Cisco Call Manager users?

I

itchyballs

New Member
I noticed that there's good number of folks running Asterisk, PIAF and Trixbox for there home PBX . I ran all those for years at home but decided I needed better looking phones and jumped to Cisco Unified CM, CUCME and Cisco Unity. By the way you can run CUCM demo for free (up to 100 endpoints IIRC)with no restrictions. All you need is Cisco SCCP/SIP phones and a little bit of tinkering. 
 
I use VOIP.MS service for voice over IP service through a Linksys PAP2T connected to a Panasonic base unit with 8 wireless phones.

What are the advantages of the Cisco solution? Do you have the Cisco wired base phones? What about wireless phones?
 
I actually use voip.ms too with my Call Manager set up.
 
For me one of the main advantages is the selections of IP phones that Cisco offers (for the cool factor). My set up is all IP. Most of my wired sets are also video phones (9951s and 8961) some are older 7965 sets . I also have 3 VOIP wifi sets (7925G). Cisco also offers a phone app for iDevices.
 
Compared to the asterisk based PBXs, CUCM is far more superior. Administration is way more intuitive. And since it is an Enterprise grade PBX it is fully baked. 
 
The negatives. CUCM only supports Cisco phones and Cisco phones are expensive. 
 
I love voip.ms by the way, I deposited $100 when I signed up 4 years ago and never had to add funds to my account.
 
Interesting - I used to run a large cisco VOIP network and I've been using voip.ms and some sip trunks at home for a while... Until recently, my primary phone was a 7975 and I have a couple 7925's floating around (stopped using them when I left the cisco UCM); the 7975 I reflashed as SIP but it really doesn't like living outside of a SIP environment.
 
I may check out the free UCM - but I must say, I've been pretty happy lately with my voip.ms environment directly using some of the Grandstream phones - the pricing on them is great and I'm happy with the quality considering the price differences.
 
Edit: It looks like that version of UCM is only available to partners - are you a partner or did you find another way to get it?
 
So besides video conferencing, which I would do from a tablet, what am I missing? What is the advantage of a PBX in the home? I have a single Panasonic base unit with 8 wireless phones and it doesn't have multi-line capability so I could see that as missing. Sorry, being lazy but I'm sure others reading this will have a similar question so I'd appreciate a quick synopsis. Thanks.

David
 
Would love to know how to get this myself, my experience is with enterprise grade Mitel equipment, would love to brush up on the Cisco platform.
 
Before you go to the trouble of acquiring a VM image of CUCM. CUCM by itself cannot peer to voip.ms or SIP trunk service. This is where CUCMExpress comes in to play. You will then have to trunk CUCM and CUCMExpress to get your SIP provider in. CUCMExpress requires a Cisco ISR router (26xx,28xx,38xx,39xx).
 
I've acquired a copy because I have a Cisco.com account thru my employment. But I have seen the VM image in sites that rhymes with " sit current". I honestly don't know why they just don't have this for free download since it's a demo. 
 
A quick run down of features (at least what I use). You can run custom apps on the phones directly. I run weather map, live traffic info, live camera feeds from my BlueIris DVR and run Vera scenes from the phones. Of course the advanced calling features you typically expect in an enterprise phone system (call group, call park, music-on-hold, presence, remote calling thru VPN, voicemail, call routing, etc.  
 
It is overkill for a home set up but this is home automation boards after all, everything we do is overkill.
 
You can PM me directly if you need more information.  ^_^
 
Yeah I looked at the UCM Express routers before - it's tempting for sure.  I'm sure I'll go back to running my own PBX in the house - just because if you have too many direct SIP phones trying to connect through your router back to an online provider, it's very easy to have the NAT route-back problems (*see below).
 
Being a forum of overkill, I've been looking for a way to put SIP phones or intercom stations in all the rooms, as well as get a SIP video door station.  I already use SIP for my own side-business, and I work from home most of the time for my day job and can access my work extension via SIP so it only makes sense for me to run a PBX at home - it lets me receive home, my business, and my work calls routed around the home as appropriate - all tightly integrated yet appropriately restricted.  That said, Cisco may not be the best - I prefer sticking with open standards and there are plenty of other systems available that are far better for open integration with just about anything in the industry.  
 
