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What's new in version 11?

The new features and enhancements included in Pexip Infinity version 11 are described below. For information about earlier versions of Pexip Infinity, see Features added in previous releases.

Feature Description More information
Multistreaming support from Lync / Skype for Business AVMCU to Pexip Infinity

Pexip Infinity can receive multiple video streams from an AVMCU multi-party conference.

This means, for example, that all endpoints connected to an AVMCU conference via the Pexip Distributed Gateway now see a full combined set of both AVMCU and any other Pexip gateway participants in the conference. Previously Lync / Skype for Business participants would see all AVMCU participants, but gateway participants would only see the currently active AVMCU participant.

Pexip Infinity and Lync / Skype for Business integration features
Merge a Lync / Skype for Business AVMCU conference with a Pexip Infinity VMR conference

A Lync / Skype for Business AVMCU hosted multi-party conference can be merged with a conference being hosted on the Pexip Infinity platform. This means that, for example:

  • a Lync / Skype for Business user dialed into a Pexip VMR can use drag-and-drop to add a contact (such as a Microsoft Surface Hub system, or an external SIP/H.323 device) into the meeting. This will create an adhoc AVMCU conference and merge it with the Pexip VMR.
  • a Lync / Skype for Business user in an AVMCU conference can drag and drop a Pexip VMR contact into the AVMCU conference to manually merge the conferences together.

When a conference is merged, participants in the Pexip VMR see a combined set of Pexip VMR and Lync / Skype for Business AVMCU participants, and the Lync / Skype for Business AVMCU participants see the Pexip VMR stage alongside the other AVMCU participants.

Pexip Infinity and Lync / Skype for Business integration features
H.264 simulcast from Pexip Infinity to Lync / Skype for Business AVMCU

Pexip Infinity can now send the video streams of gateway participants at multiple resolutions to an AVMCU multi-party conference.

This means that if Lync / Skype for Business clients request different video resolutions from the AVMCU, Pexip Infinity can now support the equivalent request from the AVMCU. This optimizes the user experience for all conference participants, and for all device sizes from a mobile client to the Microsoft Surface Hub.

Pexip Infinity and Lync / Skype for Business integration features
Optimized Lync / Skype for Business gateway functionality Pexip's Lync / Skype for Business gateway functionality has been improved to reduce the bandwidth and quantity of streams sent to the AVMCU based on what is requested. (This improvement has no detrimental impact to the user experience.) Pexip Infinity and Lync / Skype for Business integration features
Amazon Web Services (AWS) support

The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) service provides scalable computing capacity in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Using Amazon EC2 eliminates your need to invest in hardware up front, so you can deploy Pexip Infinity even faster.

You can use Amazon EC2 to launch as many or as few virtual servers as you need, and use those virtual servers to host a Pexip Infinity Management Node and as many Conferencing Nodes as required for your Pexip Infinity platform.

Amazon EC2 enables you to scale up or down to handle changes in requirements or spikes in conferencing requirements. This means that you can also use the AWS APIs and the Pexip Infinity management API to monitor usage and bring up / tear down Conferencing Nodes as required to meet conferencing demand.

Pexip publishes Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for the Pexip Infinity Management Node and Conferencing Nodes. These AMIs may be used to launch instances of each node type as required.

Deploying Pexip Infinity on Amazon Web Services (AWS)

KVM, Xen and ESXi 6.0 hypervisor support

The Pexip Infinity platform can be deployed on KVM and Xen hypervisors.

The Management Node and Conferencing Nodes can now be deployed on KVM and Xen hosts as well as VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper‑V hosts.

Support for VMware ESXi 6.0 has also been added.

Configuring KVM for Pexip Infinity

Configuring Xen for Pexip Infinity

Intel AVX2 processor instruction set support

Pexip Infinity can make full use of the AVX2 instruction set provided by modern Intel processors. This increases the performance of video encoding and decoding.

For VMware platforms, ESXi 6 is required to enable this optimization.

Detailed server hardware requirements
Web App branding upload

Infinity Connect Web App branding packages can be uploaded to the Management Node and automatically pushed out to all Conferencing Nodes.

You can upload the branding packages that are generated by the Pexip branding portal, as well as any manually created customizations.

Customizing the Infinity Connect Web App
Additions to theme feature
  • Additional indicators, icons, background colors and text can now be customized using themes.
  • You can now apply themes to Gateway Rules, meaning that you can customize the presence avatar.
Customizing images and voice prompts using themes
H.323 gatekeeper functionality

H.323 endpoints can now register to Pexip Infinity.

This means that Pexip Infinity now acts as a SIP registrar and as an H.323 gatekeeper. Note that the Infinity Connect desktop client and the Android mobile client can also register to Pexip Infinity.

