For years call recording software vendors all over the world utilized network-based recording to record CUCM phone calls. The “network-based” approach is also known as “active recording” or “SPAN-less recording” and is actually based on media-forking feature supported by the most of Cisco IP phones and also Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE).
The media forking approach is loved by all call recording vendors:
- it is easy to configure – you just enable it in CUCM without the need to create a SPAN port on each router,
- it provides more context about the call,
- it provides high-availability – you can configure several receivers in CUCM and when the primary recorder is down CUCM automatically switches to the alternative.
But still, till now Cisco IP phones and CUBE only forked media to one destination. This is finally changed in Cisco CSR 12.5!
Cisco Collaboration Systems Release 12.5 (Callisto) supports media forking to multiple destinations.
Media forking to multiple recorders is a new CUBE feature supported by IOS XE 16.10.1 or later. What’s the idea?
The new CUBE feature is called “media-proxy” and allows CUBE to receive media forked by Cisco IP phones (equipped with built-in bridge) or voice gateway and stream the received media to several destinations simultaneously in real-time. You can configure up to 5 destinations which will receive the forked media.
This provides:
- more options and flexibility to high-availability deployments – you can now record calls by 2 recorders simultaneously (will be supported in the next release of PhoneUP Call Recording),
- the ability to use several applications processing media in real time – for example, two different call recording systems AND real-time speech analytics software.
The requirements are:
- Cisco Unified Communications Manager 12.5
- Cisco IOS XE 16.10.1 available on:
- Cisco 4000 Series-Integrated Services Routers (ISR G3 - ISR4331, ISR4351, ISR4431, ISR4451)
- Cisco Aggregated Services Routers (ASR - ASR1001-X, ASR1002-X, ASR1004 with RP2, ASR1006 with RP2)
- Cisco Cloud Services Routers (CSR1000V series)
What is also important:
- CUBE media-proxy does not support colocation with CUBE,
- video recording is NOT supported also.
Lets talk.