[Comtec Announce] [QUAR] [IP Voice Services] Maintenance window 16th August 2014 - ACTION REQUIRED

[David Croft]

Please be advised of the following maintenance window scheduled on IP
Voice Services.

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY IF YOU USE HOSTED IP VOICE SERVICES. ACTION IS
REQUIRED TO AVOID INTERRUPTION TO YOUR SERVICE.

Date: Saturday, 16th August 2014
Start time: 10:30 BST (UTC+0100)
End time: 23:59 BST (UTC+0100)

Purpose:

The Engineering Team will be performing works to migrate a portion of
traffic from one Session Border Controller (SBC) cluster to another to
offer upgraded capacity.

Services affected:

IP Voice Services.

Impact:

HIGH.

Required Action:

As part of this work, all hosted phones/ATAs that are currently
registering with 85.119.63.1 will start registering with 85.119.63.17
instead. This will be accomplished by changing the DNS records that
they use.

Please ensure that your firewalls have been updated to allow
communication with this IP address, and that you have the appropriate
route installed if you do not have a default route. These changes can
and should be made in advance of the maintenance window.

Detail:

These works will affect ALL public (IC) registering hosted IP
phones/ATAs and mobile/desktop applications; their configuration files
use the uk.ic.hnt.hipcom.co.uk/uk.ic.56hnt.hipcom.co.uk (85.119.63.1)
proxy.

The change will be activated by modifying the public DNS records for
the above proxies to the new IP address of 85.119.63.17. This will
ensure that this is a more gradual and staggered change with as little
disruption to users as possible. These works have an extended window
due to the nature of DNS updates through the internet and the time it
will take to propagate fully.

The Panasonic range of phones will require a config update, which will
be applied during these works, these WILL require a reboot for the
change to take effect to allow the phones to successfully move over to
the new environment; this can be done at the customer's discretion as
the DNS change will not affect service for currently registered
handsets.

Due to the nature of this change, some handsets may require a reboot
in order to start sending SIP REGISTER messages to the new gateway,
even if they have correctly picked up the new IP via DNS. If you do
experience any disruption beyond the maintenance window, please
restart your device to ensure that it re-registers cleanly to the
platform before raising a ticket.

This change will also affect UC Office and Mobile Office clients. The
clients will need restarting after the DNS change has propagated in
order to move over to the new SBC environment, or if experiencing any
issues.

Handsets and clients will lose service if the end users' firewall(s)
have not been configured to allow SIP/RTP traffic to/from
85.119.63.17.

The Engineering team will be working to ensure that the effect on
service is minimised during this low traffic period.

Our Engineering Team will be closely monitoring all systems and
services, as well as the above, to ensure any disruption is as brief
as possible if experienced.

Regards,

David Croft

-- 
David Croft
Lead Engineer

Comtec Enterprises Ltd
Comtec House
46a Albert Road North
Reigate Industrial Estate
Reigate
Surrey RH2 9EL

Tel: 0845 899 1400
DDI: 01737 339298
Fax: 0845 899 1401
www.comtec.com

For urgent operational issues please always contact noc at comtec.com
or 0845 899 1423 and not any named individual.