Registering devices to Pexip Infinity
View registered aliases You can see a list of all device aliases that are currently registered to the Pexip Infinity platform. Viewing registrations
Ability to change a Conferencing Node's location You can change the system location of an existing Conferencing Node via the Administrator interface (which then automatically reboots the Conferencing Node). Configuring existing Conferencing Nodes

VMR provisioning via LDAP enhanced with daily sync, customizable fields and string length filter

The facility to bulk-provision VMRs from directory information contained in an AD/LDAP server has been enhanced:

  • Automatic daily sync: each VMR sync template can be configured to run automatically on a daily basis. Note that on upgrade, your existing templates will not be set to run automatically.
  • Customizable LDAP fields: to complement the standard LDAP fields that can be used as variables, administrators can add their own fields to support additional attributes in their LDAP/AD schemas.
  • New pex_strlen filter which returns the length of string.
Provisioning VMRs from Active Directory via LDAP
Improved trusted CA certificate management

You can now upload, view and delete individual trusted CA certificates, in addition to being able to import a file of one or more certificates.

An alarm is raised when a certificate is due to expire within the next 30 days.

Managing TLS certificates
Ability to limit the media capability

You can now specify the maximum media capability of certain calls. Options are audio-only, main video only, or main video plus presentation. This feature allows better resource management and smaller SDPs when calling out to known audio-only devices.

You can place restrictions on a per-conference basis (for Virtual Meeting Rooms and Virtual Auditoriums) or a per-call basis (for outbound and Distributed Gateway calls). You can also limit the capability of a Virtual Reception.

Controlling media capability

Configurable auto-escalation of Lync / Skype for Business audio calls

You can configure whether a Lync / Skype for Business audio call is automatically escalated so that it receives video from a conference.

Previously, such audio calls were always escalated to receive video. From v11 this behavior is configurable and is disabled by default.

Automatically escalating Lync / Skype for Business audio calls
Changes to Host and Guest PIN behavior

Conference PINs can now optionally end with #. This means that:

  • Host PINs and Guest PINs for the same conference can now be different lengths.
  • Users who have accidentally entered too many or too few digits can enter # to return to the start of the PIN entry process.
Using # at the end of a PIN
Lync / Skype for Business Response Group support

SIP Replaces support (RFC 3891 - "Replaces" Header) has been implemented.

This enables support within Pexip Infinity for Lync / Skype for Business Response Group call management.

 
Lync / Skype for Business IVR gateway conference lookup location

When configuring the Lync / Skype for Business IVR gateway functionality, you can specify the system location that will perform the Lync / Skype for Business Conference ID lookup on the Lync / Skype for Business server.

This can assist in scenarios where an external device connects to a Virtual Reception via a Conferencing Node in the DMZ and that node is not trusted by the Lync / Skype for Business FEP.

Configuring Pexip Infinity as a Lync / Skype for Business gateway
Option to mute all guests in a Virtual Auditorium Virtual Auditoriums have a new option to automatically mute all Guests when they first join a conference. After the conference has started, Hosts can use the Infinity Connect client to unmute Guests, either individually or as a group. Configuring Virtual Auditoriums
Send DTMF to manually dialed participants

DTMF sequences can be configured when manually dialing out to participants from a conference via the Administrator interface. The DTMF is transmitted 3 seconds after the call connects to the participant.

Manually dialing out to a participant from a conference
Last conference participant timeout

You can configure at the platform level the length of time (in seconds) for which a conference will continue with only one participant remaining. The type of participant (Host, Guest, automatically dialed, streaming etc.) is irrelevant.

By default the Last participant backstop timeout setting is configured to never eject the last participant.

About global settings
Additional options to determine whether an ADP can keep a conference alive

In addition to the existing behavior (where a conference would be terminated if the only remaining participant was an Automatically Dialed Participant, unless there were two or more ADPs and at least one was a Host), there are now two other options:

  • a Host ADP can be configured to always keep a conference alive even if they are the only remaining participant
  • an ADP can be configured to never keep a conference alive.
Keeping a conference alive
Infinity Connect one-click join The process of joining conferences via Infinity Connect has been streamlined. Users now elect, prior to joining the conference, whether they will join a conference with full video and audio, with audio only, or as presentation and control only.  
Infinity Connect supported in Microsoft Edge The Infinity Connect Web App is now supported in Microsoft Edge. Using Infinity Connect via Microsoft Edge
Infinity Connect users can change the role of other participants Infinity Connect users who have a role of Host can change the role of other users in the conference. This is useful, for example, if a Host needs to leave the conference; they can promote one of the Guests to a role of Host so that the conference will continue after they disconnect. Changing a participant's role from Guest to Host (and vice versa)
Infinity Connect users can automatically mute microphone on joining Many videoconference users mute their microphones unless they are actually speaking, to reduce the level of background noise. This option allows users to join with their microphone muted by default.  
New parameters supported in preconfigured URLs

Additional parameters are now supported in URLs that can be provided to Infinity Connect Web App users to preconfigure conference joining information:

  • <escalate> offers users the camera and microphone selection options immediately upon joining
  • <extension> provides the Virtual Reception extension, or the Lync / Skype for Business Conference ID.
Creating preconfigured links to conferences via Infinity Connect
Alarm raised when Management Node limit is reached An alarm is raised if the Management Node does not have sufficient resources for the current deployment size (number of Conferencing Nodes). Viewing alarms