Use the Locations page to configure gateway and user locations. The IP address of the device determines the physical location of the caller or the called user.

1. The Session Manager tries to match the IP address of the bottom-most VIA header of the received INVITE against the IP patterns on the Locations.

2. If no IP address match is found, the Session Manager uses the assigned location on the sending SIP Entity.

3. If no assigned Location is found, the Session Manager uses the assigned location of the Session Manager SIP Entity.

If dial patterns are administered for the specific location, the Session Manager uses the originating location to determine which dial pattern is suitable for routing the call. Locations are also used to limit the number of calls originating from or terminating to a physical location. This is known as Call Admission Control (CAC) and is useful to manage the network bandwidth of locations. CAC provides a level of protection by limiting the impact of multimedia traffic over the most critical network links between enterprise locations, such as the links from branch offices to data centers in the network core. You specify CAC details using the Overall Managed Bandwidth and Per-Call Bandwidth Parameters sections on the Location Details page.

You can use the following wildcard characters to specify a location:

• * (star) specifies any number of allowed characters at the end of the string.

• x specifies a digit.

The Locations page can contain one or several IP addresses. Each SIP Entity has a particular IP address. Depending on the physical and geographic location of each SIP Entity, some of the SIP Entities can be grouped into a single location. For example, if there are two Communication Manager servers located in Denver, the Communication Manager servers can form one location named Denver.

The order in which the Session Manager matches the IP address is as follows:

1. Wildcard patterns (* and x)

2. Ranges

3. Netmask