Specifications

82
Release Notes for Cisco 7000 Family for Cisco IOS Release 12.1 T
78-10811-05
New and Changed Information
With the introduction of this feature, broadcasting is now allowed among groups of servers. The server
groups can be either RADIUS or TACACS+. And each server group can define its backup servers for failover
independently of other groups. (Failover is a process that may occur when more than one server has been
defined within a server group. Failover refers to the following process: information is sent to the first server
in a server group; if the first server is unavailable, the information is sent to the next server in the server
group. This process continues until the information is successfully received by one of the servers within the
server group or until the list of available servers within the server group is exhausted.
Thus, service providers and their end customers can use different protocols (RADIUS or TACACS+) for the
accounting server. Service providers and their end customers can also specify their backup servers
independently. As for voice applications, redundant accounting information can be managed independently
through a separate group with its own failover sequence.
Answer Supervision Reporting
Platforms: Cisco 7200 series routers
The Answer Supervision Reporting feature is an enhancement to the information request (IRR)
Registration, Admission, and Status (RAS) protocol message that enables Gatekeepers to maintain call
accounting information by reporting the call connection time of connected calls to the Gatekeeper.
In H.323 configurations, direct call-routed signaling is utilized by the endpoint (gateway). Gatekeepers
do not have real-time knowledge or control over the state of a call and are dependent on the endpoints
to provide them the necessary real-time information, such as the call connect time, call termination
time, and call termination reason.
When a call ends, the gateway sends a Disengage Request (DRQ) message with the
BillingInformationToken (which contains the duration of the call) to the Gatekeeper. However, if the
Gatekeeper does not receive the DRQ message for some reason, the Gatekeeper does not receive the
information about call start or duration, and the accounting information is no maintained accurately.
The Answer Supervision Reporting feature addresses the need to report the call connection time to the
Gatekeeper upon call connection and at periodic intervals thereafter. The Answer Supervision
Reporting feature adds a proprietary Cisco parameter, the call connection time parameter, to the
perCallInfo parameter in the nonStandardData field, which is located in the IRR message. When a
CONNECT message is received, the originating gateway sends the unsolicited IRR message to its
Gatekeeper. On sending a CONNECT message, the terminating gateway sends the unsolicited IRR
message to its Gatekeeper. If the admission confirmation message has a nonzero value for the
IRRfrequency parameter, the gateway sends the unsolicited IRR message to its Gatekeeper at periodic
intervals, which are determined by the value in the IRRfrequency parameter.
With the exception of containing the call connection time in the perCallInfo parameter, the IRR message
and its functionality remains the same.