eWEEK Labs Walk-through: Cisco Smart Business Communications System

The 48-extension SBCS (Cisco Smart Business Communications System) I tested consisted of a voice controller (the UC520, shown) along with a 24-port Catalyst Express 520 switch uplinked via an expansion port.

Each of the desktop IP phones I tested with–the 7931, 7961 and color-screen 7970–were detected automatically via Cisco Discovery Protocol and assigned extensions.

SBCS works with either individual Cisco access points (shown is the Cisco AP521) or with the Wireless LAN Controller 526 (for larger wireless LAN deployments).

When a wireless infrastructure device is detected on the network, the CCA (Cisco Configuration Assistant) automatically adds wireless configuration options to the display. This allowed me to create SSIDs (service set identifiers), assign virtual LANs and

Individual ports on the UC520 or the Catalyst switch can be assigned specific roles according to the discovered attached device (access point, end-user device and so on) for easy system configuration.

SBCS also automatically provisioned a Cisco Wi-Fi phone (the Cisco 7921) once I connected the device to a wireless LAN.

To help resellers manage multiple networks via the CCA, administrators create Communities consisting of every managed infrastructure device in the network (but not the phones).

The CCA automatically creates a topology map of the all the detected infrastructure components in a Community, plus the attached devices.

The CCA includes an audit tool to help VARs identify any unnecessary running processes or services.

The CCA provides at-a-glance insight into the current utilization among the devices in a Community.

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