MGC 100 H323 cards

[mumpwife]

Hello...
We are having an issue of getting disconnected IP connection dialing from the bridge. The only sites that are having problems are in our network, and the only difference from other sites is that we set it up for the bridge to dial out to the site.(No problems with dialing out from the site to the bridge) The error says "H323 port deficiency" And at the same time, when I looked at our 3 H323 cards, and there are resouces available. Most of the times, I can make it work by deleting the participant and readding it.

At the same time, we have noticed that some of our H323 cards were occupied by unknown conferences with unknown parties and they are eating up our resources. I looked at the card even after there is no conferences in the bridge at all, and I still found those unknown conferences in those particular cards. I think this may be something to do with the disconnection problems.

We haven't upgraded the MGC software to 6 yet, and currently we have 5.12. We are planning to upgrade to 6 after this semester-since there are lots of classes going on now-just in case, but I was wondering if anyone has experienced the similar problems and if there is a workaround etc.

One more thing. I thought when we use H323 connection, only audio cards will be used by each participant. But when I look at the video cards, they are also been used at the same time. Is this normal?

Thanks for your help!!!

Kathy

[tom9933]

Kathy,
I’ve not heard of those exact problems but it does sound like there are a few things that might be worth looking at.
1) You mentioned that the conferences were using audio, 323 and video resources. Video resources should only be in use if the conference running is using transcoding or continuous presence.
2) Are you running any meeting rooms or is conference on demand enabled? If so that may be related to the port deficiency problem you are experiencing.
Also are you running the bridge with or without a gatekeeper?

[mumpwife]

1. Yes. Most of the conferences are setup for continuous presence. We have some ISDN line with IP connection, so when we used the video switching, it showed "secondary" and that's why we created the conferences with continuouse presense-unless there is a large conference.
2. Where do I check the conference on demand enabled?
3. We don't use the gatekeeper. I thought the gatekeeper is for the sites to dial in-so that the sites can dial in any IP of the H323 cards and it will automatically look for the available card.

Thanks for your response.

[tom9933]

Ok well if you are using continuous presence then that’s why you are seeing the usage of the video cards. Basically each conference participant should be taking one resource.
As for the conference on demand question, that’s answered by the fact that you are not running a gatekeeper. Basically the MGC when used with PathNavigator (Polycom Gatekeeper) supports conference on demand (ad-hoc conferencing). With it you can initiate a conference on the MGC from an endpoint by dialing either a special string or by using a newer Polycom endpoint that is setup for it. If you don’t have PathNavigator running then I don’t think there is a way that this could be enabled.
The only other way I can see your resources being used is if you have a meeting room setup and this would be seen in the MGC manager under the meeting rooms heading. I suppose its possible that there is some backdoor hack that would allow a person to use your bridge but I’ve not heard of such a thing.
So when you look at the unit and it shows the unknown conferences is that in the MGC manager or in Web Commander? I ask because if its only in Web Commander then maybe it’s a rights issue with the Web Commander account. We’ve not had this because we only use MGC manager to manage the bridge.

[Skylark]

*deleted* same answer as above, didn´t read it well enuff