Webex Video Mesh release notes

2021.06.17.2415m

June 24, 2021

There are no release notes for this maintenance upgrade.

2021.05.27.2405m

June 4, 2021

• Adds support for upcoming Webex changes for stack layout on on-premises registered video devices.

2021.05.05.2395m.5

May 21, 2021

• Includes minor improvements to display for non-default layouts.

• Fixes an issue that could break DNS for a specific Docker bridge configuration.

2021.04.27.2391m

April 30, 2021

• Fixes reporting of packet loss statistics for transcoded calls in Control Hub.

2021.03.22.2384m.3

April 6, 2021

There are no release notes for this maintenance upgrade.

2021.03.22.2384m.1

March 31, 2021

There are no release notes for this maintenance upgrade.

2021.03.03.2359m.7

March 16, 2021

There are no release notes for this maintenance upgrade.

2021.03.03.2359m

March 12, 2021

There are no release notes for this maintenance upgrade.

2021.02.05.2352m.4

February 12, 2021

• Adds an option to disable local sign-in to the Video Mesh Node Administration Web UI.

• Fixes jitter issues and incorrectly reported round-trip time values.

2021.01.13.2349m.3

February 5, 2021

There are no release notes for this maintenance upgrade.

2020.12.08.2333m.6

January 25, 2021

There are no release notes for this maintenance upgrade.

2020.12.08.2333m.5

January 8, 2021

• Improved the NTP Alarm messages on Video Mesh Nodes.

• Fixed an issue where, if the password expiry is set to "never", you can't change your password through the GUI.

• Improved the display for certain registration errors.

• Improved the reporting of connectivity errors from timeouts when testing the proxy connectivity.

• Reachability tests no longer report certificate errors as reachability failures.

• Updated reachability alarms for private meeting Video Mesh Node clusters.

2020.12.08.2333m

December 11, 2020

• Expanded the information available for the DNS cache. See "Enable or Disable DNS Caching" in the Deployment Guide.

• Fixed a cosmetic issue where triggering a health test can cause the node state incorrectly to display as "Installing" on Control Hub.

2020.11.17.2319m.9

December 8, 2020

This release includes changes to prevent SIP call failures when you lose network connectivity between the clusters.

2020.11.17.2319m.4

December 1, 2020

The monitoring tool for Video Mesh is a Webex call simulator that’s available on every Video Mesh node with this release. The monitoring tool includes these features:

• Running on demand or recurring hourly tests on a per node, per cluster basis.

• The ability to flag SIP signaling, media signaling, and media cascade failures for each test.

• Appropriate failure messages on a per test basis with error codes to reduce mean time to resolution.

• Historic test failure tracking for up to seven days.

2020.11.17.2319m.4

November 25, 2020

• No release notes for this maintenance upgrade.

2020.11.06.2314m

November 18, 2020

• Increased the threshold for raising the NTP alarm on Video Mesh Nodes.

• Increased the verbosity of error messages to help debug future NTP issues on Video Mesh Nodes.

• Fixed an issue where VMN log uploads were failing.

• Fixed cascade issues between Video Mesh Nodes and new cloud nodes.

2020.10.16.2305m

October 23, 2020

• Fixed an issue where maintenance mode wouldn’t turn on properly in certain situations.

2020.09.22.2288m.3

October 1, 2020

• No release notes for this maintenance upgrade.

2020.09.22.2288m

September 30, 2020

• Added rate limits to the bandwidth tests on the Overview page.

• Fixed an issue with the TCP reachability test.

• Corrected latency/round-trip time values in media statistics on the meetings troubleshooting page in Control Hub. (The statistics were off for some calls by a factor of 1000.)

• Changed to use only more secure TLS ciphers on some ports.

2020.09.11.2279m

September 18, 2020

• Added information about the IP address range that is reserved for internal use to the Video Mesh node web interface.

• Reduced the IP address range that is reserved for Webex Video Mesh Node internal use from the original 172.17.0.0–172.17.255.255 (65,536 addresses) to 172.17.42.0–172.17.42.63 (64 addresses).

2020.08.31.2273m

September 8, 2020

• Disabled TLS 1.1 on port 33432.

• Fixed bad statistics shown on IX5000 presentation audio stream when moving between lobby and conference.

• Added a workaround for an issue where a trusted SIP address longer than 200 characters causes TLS connection failure (CSCvv44969).

2020.08.19.2266m.1

August 26, 2020

• Added DNS caching option. (See Announcements tab.)

• Explicitly turned off IPv6 on internal and external interfaces so that nodes do not acquire IPv6 DNS servers.

• Fixed an issue which led to reachability test failures due to port exhaustion.

• Improved alarm detail in the case where an upgrade cannot be downloaded due to either blockage by the Zscaler service or because of a transparent inspecting proxy.

• Fixed an issue where UDP upload/download data were incorrectly displayed in bandwidth test results on the web interface.

2020.08.06.2258m.4

August 18, 2020

• No release notes for this maintenance upgrade.

