CCIE Voice Study

Call simulator (csim start) is an undocumented, extremely important tool and command in any Cisco voice engineer's arsenal. It allows debugging for call routing from voice gateways and CME devices. In this article, we examine some of the various resulting outputs of "csim start {number}".

The command "csim start {number}" is executed in enable mode on an IOS device (such as a voice gateway). It allows verification of dial-plan, routing configuration and, when used with ISDN, even carrier connectivity.

csim start is quite neat, in that it:

• bypasses class of restriction (COR).
• allows verification of dial-plan without worrying about superfluous elements like DTMF relay and codec selection.

csim start can only be executed on a device ...

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Cisco's Real-Time Monitoring Tool (RTMT) is well known (or should be!) as a highly effective tool for troubleshooting. This article considers the steps required to use RTMT to troubleshoot and identify TFTP events in the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) environment.

The steps required to setup and use RTMT for TFTP service monitoring are:

• Download RTMT from the CallManager (you must download the exact version appropriate for your servers)
• Configure the appropriate level of logging for the TFTP service
• Open RTMT and verify, in real-time, TFTP events

If the exact filenames are of interest, then the logging level must be Significant or higher.

In the example shown below, observe the behaviour of a 7961 IP phone as a user ...

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