next week :)

But if you can't make it to Tech.Ed then it might be worthwhile checking out the Edge Planning Tool.

The Edge Planning Tool asks questions about your proposed or current edge server deployment. The tool uses your answers and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 best practices to generate the following reports:

Settings that you can use to configure your certificates, DNS services, and firewalls
Custom documentation for configuring your edge servers, reverse proxy, and next hop server
A comparison of your answers to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 best practices

Download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=149e5dd5-eaae-46b6-afba-01c31e88a275&displaylang=en

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Designing Your Perimeter Network for Office Communications Server 2007 White Paper

jkruse — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:12:37 GMT

This paper answers questions about Office Communications Server 2007 with specific regard to its integration into the perimeter network (also known as DMZ, demilitarized zone, or screened subnet).

The first section, “Commonly Asked Questions,” answers key design questions from customers about the initial stages of product deployment.

The second section, “Architecture and Networking Best Practices,” explores ways to prepare for the edge servers in the perimeter network, taking into consideration issues of physical deployment, ways to ensure a publicly routable IP address, firewall configuration, and load-balancing concerns.

Download the whitepaper at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E4A8D703-E41A-47D9-B9DD-2799F894AF92&displaylang=en

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Information on A/V Edge Ports and Public IP Addresses

jkruse — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:04:00 GMT

I often get asked why the OCS AV Edge server requires a public IP address. The best explanation I've seen was recently posted by Alan Shen over at the OCS Team Blog.

The A/V edge server enables users to participate in audio and video connections from outside the corporate network, such as a point to point call, a conference, leaving a voicemail with Exchange UM, or making a PSTN call. Contoso has deployed the A/V Edge server with two NICs in the perimeter network. The “external” firewall separates the edge server from the internet and the “internal” firewall separates the server from the corporate network. In order for the A/V Edge server to function correctly, the internal firewall must allow traffic to UDP 3478, TCP 443, and TCP 5062 (A/V authentication port). And the external firewall must allow bi-directional traffic to the following ports: UDP 3478, TCP 443, UDP 50,000-59,999, and TCP 50,000-59,999. No NATing behavior is allowed on either firewall. The external IP address must be publically routable and the internal IP address must be routable from within the corporate network.

Read the rest of the article at http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2008/03/25/133.aspx

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