2020.08.06.2258m.1

August 13, 2020

• Fixed an issue where an IX5000 would drop the call when moved from a meeting back to the lobby.

• Fixed an issue where a node configured to use explicit proxy could lose network connectivity if the Container Network IP address is changed.

2020.07.15.2245m

July 20, 2020

• Changed the DNS resolution test to increase compatibility with older versions of Microsoft-based DNS servers.

• Fixed an issue where audio received from the Webex Meetings app may be quieter than expected for the first few seconds after a period of silence.

2020.06.29.2236m.10

July 9, 2020

• Changed the DNS resolution test behavior. Each configured DNS server now must be able to resolve the test FQDN in order for the DNS test to pass. (In earlier releases, if any DNS server was able to resolve the test FQDN, the test would pass.)

• Improved media quality in lossy networks.

• Added network interface MTU configuration options. (See Announcements tab.)

• Added an alarm if the Video Mesh node isn’t able to reach any of the cloud media servers.

2020.06.18.2231m

June 26, 2020

• Improved aspect ratio selection for bandwidths around 1.5Mbps when 1080p is enabled.

• Added the ability to filter packet captures by network interface, by host, and by port.

• Fixed a bug where you get an error if you start and then quickly stop packet capture.

• Added support for VMNLite deployments. (See Announcements tab.)

• Removed the default NTP configuration. A valid NTP configuration is now required to register a node. Added alarms if the NTP configuration is empty or the node is not able to reach a configured NTP server.

• Fixed an issue where the proxy connectivity test would incorrectly report a failure due to a timeout that was too short.

• Added shutdown and reboot functionality to the Video Mesh node web interface.

2020.05.26.2200m.3

June 10, 2020

• Added the ability to toggle Maintenance Mode on and off from the Video Mesh node web interface Administration page.

• Removed alarms and checks for Amazon ECR server connectivity from the node web interface Overview page.

• Added an uptime counter to the node web interface Overview page.

• Removed CPU utilization from the node web interface Overview page.

• Disabled proxy connectivity tests to port 444 as part of transitioning cascade signaling to port 443.

2020.05.13.2195m

May 27, 2020

• Fixed an issue where a third-party browser autofill extension could interfere with the Webex Video Mesh node web interface.

2020.04.16.2176m.2

May 8, 2020

• Solved an issue where the port 444 connection checker would erroneously report a failure when behind certain types of proxies.

• Fixed an issue where a mismatched server certificate was allowed to be installed if a correctly matched certificate was previously uploaded.

• Disabled the websocket connectivity test after an issue was found with it when the node is behind an explicit proxy.

2020.04.16.2176m.1

April 24, 2020

• Removed support for TLS1.1.

• Added more Cloud Connectivity checks on the Overview page of the Webex Video Mesh node web interface.

• Fix for an issue that was causing a false invalid hostname DNS alarm.

• Added a key length constraint on the Server Certificate page, with an error message if an administrator uploads a server certificate of less than 2048 bits.

• Improved handling of situations where an administrator enters a private key of less than 2048 bits or a private key with no passphrase. In these cases, the Video Mesh node will use a self-signed certificate.

2020.03.11.2143m.8

April 17, 2020

• Fixed an issue that caused some clients to only get audio from the top two active speakers when someone is sharing content audio.

• Fixed an issue that could cause call failures when lots of call attempts are made in a short period of time.

2020.03.11.2143m.7

April 6, 2020

• Increased the bandwidth for 1080p calls from 3.25M to 4M.

• Increased the timeout for multistream signalling for dual-screen calls.

• Reduced the number of requests to the identity service.

• Changed the way we handle OAuth verification to be more resilient to delayed responses.

2020.03.11.2143m.3

March 24, 2020

• No release notes for this maintenance upgrade.

2020.03.11.2143m.9—Urgent upgrade

March 22, 2020

• Added more logging for debug support.

2020.03.11.2143m—Urgent upgrade

March 11, 2020

• Disabled the periodic call health checks and the corresponding alarm (mf.callHealth.fail) that was reported on the node and in Control Hub if failures occurred on the node beyond a certain threshold.

2020.03.02.2132m

March 6, 2020

• Added support for NTLMv2 proxy authentication. (Video Mesh automatically detects the version, you do not need to specify it when configuring your proxy.)

• Added an alarm that is reported on the node and in Control Hub if periodic call health test failures occur on the node beyond a certain threshold.

  Alarm id: 'mf.callHealth.fail', severity: "warning", title: 'Call Health Check has Failed'

2020.02.09.2120m.1

February 28, 2020

• No release notes for this maintenance upgrade.

2020.01.30.2115m

February 7, 2020

• Fixed CSCvs70769—NGINX HTTP Request Smuggling Vulnerability

• The Opus codec is enabled for 1:1 meetings and calls.

2020.01.12.2091m

January 22, 2020

• Added factory reset to the web interface for Video Mesh nodes. For more information, see Manage Video Mesh Node from the Web Interface in the deployment guide at https://www.cisco.com/go/video-mesh.

• Fixed an issue ( CSCvs28104), where low quality video could be shown on some screens of an immersive three-screen endpoint.

