Polycom 3725-76302-001LI manual About Cascading

DMA Operations Guide Conference Templates

On the Conference IVR tab of the Add Conference Template and Edit Conference Template dialog boxes, the list contains the names of all the conference IVR services available on the currently connected MCUs. If an IVR service is only available on some of the connected MCUs, its entry shows how many of the MCUs have that IVR service (for instance, 2 of 3).

If a template specifies a conference IVR service, the system will put conferences using that template on the least used RMX MCU that has that conference IVR service. If there are none, it falls back to the default conference IVR service.

See also:

“Conference Templates” on page 195 “Two Types of Templates” on page 195 “Template Priority” on page 197 “About Cascading” on page 198 “Conference Templates Procedures” on page 220

About Cascading

One of the conference features you can optionally enable in a template is cascading, which makes it possible for a conference to span RMX MCUs. Cascading a conference across multiple MCUs can conserve bandwidth and is especially useful when using WAN links. Participants can connect to MCUs that are geographically near them, reducing network traffic between sites to a single link to each MCU.

Cascading does, however, impact the quality of the conference experience.

Note

The cascade links between RMX MCUs must use H.323 signaling. For conferences with cascading enabled, the Polycom DMA system selects only MCUs that have H.323 signaling enabled.

This cascade link requirement doesn’t affect endpoints, which may dial in using SIP (assuming the MCUs and the Polycom DMA system are also configured for SIP signaling).

If you have a Polycom RealPresence Resource Manager or CMA system in your network, you can enable cascaded conferences with these steps:

1On the Polycom RealPresence Resource Manager or CMA system, create site topology data defining the territories, sites, site links, and MPLS clouds in your network, and the subnets in each site.

2On the Polycom DMA system, integrate with the Polycom RealPresence Resource Manager or CMA system to obtain its site topology data. See “Resource Management System Integration” on page 185.

198 Polycom, Inc.