Breakout - Airheads Macau 2013 - Microsoft Lync, Unified Communications, Cloud Application Control, and Aruba Networks

CONFIDENTIAL © Copyright 2013. Aruba Networks, Inc. All rights reserved 1 @arubanetworks@arubanetworks

Microsoft Lync, Unified Communications, Cloud Application Control,

and Aruba NetworksTechnical Overview

Rich Langston, PLM

CONFIDENTIAL © Copyright 2011. Aruba Networks, Inc. All rights reserved

CONFIDENTIAL © Copyright 2013. Aruba Networks, Inc. All rights reserved 2 @arubanetworks

• Why should I be interested in Lync/UCC?

• What challenges will I face?

• How do I solve these challenges?

• RF Optimization• QoS• Troubleshooting

Agenda

LyncAruba


Although we will talk about Lync today, many of these techniques and features are applicable to other types of VOIP and Unified Communications, and enable delivery of things like next-gen cloud apps.

FYI


Desk Phones Are So 20th Century

Mobile UCC Applications are eliminating the need for desk phones completely


Lync Brings Opportunities for Big Savings

Deployment savings from using UC over Wi-Fi instead of wired

LAN1

Rightsizing savings from consolidating unused legacy switches, lower

operating costs 2

Wired Edge

Co

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Infrastructure savings from extending UC network to remote sites, branch

offices, homes4

Rightsized Edge

Co

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Of

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Application savings from using one common network for all multimedia, locationing, telemetry applications

3


• Employees are more productive – they can work from anywhere

• Reduce spending on conference calling services

• Reduce toll costs

Additional UCC Advantages


Is Your Network Ready For Mobile UCC?

Microsoft Lync

• Lync is 5 applications but one encrypted stream.• How do you set QoS for different Lync media?

Device Explosion

• The average knowledge worker has 2-3 devices.• Can you provide the speed and connectivity they

need?

Converged Devices

• UCC, Voice, Video, Facebook, Email, YouTube,

Games, Twitter, and Music on the same device.• What priority should the traffic receive?


End-to-end UCC challenge (simplified)

• Diversity of client types• Diversity of operating

systems• Mix of managed and

unmanaged

• Server health• Server capacity

• Configuration inconsistencies

• Network bottlenecks • QoS markings not being

honored

• Interference sources• Different RF

environments• Channel conflicts• Variable numbers of

clients


Recipe for a successful Lync/UCC Wi-Fi Implementation

Ensure adequate Wi-Fi density Optimize Wi-Fi to account for

UCC Ensure proper prioritization of

UCC traffic Ensure the right instrumentation

is in place to measure and troubleshoot end-to-end


Optimize the Wi-Fi Environment


UCC RF Design Best Practices

• Pervasive RF Coverage

• Distance between APs to not exceed 50 Ft

• Minimum RF signal (RSSI) levels of -65 dBm

• Minimum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 25 dB

• Co-channel separation of 20 dB

• Minimum and maximum AP power difference no greater than two steps

• On the SSID profile• Set max-tx-fail to 20• Set max-retries to 4

15M

15M


2.4 GHzCh 1

2.4 GHzCh 1

2.4 GHzCh 115 GHz

Ch 36

5 GHzCh 149

5 GHzCh 52

5 GHzCh 161

X2.4 GHzCh 6

X

ARM: Optimize Wi-Fi In Real-Time

Zero-Touch RF Management And Optimization

Band Steering – Move 5 GHz capable clients to 5GHz radios

Spectrum Load Balancing – Distribute clients across APs

Airtime Fairness – Keep slow clients from taking all the bandwidth

Lync-Aware ARM Scanning – Don’t change channels during a call

Self-Healing – Adjust power to cover gaps

X


Aruba ClientMatch™ Enables High Performance Wi-Fi

Match to another AP

DEVICE TYPE

INTERFERENCE

LOCATION CONGESTION

REAL-TIME RF CORRELATION

Enables use of High Wi-Fi data rates

98% of mobile devices with higher SNR

94% better performance for “sticky” clients

No client-side software required

Patent: 8,401,554


802.11ac – Not required, but helpful

• 3x3:3 Dual Radio

• 5GHz 11ac: up to 1.3Gbps

• 2.4GHz 11n: up to 450Mbps

(600Mbps with Broadcom clients)

• 2x GE link aggregation

• Enabling >1Gbps TCP throughput

• Operates with 802.3af, requires

802.3at for full functionality

• More bandwidth

• Faster data rates

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AppRF – Control Access to the Air

• Even with 802.11ac, there is only so much air available

• Unlike wired networks, this is a shared resource

• Enterprises should monitor, and, if necessary, control what applications have access to the air

• Reduce the bandwidth provided to completely recreational apps• Block bandwidth-hogging apps of no value to the business


AppRF: Identify traffic for special treatment

• Classify based on priority

• Fix missing or incorrect QoS priority tags

• Block or rate limit bandwidth hogs

• On-Controller visualization and reporting for real-time flows

• Export to AirWave for historical trending and debugging

• Inspect traffic with DPI engine

• Determine applications and categories

• 1500 apps

Identify Report Prioritize/Block


AOS 6.4 - Late 2013 - AppRF 2.0

• Incorporates Application-Aware Deep Packet Inspection technology

– Uses next-gen techniques, not just signatures

– Over 1500 Applications

• Operates at user role level to provide application control

– Block application or categories of apps– QoS applications – Bandwidth contracts for applications

• New Category Dashboard element• Shows apps by category such as Peer-to-

Peer, Streaming video

• Graphically based application blocking work flow


What is Application-Aware DPI?

