Posts

If you’re keeping count, this is the 3rd article on this topic. Previosuly, I have written about two other methods employed to deploying an AudioCodes SBC in Azure: Using Azure Site Recovery Uploading a pre-packaged ‘Azure VHD’ to Azure Whilst both worked, it still involved uploading an up-to-date copy of the SBC to Azure and a bit of patience. I’ve had quite a few users reach out to me and ask where they can download the ‘Azure VHD’, but it was never released for download by AudioCodes. Instead, they have published the SBC to the Azure Marketplace. As long as you have access to create resources in Azure, you’re good to go. ...

Whilst attending Evolve in Birmingham this year (which I highly recommend), I went to the AudioCodes booth and got on to the subject of their handsets. I’ve mainly used LPE or Polycom VVX so was intrigued by their offerings and they kindly offered to lend me a handset to test and review. Today, I have an AudioCodes 450HD with expansion module (allows for an extra 22 one-touch keys). It is certified Skype for Business Online and On-Premises (in addition to ‘standard’ SIP). It is marketed as a high-end device - does it live up to it? Here is my quick review of the handset. ...

Issue I’ve had this issue reported to me a few times. A customer will not be able to call certain numbers from Skype for Business/Teams. When I look at the SIP trace within Syslog there is an error message from the SIP provider - SIP/2.0 483 Too Many Hops. This isn’t an AudioCodes specific issue, but this is how to resolve it for AudioCodes SBC. AudioCodes Syslog Trace showing error from SIP provider ...

Introduction Following on from Part 1, you should now have an AudioCodes SBC up and running in Azure. This article will cover any Azure specific setup to allow Teams Direct Routing to function. For Direct Routing configuration you can follow my earlier blog post for instructions. Note: In Azure, we are using a single NIC, so the “LAN” and “WAN” NIC mentioned is the same interface, so bear this in mind when configuring Media Realms, SIP interfaces etc. ...

This article is now out-of-date, please refer to this article for Deploying an AudioCodes SBC in Azure using the Azure Marketplace. Introduction I’ve written in the past about deploying AudioCodes SBC into Azure by using Azure Site Recovery. Whilst this works, it’s not supported! I recently asked AudioCodes if there were any plans to officially release an “Azure Edition” of the SBC and to my surprise, they said “Yes”. It’s about to hit GA, but I’ve been given a pre-release build to try. I don’t believe the steps will change when it hit’s GA - but I will update this post if it does. ...

Background With the preview release of Teams Direct Routing users are now able to make and receive PSTN calls using certified SBCs instead of Calling Plans. Part of setting this up involves setting up PSTN Usages, Voice Routes, Online Voice Routing Policies, PSTN Gateways etc. within Skype Online PowerShell. Much like Skype for Business, if your users have multiple calling requirements the amount of Voice Routes, PSTN Usages etc. can grow quickly and sometimes make it quite hard to fathom how a call will route. With Skype for Business Control Panel, you have a handy GUI tool to test the voice routing. ...

Just a quick one here. I was busy setting up some Voice Routes and Online Voice Routing Policies for Direct Routing but it wasn’t behaving as I expected. I had purposely locked down my account I was using to only allow UK calls. But when making a call to Microsoft US, it worked. Odd! I double checked the routing I had in place and it was correct. Strange… I then made sure I didn’t have a Calling Plan assigned (as that will be used as a last resort)… I didn’t. ...

Introduction Had this one recently. Just before ‘go-live’ we had an issue whereby some users were unable to receive calls. On testing, we noticed that an affected user had delegates (or a team-call) set to ring. Disabling the delegates from receiving calls and it worked again. If the delegates were set to ring after 0 seconds, the user got a missed call each second the call was not ringing. Odd! ...

Last Updated: 13th August 2020 Introduction Microsoft has released Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams. Direct Routing effectively allows you to connect up existing PSTN connectivity (e.g. SIP trunks) into a certified SBC and route directly to Teams. This differs from the Skype Online method of doing this, in that you no longer need any hardware (on-premises Skype for Business Server or a CCE) other than an SBC. In this post, I’ll go over how to do this with an AudioCodes SBC and SIP trunks. I shan’t go into any more detail than is required, as the documentation from Microsoft and AudioCodes is pretty good (see references at bottom of post). ...

Recently added to Skype Online and Teams is the ability to block inbound calls based on their caller ID. Useful for blocking nuisance callers. Once you’ve added the patterns, you ideally want to know: If the calling numbers you want to block will be caught in your patterns. Regex is not my strong suit so want to make sure it will match. Are some calls going to be inadvertently blocked? If you have many rules it might not be apparent which pattern(s) are blocking it. I’ve set up a pattern called test to demonstrate this. The pattern will match +441234567890 or 441234567890: ...