Unified Communications

The growing use of Wi-FiWi-Fi is a technology that allows electronic devices to connect to a WLAN network, mainly using the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radio bands. Wi-Fi can apply to products that use any 802.11 standard. and the proliferation of mobile, tablet, portable, and smart devices and clients cause control and visibility challenges for communication and collaboration applications such as Lync or Skype for Business. To overcome these challenges, Aruba offers the Unified Communications service to manage your enterprise communication ecosystem.

The Unified Communications service provides a seamless user experience for voice and video calls and application sharing when using Lync or Skype for Business applications. The service actively monitors and provides visibility into Lync or Skype for Business traffic and allows you to prioritize sessions. The Unified Communications service leverages the functions of the service engine and provides rich visual metrics for analytical purposes.

The Unified Communications service supports the following functions based on the type of device:

• Session prioritization—Based on the type of device provisioned in your network, the Unified Communication service receives call control information from APs, switches, and controllers. The Unified Communications service uses this data to detect and classify the traffic type and dynamically prioritize voice and video call traffic over data traffic. Based on the type of device, the following information sources are used for session prioritization.
  • The Lync or Skype for Business SDNSoftware-Defined Networking. SDN is an umbrella term encompassing several kinds of network technology aimed at making the network as agile and flexible as the virtualized server and storage infrastructure of the modern data center. API—The SDN APIApplication Programming Interface. Refers to a set of functions, procedures, protocols, and tools that enable users to build application software. provides an interface for the Aruba devices to access diagnostic information for a comprehensive and a real-time view of applications, users, devices, the Wi-Fi, and the LANLocal Area Network. A LAN is a network of connected devices within a distinct geographic area such as an office or a commercial establishment and share a common communications line or wireless link to a server. network infrastructure. The Unified Communications service uses this data to prioritize voice and video traffic. The SDN API can be installed on a Lync or Skype for Business server.
  • Heuristics—A built-in method that detects the Lync or Skype for Business traffic and works with all on-premises and Skype for Business online deployments. The heuristics data detection and classification method is used to identify clients in the call, classify, and prioritize media packets. Switches do not support heuristics-based prioritization. The session prioritization for switches is based on the data from the Skype server through OpenFlowOpenFlow is an open communications interface between control plane and the forwarding layers of a network..
• Session visibility—The application also provides call session visibility correlated across the Skype server and mobility network to simplify operations for the network administrator. The administrators can monitor wireless and wired network connectivity health on a per-session basis and analyze the quality of experience.

Licensing

Multi-tier licensing is applicable to Unified Communications applications. A foundation license provides heuristics-based prioritization of the media traffic without visibility. An advanced license provides session prioritization with visibility.

See the following sections for information about configuring and monitoring UCC:

• Configuring UCC
• Monitoring UCC in List View
• Monitoring UCC in Summary View