CCM Gateways Test
Cisco offers a wide variety of voice and video gateways. A gateway provides interfaces that allow the Unified Communications network to communicate with an external network. In the data environment, a gateway might translate between a Frame Relay network and an Ethernet network, for example. In a VoIP environment, voice gateways are the interface between a VoIP network and the public switched telephone network (PSTN), a private branch exchange (PBX), or analog devices such as fax machines. In its simplest form, a voice gateway has an IP interface and a legacy telephone interface, and it handles the many tasks involved in translating between transmission formats and protocols. Gateways enable Cisco Unified Communications Manager to communicate with non-IP telecommunications devices and with Internet Service Providers over SIP. In addition, when gateways are properly configured, many can take over for a Cisco Unified Communications Manager when it is unreachable.
Most Cisco gateways offer multiple deployment options and can be deployed using any one of a number of protocols. Depending on the gateway that you want to deploy, your gateway may be configurable using any of the following communication protocols:
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Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP)
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Skinny Call Control Policy (SCCP)
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Session Initiation Protocol(SIP)
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H.323
If the gateways are not configured correctly on the call manager, it can cause gateway registration failures. Then, the gateway will no longer be able to communicate with the Call manager which can in turn lead to serious service bottlenecks. Any gateway connectivity issues can also affect the D-channel service, which can be a cause for concern as the D-channel is responsible for carrying control and signaling information. Due to this, user experience will suffer. To avoid such poor user experience, it is essential to keep a vigil on the registration status of the gateways and the active status of the D-channel. CCM Gateways Test helps administrators in this regard. This test monitors the gateways and reports the registration status of the gateway. This test also reports whether/not the D-channel is active. This will proactively help administrators identify issues with the gateway and rectify the same before it adversely affects the user experience.
Target of the test : A Cisco Unified Communications Manager
Agent deploying the test : An external agent
Outputs of the test : One set of results for each gateway being monitored
| Parameters | Description |
|---|---|
|
Test period |
How often should the test be executed |
|
Host |
The IP address of the host for which this test is to be configured. |
|
SNMPPort |
The port at which the monitored target exposes its SNMP MIB; the default is 161. |
|
SNMPVersion |
By default, the eG agent supports SNMP version 1. Accordingly, the default selection in the SNMPversion list is v1. However, if a different SNMP framework is in use in your environment, say SNMP v2 or v3, then select the corresponding option from this list. |
|
SNMPCommunity |
The SNMP community name that the test uses to communicate with the firewall. This parameter is specific to SNMP v1 and v2 only. Therefore, if the SNMPVersion chosen is v3, then this parameter will not appear. |
|
Username |
This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. SNMP version 3 (SNMPv3) is an extensible SNMP Framework which supplements the SNMPv2 Framework, by additionally supporting message security, access control, and remote SNMP configuration capabilities. To extract performance statistics from the MIB using the highly secure SNMP v3 protocol, the eG agent has to be configured with the required access privileges – in other words, the eG agent should connect to the MIB using the credentials of a user with access permissions to be MIB. Therefore, specify the name of such a user against this parameter. |
|
Context |
This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVERSION. An SNMP context is a collection of management information accessible by an SNMP entity. An item of management information may exist in more than one context and an SNMP entity potentially has access to many contexts. A context is identified by the SNMPEngineID value of the entity hosting the management information (also called a contextEngineID) and a context name that identifies the specific context (also called a contextName). If the Username provided is associated with a context name, then the eG agent will be able to poll the MIB and collect metrics only if it is configured with the context name as well. In such cases therefore, specify the context name of the Username in the Context text box. By default, this parameter is set to none. |
|
AuthPass |
Specify the password that corresponds to the above-mentioned Username. This parameter once again appears only if the SNMPversion selected is v3. |
|
Confirm Password |
Confirm the AuthPass by retyping it here. |
|
AuthType |
This parameter too appears only if v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. From the AuthType list box, choose the authentication algorithm using which SNMP v3 converts the specified username and password into a 32-bit format to ensure security of SNMP transactions. You can choose between the following options:
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|
EncryptFlag |
This flag appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. By default, the eG agent does not encrypt SNMP requests. Accordingly, the this flag is set to No by default. To ensure that SNMP requests sent by the eG agent are encrypted, select the Yes option. |
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EncryptType |
If the EncryptFlag is set to Yes, then you will have to mention the encryption type by selecting an option from the EncryptType list. SNMP v3 supports the following encryption types:
|
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EncryptPassword |
Specify the encryption password here. |
|
Confirm Password |
Confirm the encryption password by retyping it here. |
|
Timeout |
Specify the duration (in seconds) within which the SNMP query executed by this test should time out in this text box. The default is 10 seconds. |
|
Data Over TCP |
By default, in an IT environment, all data transmission occurs over UDP. Some environments however, may be specifically configured to offload a fraction of the data traffic – for instance, certain types of data traffic or traffic pertaining to specific components – to other protocols like TCP, so as to prevent UDP overloads. In such environments, you can instruct the eG agent to conduct the SNMP data traffic related to the monitored target over TCP (and not UDP). For this, set this flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No. |
|
EngineID |
This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. Sometimes, the test may not report metrics when AES192 or AES256 is chosen as the Encryption type. To ensure that the test report metrics consistently, administrators need to set this flag to Yes. By default, this parameter is set to No. |
| Measurement | Description | Measurement Unit | Interpretation | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Status |
Indicates the current status of this gateway. |
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The values reported by this measure and its numeric equivalents are mentioned in the table below:
Note: This test typically reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate status of the gateway. However, the graph of this measure is represented using the numeric equivalents only. |
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|
D-channel status |
Indicates the current status of the D-channel in this gateway. |
|
The values reported by this measure and its numeric equivalents are mentioned in the table below:
Note: This test typically reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate status of the D-channel in the gateway. However, the graph of this measure is represented using the numeric equivalents only. |
