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About system locations

System locations are labels that allow you to group Conferencing Nodes together, typically according to where they are physically located. System locations serve two purposes:

The Conferencing Node's system location is assigned when the node is deployed, however you can subsequently change its location.

If you change the system location of an existing Conferencing Node, all existing calls will be disconnected and the Conferencing Node will be restarted.

Intelligent routing

Grouping Conferencing Nodes by location allows Pexip Infinity to make intelligent decisions about routing. For example, if a single conference is taking place across groups of Conferencing Nodes in two different locations, then Pexip Infinity will nominate one Conferencing Node in each location to act as the proxy for that location. Media streams will be sent between each proxy only, rather than multiple streams being sent between each of the Conferencing Nodes at each of the locations. For more information, see Handling of media and signaling.

If a location reaches its capacity for a conference instance, additional "overflow" locations can be utilized to handle the media for new conference participants that are connected (for signaling purposes) to nodes within that location. For more information, see Location capacity overflow.

When grouping Conferencing Nodes into different locations, you should consider the amount of packet loss within your network. If there is a chance of packet loss due to network congestion between different groups of Conferencing Nodes by design, then they should be assigned separate system locations even if they are in the same physical location.

Network deployment considerations

Nodes within a location actively synchronize with each other and may require a relatively high amount of network bandwidth for their communication. Pexip's backplane topology for distributed conferences assumes that there is a high availability, low latency, high-bandwidth network link between nodes within a location.

Therefore, while physical proximity is not a requirement, nodes in the same system location should typically be in the same physical datacenter or in physically proximate datacenters with such an excellent link between them.

If (as is often the case) you do not have such a network between your datacenters, we recommend that you consider assigning your nodes to different system locations.

In addition:

  • Conferencing Nodes in a DMZ must not be configured with the same System location as nodes in a local network. This is to ensure that load balancing is not performed across nodes in the DMZ and nodes in the local network.
  • Any Conferencing Nodes that are configured with a static NAT address must not be configured with the same System location as nodes that do not have static NAT enabled. This is to ensure that load balancing is not performed across nodes servicing external clients and nodes that can only service private IP addresses.

See Network deployment options for more information about the various deployment scenarios.

Configuring external services

DNS and NTP servers

When setting up a system location you must select at least one DNS server and at least one NTP server to be used by all of the Conferencing Nodes in that location. This allows you to, for example, assign nodes in a DMZ to a location that uses different DNS and NTP servers to a location containing nodes in a local, internal network.

H.323 gatekeepers, SIP proxies and Lync / Skype for Business servers

When setting up a system location you can optionally specify the H.323 gatekeeper, the SIP proxy, and the Lync / Skype for Business server / MSSIP domain to be used for outbound calls from that location. These are the call control systems that will be used when:

For more information, see About H.323 gatekeepers and SIP proxies and About Lync / Skype for Business servers.

TURN servers and STUN servers

If your deployment includes external SIP or WebRTC endpoints that are ICE-enabled (such as Lync / Skype for Business clients, the Pexip Infinity Connect Web App on Chrome and Firefox, and Infinity Connect mobile and desktop clients) and these endpoints will be connecting to privately-addressed "on-premises" Conferencing Nodes, you must configure Pexip Infinity with the address of at least one TURN server that it can offer to ICE clients.

In some deployment scenarios where the TURN server is not located outside of the enterprise firewall, you may need to configure a separate STUN server so that each Conferencing Node can discover its public NAT address.

You can also configure the STUN servers to be used by Infinity Connect WebRTC clients when they connect to a Conferencing Node in this location.

For more information, see About TURN servers and About STUN servers.

SNMP NMSs

If you have enabled SNMP support on one or more Conferencing Nodes in a particular location, you must also select the SNMP Network Management System (NMS) to which SNMP traps will be sent. The selected NMS will be used for all Conferencing Nodes in this location that have SNMP support enabled.

For more information, see Enabling SNMP.

External policy servers

Pexip Infinity's external policy feature allows call policy decisions to be taken by an external system, based on the data sources that are available to that system. This allows Pexip Infinity administrators to implement routing decisions based on their specific requirements.

When external policy is enabled, rather than using its own database and systems to retrieve service and participant data, Pexip Infinity Conferencing Nodes send the external policy server a service request (a GET request over HTTP or HTTPS) and the server should respond by returning the requested data to the Conferencing Node.

You can configure Pexip Infinity to use a different policy server per system location.

For more information, see Using an external policy server with Pexip Infinity.

Configuring system locations

To add, edit or delete system locations, go to Platform configuration > Locations.

The available options are:

Option Description
Name The name you want to give to this physical location.
Description An optional field where you can provide more information about the location.
DNS servers From the list of configured DNS servers, select one or more DNS servers to be used by all the Conferencing Nodes in this location.
NTP servers From the list of configured NTP servers, select one or more NTP servers to be used by all the Conferencing Nodes in this location.
H.323 gatekeeper The H.323 gatekeeper to use for outbound H.323 calls from this location. For more information, see About H.323 gatekeepers and SIP proxies.
SNMP NMS The Network Management System to which SNMP traps for all Conferencing Nodes in this location will be sent. For more information, see Enabling SNMP.
SIP proxy The SIP proxy to use for outbound SIP calls from this location. For more information, see About H.323 gatekeepers and SIP proxies.
Lync server The Lync / Skype for Business server to use for outbound MS-SIP calls from this location. For more information, see About Lync / Skype for Business servers.
TURN server The TURN server to use when ICE clients (such as Lync / Skype for Business clients and Infinity Connect WebRTC clients) located outside the firewall connect to a Conferencing Node in this location. For more information, see About TURN servers.
STUN server The STUN server to use when ICE clients (such as Lync / Skype for Business clients and Infinity Connect WebRTC clients) located outside the firewall connect to a Conferencing Node in this location. For more information, see About STUN servers.
Client STUN servers The STUN servers to be used by Infinity Connect WebRTC clients when they connect to a Conferencing Node in this location. Note that stun.l.google.com is added by default to every location. For more information, see About STUN servers.
MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) - the size of the largest packet that can be transmitted via the network interface for this system location. Whether you need to specify a value here will depend on the settings of your firewall rules.
DSCP value for media

This is an optional setting used to prioritize different types of traffic in large, complex networks.

This DSCP value tags the media traffic from Conferencing Nodes in this system location that is sent line side to endpoints and over the IPsec backplanes to other Pexip Conferencing Nodes.

DSCP value for signaling

This is an optional setting used to prioritize different types of traffic in large, complex networks.

This DSCP value tags the signaling traffic from Conferencing Nodes in this system location that is sent line side to endpoints and over the IPsec backplanes to other Pexip Conferencing Nodes.

Note that some IPsec traffic between nodes — configuration synchronization and other non-realtime traffic — remains untagged.

Also see DSCP value for management traffic in Global settings.

Primary overflow location An optional field where you can select the system location to handle media when capacity is reached in the current location. For more information, see Location capacity overflow.
Secondary overflow location An optional field where you can select the system location to handle media when capacity is reached in both the current location and the Primary overflow location.
Lync MSSIP domain

The name of the SIP domain that is routed from Microsoft Lync / Skype for Business to this Pexip Infinity location, either as a static route or via federation.

This is an optional field. If configured, it is used instead of the global Lync MSSIP domain in outbound calls to Lync / Skype for Business from Conferencing Nodes in this location.

Policy server The external policy server to be used by Conferencing Nodes in this system location. For more information see Using an external policy server with Pexip Infinity.