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Mustafa Baig has been with En Pointe Technologies for over 3 years with 10 years of experience in computer and network industry. He works with voice communications over IP networks and holds expertise in deploying unified communication solutions in converged networks.

Cisco Unified SRST provides Cisco Unified Communications Manager with fallback support for Cisco Unified IP phones that are attached to a Cisco router on your local network. Cisco Unified SRST enables routers to provide call-handling support for Cisco Unified IP phones when they lose connection to remote primary, secondary, or tertiary Cisco Unified Communications Manager installations or when the WAN connection is down.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager supports Cisco Unified IP phones at remote sites attached to Cisco multiservice routers across the WAN. Prior to Cisco Unified SRST, when the WAN connection between a router and the Cisco Unified Communications Manager failed or when connectivity with Cisco Unified Communications Manager was lost for some reason, Cisco Unified IP phones on the network became unusable for the duration of the failure. Cisco Unified SRST overcomes this problem and ensures that the Cisco Unified IP phones offer continuous (although minimal) service by providing call-handling support for Cisco Unified IP phones directly from the Cisco Unified SRST router. The system automatically detects a failure and uses Simple Network Auto Provisioning (SNAP) technology to autoconfigure the branch office router to provide call processing for Cisco Unified IP phones that are registered with the router. When the WAN link or connection to the primary Cisco Unified Communications Manager is restored, call handling reverts back to the primary Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

When Cisco Unified IP phones lose contact with primary, secondary, and tertiary Cisco Unified Communications Managers, they must establish a connection to a local Cisco Unified SRST router to sustain the call-processing capability necessary to place and receive calls. The Cisco Unified IP phone retains the IP address of the local Cisco Unified SRST router as a default router in the Network Configuration area of the Settings menu. The Settings menu supports a maximum of five default router entries; however, Cisco Unified Communications Manager accommodates a maximum of three entries. When a secondary Cisco Unified Communications Manager is not available on the network, the local Cisco Unified SRST Router's IP address is retained as the standby connection for Cisco Unified Communications Manager during normal operation.