Maintenance Manual

If a streaming and content channel port or a video port is unavailable (or not allocated in advance when the MCU is in
Reserved mode), it will not be possible to stream that conference. If a video port has been allocated for streaming a
conference, any number of streaming viewers will be able to view that conference via streaming, at any combination
of available bit rates.
MCU Media Capacity
The total number of media ports available depends on the MCU model; refer to the product datasheets available on
the web site, or to MCU port matrix for more information.
Configuring the MCU
How MCU media ports are allocated, and which options and settings are available, is controlled by the Media port
reservation setting on the Settings > Conferences page.
On the MCU 4500 Series, the MCU 5300 Series, and the MCU MSE 8510 blade, the number and type of available
media ports on the MCU is controlled by the port capacity mode - which you configure on the Settings > Media ports
page.
Unreserved Mode
This is the mode that the MCU runs in when the Media port reservation setting is configured as Disabled, and is the
mode that the MCU uses by default. With this scheme, you can specify a maximum value for the number of video and
audio-only ports each conference is allowed to use on the Conference configuration page. These limits are optional,
and by default there is no configured limit.
The configured limits are strictly maximum values; in particular, setting such a limit does not guarantee that that many
participants will be able to join the conference. It is perfectly possible to set these values such that the sum of the
configured limits across all active conferences exceeds the total number of ports available on the MCU.
Reserved Mode
This is the mode that the MCU runs in when the Media port reservation setting is configured as Enabled. With this
scheme, each conference must be configured with a number of video ports to reserve and a number of audio-only
ports to reserve. These values differ from the maximum port values set in Unreserved mode in a number of ways:
■ Reservations are guaranteed
As well as being maximum values (i.e. enforcing limits on the number of conference participants), port
reservation values also guarantee that that many endpoints are able to participate in the conference.
■ Port reservations are mandatory
In unreserved mode, it is not necessary to specify a number of video or audio-only ports for a conference. In
reserved mode, however, every conference must have configured reservations for both video and audio-only
ports.
■ Over-allocation is not permitted
Port reservations guarantee that a certain number of participants will be able to join a conference; because of
this, the MCU will not permit these reservations to be configured such that the total number of reserved ports
at any given time exceeds the total number of ports available. See Clashing reservations for additional
information.
Clashing Reservations
In order to honor configured port reservations, the MCU must ensure that at any given time the number of reserved
ports does not exceed the total media capacity. This entails some level of clash detection when you schedule
conferences or change their configuration.
The MCU considers two conferences to be clashing if they can ever be active simultaneously. When validating a
conference schedule, the MCU looks at the maximum number of ports reserved by other conferences which can be
active at the same time, and checks that the number of ports requested by the conference being added or changed is
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