Avaya’s distributed IP-based systems experience increased availability by virtue of the alternate gatekeeper feature. When IP telephones register with Communication Manager, they are given a list of alternate gatekeepers to which they can re-register in the event of a failure.
The Avaya servers have a scalable architecture with different server components. These components provide processing and relay signaling information between Communication Manager and the Avaya IP endpoints. The system architecture is inherently distributed, providing the scalability to support a large number of endpoints and the flexibility to work in various network configurations.
This distributed nature of the architecture introduces additional complexity in dealing with endpoint recovery, since failure of any element in the end-to-end connectivity path between an IP endpoint and the switch software can result in service failure at the endpoint.
The recovery algorithm outlined here deals with detection and recovery from the failure of signaling channels for IP endpoints. Such failures are due to connectivity outages between the server and the endpoint, which could be due to failure in the IP network or any other component between the endpoint and the server.
The connectivity path between the endpoint and the server is:
Endpoint ⇔ IP network ⇔ Server PE interface
In this configuration, IP endpoints directly register to the server Processor Ethernet interface.