• Uses a combination of advanced techniques for application identification

• Uses protocol grammar analysis to understand complex applications and their current state

• Uses advanced heuristics when required

• Signatures are used for “easy to identify” applications– Allows advanced REGEX to be used for performance scaling

• Detects encrypted applications via certificate common names

• To be leveraged in a future releases:• Decodes applications inside unencrypted tunnels such as ICA• Understands and extracts metadata to increase context


Encrypted Applications

• Primary method of classification for encrypted flows is use of the unencrypted certificate information

– Primarily Common Name

• Certificate is exchanged as part of the initial application startup

• Only allows granularity reflected in the cert name

– All of facebook, for example, uses a cert with “Facebook” as the CN

• Extraction of metadata or any deeper analysis isn’t possible

19


Application Categories

• This is an initial list – will probably evolve slightly

• Block/QoS/Bandwidth contracts can control these categories with a single configuration line

• User-defined categories will be available in a post 6.4 release


AirWave 7.7 Historical Trending


Prioritization via QoS


End-to-End: Different QoS Techniques


End-to-End Prioritization

• For QoS and WMM to work effectively, they must be deployed end-to-end throughout the network

• All components must recognize the packet marking and must react in the same way to ensure proper handling

• Complete deployment of QoS ensures consistent delivery of data

• WMM/802.11e is used for QoS on the Wireless side

• DiffServ Code Point (DSCP) and 802.1p tagging is used on the wired side

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• Distributed Coordinated Function (DCF)– Transmission rules followed by all clients

• Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA)– Responsible for mediating access to the air

802.11 Access Rules Basics

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Access Categories with EDCA

1. Voice Data

2. Video Data

3. Best Efforts

4. Background

“Air”

High Priority

Low Priority

Application Data

• WMM Specifies how priority queues map to DSCP and dot1P tags

• Different access categories, different contention parameters

• 4 queues per radio; 8 queues total; supported on all APs

• Voice and video gets priority over data

• EDCA parameters decides a unique delay and random back off for each queue


Why it is important to understand DSCP

• End-to-end prioritization is important for quality of Lync calls

• Clients can send Lync traffic with DSCP tags

• DSCP Tag is mapped to WMM-AC tag to prioritize the packets over the Air

• In tunnel mode, since lync packet is encrypted, AP can only see WMM-AC prioritization from the outer header and puts DSCP tag corresponding to WMM-AC prioritization flag defined in DSCP-WMM mapping in SSID profile

• If there is no mapping in SSID profile, AP derives DSCP tag from standard WMM-DSCP conversion algorithm

• Controller can retag the packet as per DSCP-WMM mapping in SSID profile if the tagging in the incoming packet is not correct

• In d-tunnel mode, AP decrypts the packets and puts the inside DSCP tag on the wire


WMM-DSCP Configuration on Controller


@arubanetworks

UCC Visibility, Control, and Debugging


Typical Lync QoS Services

• Basic WMM prioritization for Lync RTP traffic based on ports or incoming DSCP tags

• Configuration heavy

• Prone to mis-classification of traffic

• Tagging video on the high queue is a bad idea…

Lync Server

WLAN


Aruba’s Solution: Application Level Gateways (ALGs)

• ALGs are deep packet inspection technology

• Listen on particular ports and take action when the traffic is recognized as being part of the supported VOIP traffic streams

• QoS packet flows• Collect call and protocol

statistics for troubleshooting• ALGs are handled in the

controller using the control plane


VOIP/UCC ALGs Supported

• Cisco SCCP, a.k.a. “Skinny” – Cisco’s original VOIP protocol. Many customers have moved on to Cisco’s Jabber protocols

• NOE – This is Alcatel’s original VOIP protocol. Modern Alcatel systems use SIP

• Vocera – This is Vocera’s version of SIP

• SVP – SpectraLink Voice Protocol


Standards-Based UCC Signaling Protocol Support

• H323 – A protocol for streaming media control used by many UCC and video solutions

• SIP – Session Initiation Protocol – another signaling protocol used by most modern VOIP

• RTSP – Real Time Streaming Protocol – Another protocol for control of streaming audio/video


Aruba’s Lync QoS Services

• Heuristics to identify Lync voice and video seperately

• Lync aware video management

• Full support for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac OS X, Windows Phone

• Works on Lync 2010, 2013, Online

• Traffic retagging

• Inline voice quality assessment

WLAN


Heuristics: How they work

• Called “Classify Media”

• Create an ACL to trigger deeper inspection of traffic• ACL triggers on ports used for UCC• May need to include IP address or hostname as well

• Once the ACL triggers, we analyze traffic from the client

• If the traffic looks like a supported audio or video stream format, we will QoS it appropriately

• Supports separate classification of audio and video streams


UCC Solutions we support using heuristics

• Microsoft Lync• Pre 6.1.3.10 – only Lync 2010• 6.1.3.10 and 6.3.1 – all Lync including Lync 2013 apps, laptop and

mobile• Lync Online (Office 365) is supported with these builds for heuristics

only

• Apple Facetime

• Cisco Jabber – planned for future AOS release


• Heuristics approach works well with Lync Online

• Special configuration is needed we will cover later

Heuristics Work with Lync Online Today!


