Unified Conference

The Unified Conference type provides the following functionality:

• Conferees can be µ-Law, A-Law, or mixed. There is no need to specify the encoding when creating the conference.

• Unlimited Broadcast or "listen only" capability (µ-Law and A-Law)

• Dynamically increase conference size

Dynamic Sizing

You can connect channels to a conference even if the number of conferees exceeds the configured conference size, as long as the DSP Chip hosting the conference has available resources.

When the Excel platform creates a Unified conference, it places the conference on whichever DSP chip has the largest number of free channels at that moment, maximizing the opportunity for that conference to grow dynamically.

Child Conference

You can create a private sub-conference (child conference) within a larger conference (parent conference). When a smaller group of participants within a larger conference want to talk privately, they can do so while still hearing the audio from the larger conference. The sub-conference parties participate with one another in full duplex, while becoming listen-only parties in the larger conference.

The feature allows users to create a child conference, move parties from the parent conference to the child conference and back, and delete the child conference.

No Resource Points are used for a Child Conference unless a leg is added to the child conference. If a leg is added to the child conference, Resource Points are consumed the same way they are consumed in parent conference.

DTMF Clamping

You can enable DTMF Clamping on a Unified conference to prevent DTMF echo. DTMF echo causes false DTMF indications on conference legs. This feature enables users to provide DTMF digit receivers on each conference leg without one conference participant inadvertently controlling another participant’s conference parameters.

Conferencing over an EXNET Ring

For a Unified conference, two local timeslots per conference are allocated to broadcast over the ring in both µ-law and A-law. In contrast, conference types 0xN7, 0xN8, 0xN9, and 0xNA, use only one local timeslot per conference to broadcast over the ring, in either µ-law or A-law, but not both. Users who use only µ-law do not need to allocate midplane ports for A-law, and vice versa.

Configuration

See Creating a Conference.