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Call Recording of HairPin Calls

kelvin.blair
Level 5
Level 5

I was wondering if anyone has run into a requirement where all calls into and out of a gateway needs to be recorded. I know this can be done with no problem as long as the call leg is terminated physically on a phone or port where port monitor spans the voice traffic to the recording server. My question is regarding hairpin calls. For example a call comes in to a phone and call is answered. At this point the call is being recorded. Now another outside call is conferenced into the call, but the IP PHone call is dropped and this now becomes a hairpin call. I understand at this point the orginating call and destination call is the same device and never travels across the switch network. It connection is between PRI channels. Is there away to still record the call or is it safe to say hairpin calls can not be recorded no matter what recording package you use?

6 Replies 6

kelvin.blair
Level 5
Level 5

What about Trunk Side Recording? Has anyone done this with a Call Manager/IPCC integration?

pcameron
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

You can use basic syslog to record Call Detail Records from the gateway router -

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk1077/technologies_tech_note09186a0080094e72.shtml

Pulling the details out of the log file will depend on how clever you are - many people use excel or some kind of SQL query to pull the relevant fields out of the CSV file. We can't really tell you how to do this - the gateways generate the CDR's and it's up to the user to extract the required details.

The CDR's inside callmanager would also have these details - again you would need to create a custom SQL query to pull the relevant details.

I guess I didn't make myself really clear. I need to be able to record phone conversations at the trunk side not CDR of the call. However, I did find my answer and I guess I should share it.

I've had the pleasure to work with two vendors that have their places in the market. I've worked with both CallRex and Cistera. Both do station side recording by using port mirroring at the switch level. However, when a call has been hair pinned in the gateway and not controlled by the phone, the call will not be recorded. Both require the phone to have control of the call in order for it to be recorded. CallRex is a very good product and cheaper than Cistera, but doesn't have the ability to record a certain extension on a single phone. If a phone is set to be recorded, It will record all phone conversations into that phone. Cistera, however can record a single extension on the phone if the phone has multiple extensions and you only want to record one extension. For example, Let's say you only want to record the agent extension on the phones and not the personal extensions. With Cistera this can be done with no problem.

Now, Today I just found a vendor that will record at the Trunk side as well at the station side. This is very useful in financial and health care environments where hairpinning of calls is possible and need to be recorded. This vendor is called VPI-Corp. They have multiple integration types depending on the type of PBX especially Cisco Call Manager.

For anyone that would like to read about these different vendors here are the links:

http://www.callrex.com

http://www.cistera.com

http://www.vpi-corp.com

If you enabled a MTP on the CCM, technically all the traffic would stream to/from the MTP across the network and you could SPAN this VLAN for recording, even for hairpin calls (as the MTP would be performing the hairpin instead of the gateway).

Never tried this, but can't see why it would not work.

Nitpick, CallRex is at:

http://www.telrex.com/callrex.htm

I'm currently getting a quote. I like the"cheap and good" adjective.

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