Perfect and it all makes sense. Can you think of any reason as to why you would want to do 2 separate routers, 1 for voice and 1 for data?

TO: Brian

FR: Steve

We have separate devices for networks & voice. I go so far as to not even use the term 'router' for an ISR voice gateway. There are 'routers' and there are 'voice gateways'.

We don't want network functions to interfere with voice functions.

Imagine a situation where your IOS has stable voice functions, but there's a bug in the networks functions. If you upgrade the IOS, you may affect voice functions.

There is also the situation where the network traffic/load can affect voice call processing. High volume of network traffic could affect call processing. And vice versa.

The trade-off is cost. The all-in-one setup is less expensive.

CME as SRST also supports fallback for Unity Connection as well as Unity Enterprise.

Hi All

The reason to use two routers is for fault tolerance.

Imagine you have a single router - the power supply unit dies, and the router shuts off.

You have lost both your link to the WAN for Callmanager call control, and you hve lost your SRST router. So you have no data connectivity, no CallManager telephony control, and no SRST router.

If you have a seperate SRST/telephony and WAN/Data router, with your local telephony circuits connected to the SRST router, you have proper fault tolerance:

- If you lose the WAN link, you have SRST fallback

- If you lose the Data router to a hardware fault, you have SRST available with local telephony circuits so you can still use the phones.

- If you lose the SRST router to a hardware fault, you lose your local telephony circuits, but you still have Callmanager call control via the WAN/Data router. You can therefore still use the phones, and potentially can send/receive calls over the WAN via an alternate gateway.

Hope this helps

Aaron

Hey Aaron,

Excellent points my friend! I have seen references to CME router redundancy but had never really thought of it in a SRST context. +5 points sir!

Cheers!

Rob

PS: here is the reference I was referring to :)

Here is a clip from the CME SRND Guide;

Redundant Cisco Unified CME Router

A second Cisco Unified CME router can be configured to provide call-control services if the primary Cisco Unified CME router fails. The secondary Cisco Unified CME router takes over and provides services seamlessly until the primary router becomes operational again.

When a phone registers to the primary router, it receives a configuration file from the primary router. Along with other information, the configuration file contains the IP addresses of the primary and secondary Cisco Unified CME routers. The phone uses these addresses to initiate a keepalive (KA) message to each router. The phone sends a KA message after every KA interval (30 seconds by default) to the router with which it is registered and after every two KA intervals (60 seconds by default) to the other router. The KA interval can be adjusted with the keepalive command.

If the primary router fails, a phone will not receive an acknowledgment (ACK) to its KA message to the primary router. If the phone does not get an ACK from the primary router for three consecutive KAs, it registers with the secondary Cisco Unified CME router.

During the time that the phone is registered to the secondary router, it keeps sending a KA probe to the primary router to see if it has come back up, now every 60 seconds by default or two times the normal KA interval. After the primary Cisco Unified CME router is operating normally, the phone starts receiving ACKs for its probes. After the phone receives ACKs from the primary router for three consecutive probes, it switches back to the primary router and reregisters with it. The reregistration of phones with the primary router is also called rehoming.

The physical setup for redundant Cisco Unified CME routers is as follows. The FXO line from the PSTN is split using a splitter. From the splitter, one line goes to the primary Cisco Unified CME router and the other goes to the secondary Cisco Unified CME router. When a call comes in on the FXO line, it is presented to both the primary and secondary Cisco Unified CME routers. The primary router is configured by default to answer the call immediately. The secondary Cisco Unified CME router is configured to answer the call after three rings using the voice-port ring number 3 command. If the primary router is operational, it answers the call immediately and changes the call state so that the secondary router does not try to answer it. If the primary router is unavailable and does not answer the call, the secondary router sees the new call coming in and answers after three rings.

The secondary Cisco Unified CME router should be connected in some way on the LAN, either through the same switch or through another switch that may or may not be connected to the primary Cisco Unified CME router directly. As long as both routers and the phones are connected on the LAN with the appropriate configurations in place, the phones can register to whichever router is active.

Configure primary and secondary Cisco Unified CME routers identically, with the exception that the FXO voice port from the PSTN on the secondary router should be configured to answer after more rings than the primary router, as previously explained. The ip source-address command is used on both routers to specify the IP addresses of the primary and secondary routers.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucme/admin/configuration/guide/cmesystm.html#wp1024559

Keep Rockin' Aaron!

Rob