Keeping a Meet-me Conference Alive

todd.g.eppich · ‎10-15-2007

Can a Meet-me conference be kept alive by an off-net participant?

I've got an end device attached to a 4-wire E&M port on a channel bank that is trunked to a 3825 router via an E-1. I need this device to keep the Meet-me conference alive to free up DNs on a VoIP phone on the Call Manager cluster. The device can participate in the conference, but as soon as I drop the IP phone that called the E&M port, everything drops.

Thanks.

hadbou · ‎10-19-2007

You can select the maximum number of participants allowed in a single Unicast Meet-Me Conference. This value depends on the capabilities of the software/hardware conference bridge; for example, a Cisco CallManager Software Conference Bridge conferences a maximum of 128 participants. This amount of participants can cause performance degradation on a Cisco CallManager that runs on the same server. If you need that many participants at the same time, install the Cisco IP Voice Media Streaming Application on a separate server. The default number of participants Cisco CallManager specifies is 48.

tdilley2 · ‎10-19-2007

I just read this about Meet-Me Conference...

A conference continues even if the conference controller hangs up.

At this link - http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/ps556/products_administration_guide_chapter09186a00803edae2.html#wp1022209

I'm a little confused about your question though because if it's a Meet-Me conference shouldn't the end device be dialing into the Meet-Me number rather than the IP phone calling that E&M port? I think if you start the Meet-Me call using the IP phone and then at least 1 other caller dials into the bridge then the original phone that started the Meet-Me conference bridge should be able to hang up and the bridge should stay active.

Hope this helps...

todd.g.eppich · ‎10-19-2007

Thanks for the input. I was bothered because I had read the same statement and expected ANY participant to be able to connect and keep the conference up. For some reason, if I dropped the IP phone that called the E&M port, the whole session dropped. I don't know what was wrong other than I had forgotten to bind the H323 interface.

Since posting, we bound the H323 interface and added a connection trunk command on the voice port to automatically bring in the device on the E&M port to a pre-existing MeetMe. We also ran into some glare and switched from E&M Immediate start to wink start. The E&M participant now keeps the MeetMe alive, too, as I had expected. All is well in my voip land for now.