Howto13r3:Conferences, Resources and Licenses

From innovaphone wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
There are also other versions of this article available: Howto | Howto12r1 | Howto13r1 | Howto13r2 | Howto13r3 (this version) | Howto14r2

Applies To

This information applies to

all innovaphone devices supporting a CONF or SCNF interface and hence Conference Channels (as shown in the devices home-page).


More Information

Performing conferencing on a CONF or SCNF interface consumes both resources and licenses. Here is an overview of which and how much.

Overview

First let us have a look at the overall scheme:

Conferences, Ressources and Licenses - Scheme2.png

Coder channels

Both the CONF and SCNF interface provides the mixing of 8KHz G711 PCM audio channels.

If a call is done towards a CONF interface, it will allocate a Coder channel from the DSP coder channel bank for processing of the audio from the VoIP codec (e.g. G.711, G.722, OPUS) to PCM audio.

The SCNF however supports G.711a/u coder only (which is basically PCM). For this reason, no Coder channel needs to be allocated for a call.

(Soft) Conference Channels

Each call to a CONF interface consumes one of the Conference Channels.

Each call to an SCNF interface consumes one of the Soft Conference Channels.

Channels license

In addition to that, a call to either the CONF or SCNF requires a Channel license. This license can be obtained from the PBX if the PBX Channels licenses switch in the PBX Conference object is activated (if the call comes through such an object) or the Obtain Channels lic on outgoing call check-mark is ticked in a PBX Gateway object (if the call comes through such an object). For this, PBX Channels licenses must be installed on the PBX.

This is the recommended configuration. However, the Channel license can also be obtained locally from the gateway where the CONF/SCNF is located on. All innovaphone gateways have a number of Channel licenses built-in. The number of licenses available is equal to the number of Coder channels the box supports. If no license is sent along with the call to the CONF or SCNF interface, the interface will try to obtain one from the pool of built-in licenses. This can save you some cost. However, be aware that these licenses (as well as the corresponding Channel coders) are also required for calls through the ISDN BRI/PRI interfaces or for audio fax calls. Calls to CONF/SCNF interfaces which consume local Channel licenses may inhibit such calls therefor.

The PBX-Channels License has order no. 02-00020-007 according to chapter "3.5 PBX Channels license" in the innovaphone license guide.

The status of the PBX Licenses shows assigned PBX-Channel licenses:

Conferences, Ressources and Licenses - pbx-channel license 01.png

Port license

The registration of the CONF and/or SCNF to the PBX Conference object does not require a Port license.

Although this is not directly related to the CONF or SCNF interface, please note that a single Port license is required if any of the rooms defined in a PBX Conference object is accessed using the conference web access (from 13r3).

CPU usage

For a calculation of CPU usage see Howto:V13_Firmware_Upgrade_V13r2_V13r3#Conferences.

Example Scenarios

Conference on hardware gateway with local ISDN

Let us assume we have a conference running on a CONF interface with one PSTN and 3 VoIP participants. In this case, we have

Caller DSP Coder Channel Conference Channel PBX Channel License
1 PSTN 1 (CONF) + 1 (ISDN) ** 1 1
3 VoIP 3 3 3
Total 4 5 4 4

**:

Tools clipart.png FIXME: do we need only one or would this require enable PCM?


Looking at an IP411, it supports the following resources:

Conferences, Ressources and Licenses - example gateway channels IP411.png


We can see that our sample scenario will not work on an IP411 as there are no Conference Channels available. However, if we change the scenario so that an SCNF is used instead of a CONF, it would look as follows:

Caller DSP Coder Channel Soft Conference Channel PBX Channel License
1 PSTN 1 (ISDN) ** 1 1
3 VoIP 3 3 3
Total 4 4 4 4

This will work on an IP411.


3PTY Conferencing

3-way conferencing is special as it is usually implemented internally in the innovaphone IP phones. That is, each user of an innovaphone IP phone (except the IP61) has internal conferencing resources built-in to allow for a 3-way conference. No external CONF/SCNF interface is needed.

However, on innovaphone DECT phones, no internal conferencing resource is present and hence no internal 3PTY is possible. The DECT system can thus be configured to use an external conferencing resource for 3PTY. In this case, the rules above apply.

Related Articles