Hi all We are looking to deploy to some different branch offices, a IP phone solution. Most offices operate separately and have between 4 and 20 staff. The UC500 looks perfect as we'll deploy them one at a time as needed by the users. I have read that there is a limit of 5 sites per UC500 "solution" (we have 8) however I can not find a definitive answer as to what this limitation really means (is that for a single point of configuration/management or does it mean UC500's talking via IP to other UC500's)? I have also read that a number of people have used dial plans and/or extensions to link UC500's over an IP or Internet network (Which is what we'll want to do - allowing person A in office 1 to talk to person B in office 6 for example). Any thoughts or help much appreciated. Best Regard |
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UC500.comCisco Communication Manager Express, UC520, SMB VOIP reference and community |
If you look at the
If you look at the documentation or marketing info, I believe it says a max of like 4 or 5 UC500 'sites'. After discussing this with the UC500 product development team, it sounds like this is just a 'recommended' setup, not an actual hard limit. So I would think you will be fine with 8 sites. Management would be the only issue, as you would probably have to manage each site individually. But call routing between sites shouldnt be a problem. I don't remember if there is a limit on VPN tunnels on the UC520, but if there is, it is at least 10, so you should be fine anyway.
Multiple sites with UC520s
The UC500 can scale to hundreds of sites. Best practice is to use H.323 gatekeepers to resolve the WAN dial plan and perform bandwidth management in a large distributed environment.
If it were me I would probably use the 1861 routers over the UC520's as the 1861 (while the same hardware wise) support upgrading to Site Remote Survivable Telephony - SRST. This way if you ever decide to upgrade to full blown Communications Manager, your investment is preserved.
One more point the 1861 supports dynamic routing protocals like OSPF and EIGRP. A must in a large environment.