• Heuristics are never perfect

• Microsoft SDN API Integration

• Uses information directly from the Microsoft server for fine-grained application identification

• Allows separate detection and QoS for Voice, Video, Desktop Sharing, and File Sharing

• Eliminates the need for deep packet inspection

• Adds Lync “Quality of Experience” (QoE) metrics for debugging

Beyond Heuristics: Direct Integration with Microsoft Lync Server


Lync

Lync SDN Model

Lync SDN APIREST Architecture

Increased visibility into Lync traffic and events

Ability to correlate network and call information

Routers

Switches

IDS/IPS

Firewalls

WANOptimizers

WLANAPs

NetworkCAC

Probes NMS

APMDiagnostic

s

OSS


Lync SDN QoS Flow

1. User establishes Lync call to another device

– Call setup is through server, call is peer-to-peer

2. Lync server sends session information to Controller

3. Controller uses data for QoS and AppRF visibility

– Voice gets DSCP 56 (0x38)– Video gets DSCP 40 (0x28)– Desktop Sharing gets DSCP 40 (0x28)– File transfers get DSCP 24 (0x18)

4. Controller sends app usage data to AirWave

AirWave

2

1

4

3


Dialog Event

Lync

LEN Dialog Shim

Routers

Switches

IDS/IPS

Firewalls

WANOptimizers

WLANAPs

NetworkCAC

Probes NMS

APM Diagnostics

OSS

Networks & Operation Systems

LyncDialog Event

Events:• Start, Update, Error & End

Dialog

Attributes:• SIP URIs• Call ID• IP SA/DA• Protocol• Transport S/D Ports• Media Type• Codex & BW


• Where is the problem? • Is the Wi-Fi network congested?• Are the wired network tags wrong?• Is it something else?

UCC Troubleshooting Challenge

Lync Call Problem Help Desk Request

?


Lync SDN– Collecting call data

1. At the end of each call, the call participants send data on call quality to the Quality of Experience (QoE) server - a component of Lync

2. The QoE server reports stats to the controller

3. Controller builds monitoring pages

1

2

3


Quality Update Event

Lync

LEN Dialog Shim

Routers

Switches

IDS/IPS

Firewalls

WANOptimizers

WLANAPs

NetworkCAC

Probes NMS

APM Diagnostics

OSS

Networks & Operation Systems

Attributes:• 5 Tuple Value• NMOS Value• Delay Value• Jitter Value• Packet Loss Value• Healer ratio Value

Events:• Quality Update event for

Voice, Video or Data

LyncQuality Update

Event


Lync Diagnostics: Getting To Root Cause

• End-to-end insights into call quality and the root cause of problems• Wi-Fi call metricsinclude R-value, jitter, delay, packet

loss, AP-controller packet loss• Includes caller/callee extension number mapping to MAC

address, call status, voice or video call type, active client sessions at time of call, other Lync traffic

•Reports include system-, Wi-Fi AP-, and client-level details, client roaming data, and historical call records


Examples of Call Statistics

Lync Voice Clients

Call Performance Report

Call Detail Report


ArubaOS 6.4 – Network-Wide UCC Stats

DONE Select the Trend view for Call Volume


WiFi and Call Heath View

Speeds troubleshooting UCC issues– Is it the WiFi, or something else


ArubaOS 6.4 – Per Client Quality View

DONE Click breadcrumb to go back to dashboard


AArubaOS 6.4 Call Details View

DONE Click breadcrumb to go back to dashboard


Aruba AirWave – combine call quality and location

DONE Click on ‘X’ in top right of popup to dismiss


Better Together – MS Lync and Aruba

Lync Ready Wi-Fi

802.11ac APs with

ClientMatch™ reduces sticky

clients and increases speed Lync client visibility and QoS

per application Lync Wi-Fi qualified and SDN

API vendor (certification in

progress)

Complete UCC Solution

Voice, Video, Chat, Desktop

Sharing and File Transfer Presence information with

Exchange Integration Cross-platform Microsoft

Windows, MacOS, iOS, and

Android


• Would you like to learn more about making your Wi-Fi UCC a success?

• Would you like help deciding which approach is best for you?

• Want your users in the fast lane?

• Contact me after the talk!

Call to Action!



Thank You

Business

Breakout - Airheads Macau 2013 - Microsoft Lync, Unified Communications, Cloud Application Control, and Aruba Networks