*By NAT route-back problems, I'm referring to the state where phone always looks connected, but after being on for an hour or two, incoming calls never ring through/no incoming audio because the port it tries to hold open gets lost by the router.
 
I totally agree with you sticking to open standards. Unfortunately for me I have acquired my IP phones for a very good price and the only way I could use them is thru CUCM.
 
Just FYI, many of the Cisco phones can be flashed to SIP to get rid of the proprietary SCCP protocol - that lets the 79xx phones work with other systems, and some of them have built-in support for both Cisco SIP and some even deal with SCCP.  That said, there's no getting your 7925's onto SIP - but, quite frankly, I'm over VOIP over Wifi - I've found that the newer solutions where there's a base plugged into the LAN and multiple handsets via DECT work much better.  Many can have 4-5 handsets with charge-only bases talking via DECT to a single base and can either mirror each other or have their own SIP extensions - and direct handset-to-handset intercom.  
 
I will say that even in SIP mode, Cisco phones are a PITA to work with outside of Cisco... their call quality is amazing, and I love the color touchscreen of the 7975, but I'm finding that I'm very happy with some of the Grandstream products - especially when you look at the pricing... I'm a reseller so if you want to glance through the product line and PM me for some specifics, I'll hook you up - for the price/quality, I'm extremely pleased.  They also are built to work seamlessly with every environment so in their default settings they deal with the NAT issues and keep themselves working via Grandstream's free hosted STUN server.  All in all, it's a great line and you wouldn't believe how affordable they can be.
 
I'd agree 'overkill' for a home - the typical nature of home telephony is cordless and the cisco cordless phones aren't that 'cool' - and you must have a very solid wifi network to ensure consistent quality, a controller based wifi network is basically a requirement for multi-ap networks (to ensure proper handoff and seemless calls when roaming to different aps). I implement Cisco UC solutions and while I think they are pretty cool - I wouldn't run one in a home except for a lab (which I have). The other issue is with sip trunks - CUCM cant terminate a sip trunk natively (they are supposed to be terminated via Cisco's CUBE gateway). I use asterisk to terminate SIP trunks since that's another expense I don't want to spring for. The Express version (CME and CUE) will terminate a sip trunk without issue - however they aren't exactly cheap - and can be a pain to manage via CLI (they have a few web/gui tools) which are meh.
 
For me - when it comes down to it we just don't use the home phone - they could be a pretty cool intercom though :P an expensive intercom :-)
 
whatuusay1 - check out the new Ubiquiti product and their new zero-handoff feature.  If it works as intended, it's a very cost effective solution to that handoff problem.
 
You also have me curious now - I had SIP terminated natively in my previous CUCM environment but I didn't personally set it up - I paid my cisco integrator to handle it so I don't remember the specifics.
 
As for the intercom being "expensive" I have to again plug Grandstream - their products are amazingly affordable.
 
The Zero-hand off feature sounds good. I've played with a few Ubiquiti products and while they are a great small biz/prosumer product I dont think they compare to the Cisco AP/controller products - I certainly wouldnt want to try and support a VoIP WLAN environment with them. perhaps for a home environment - but I support them in business environments and the savings just isnt worth the headache or lack of flexability (imo). The CUCM will terminate sip trunks natively - in the sense that SIP trunks can be used (without registration) and are used for clustering and trunking between systems - you can also use them to trunk into ITSP's as long as the provider authenticates by source IP (which doesnt work for home/DHCP) type environments - obviously businesses will likely have static addressing (certainly ones buying into CUCM, UCON, etc). Cisco's SRND is always going to recommend using a cube product to terminate the SIP traffic as it'll handle the NAT and any dial-peer manipulations necessary. I use asterisk to do that since its a pricey feature (on a pricey router). Works pretty well for my lab - i wouldnt do it for a paying customer though ;)
 
It's definitely not Cisco, agreed - but they make decent stuff for 1/10th the cost.  If you've got the money for Cisco then it's a moot discussion.
 
I don't recall Cisco having a solution for zero-handoff; that was a weakness of the UCM solution when I was using it a couple years ago; then again hardly anyone had a solution for that.  Calls didn't like when you moved around a lot.
 
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