• Fixed an issue where some SIP calls experienced delayed setup.

2019.12.15.2053m

January 8, 2020

• Fixed an issue where meetings (that included at least one Webex Board) sent low resolution video streams from SIP devices to Webex endpoints.

2019.12.03.2042m

December 12, 2019

• Fixed an issue where the meeting join screen remained blank when *.clouddrive.com was blocked on a customer network. While the meeting join screen is no longer blank in this scenario, we still require that you unblock this URL on your network to avoid unintended side effects.

• Added admin password management to the web interface for Video Mesh nodes. For more information, see Manage Video Mesh Node from the Web Interface in the deployment guide at https://www.cisco.com/go/video-mesh.

2019.11.06.1992m

November 14, 2019

• Fixed CSCvr92794—Incorrect error msg on FQDN validation against node IP.

• Fixed an issue where nodes were not quiescing properly and were using a short timeout, which happened only when other nodes in the cluster were moved to maintenance mode in Control Hub, leading to reduced capacity and dropped calls.

2019.10.21.1973m.1

November 1, 2019

• Added the ability to upload and download logs and pcap files from the Webex Video Mesh node interface Troubleshooting page even when the node is unregistered. For more information, see Generate Webex Video Mesh Logs for Support and Generate Webex Video Mesh Packet Captures for Support.

2019.10.11.1964m.1

October 23, 2019

• Fixed CSCvr39819—Vulnerable Software Version.

• Fixed CSCvr39878—X.509 Self-Signed Certificate whose common name does not match the issuing server (SSL/TLS). Made a change where the common name of the certificate on the node gives the node's FQDN (if available) or the IP address.

• Added a new "Subject Alternative Name(s):" field to the CSR creation form in the web interface.

2019.09.19.1956m

September 26, 2019

• Added network settings to the Video Mesh node web user interface (UI). For more information, see Configure Network Settings from Webex Video Mesh Node Web Interface.

• Changed this alarm's severity from critical to warning: "The Video Mesh Node was not able to download the required software from the Cisco cloud provider. The problem can happen because of multiple issues that are related to the network. Check your network connectivity to the public network (.amazonaws.com) and check your DNS settings. This can also happen because of changes to the firewall that is present between Video Mesh nodes and the internet."

• Fixed an issue where reflector server ports were not being released even after the reflector tool is stopped in the node's web UI.

• Fixed a vulnerability that affected the Ping and Check NTP APIs where an attacker could launch a command injection attack if they had access to authenticated APIs.

• Improved the codec selection for transmitted video.

• Server certificates that are signed with weak ciphers (like MD2 or MD5) are no longer accepted in the Video Mesh node certificate UI.

2019.08.21.1941m.2

September 13, 2019

• Fixed an issue where the node CPU levels spiked and wouldn't return to acceptable levels.

• Fixed an issue where content sent by participants connected to a cloud node would not be received by participants connected to on-premises nodes, if there is a Palo Alto Networks (PAN) firewall in the network.

• Added a network configuration page to the node software image. Admins can specify the network settings during first time setup of the node virtual machine. See Install Webex Video Mesh Node Software in the deployment guide for more information.

2019.08.14.1937m

August 16, 2019

• Added support for explicit proxies with no-auth, basic, digest, or NTLM authentication. For more information, see Proxy Support for Video Mesh and other relevant updates in the deployment guide.

• Added a config changes that prevents some overflow of calls to the cloud.

2019.08.01.1929m

August 8, 2019

• Fixed two issues:

  • Packet capture from the web UI was failing to start successfully but no error message appeared.

  • Packet capture wouldn't run because Ubuntu URLs were blocked. (With this fix, no URL changes are required on your firewall.)

2019.07.12.1917m

July 25, 2019

• Removed cascades information from the Call Status card in the node web interface until better metrics are available.

• Added OS version to the Node Details card in the node web interface.

• Redesigned the user interface for the Troubleshooting page on the node web interface. (See the deployment guide for more information.)

• Added connectivity checks using ping, traceroute, and NTP verification in the node web interface. (See the deployment guide for more information.)

• Improved resolution and framerate choice for presentation streams.

• Fixed an issue where too much bandwidth was sometimes sent to switched participants.

• Fixed an issue where no unmute option was available for some participant types when they were muted by the host.

• Improved the pacing of media for transcoded presentations.

2019.06.13.1907m.7

July 12, 2019

• Fixed an issue that sometimes caused video resolution to drop even when no packets were lost and latency was low.

• Fixed an issue where split audio sometimes occurred when participants were muted by the host and then unmuted.

2019.06.13.1907m.3

June 20, 2019

• Fixed an issue where the presentation sharing state was incorrect if an endpoint tried to share while on the lobby screen.

• Added an enhancement to speed up the start of presentation sharing when transcoded.

2019.06.13.1907m.1

June 14, 2019

• Fixed an issue where some Video Mesh nodes were not automatically rebooting after an upgrade, which disabled the node's troubleshooting features and led to missing information on the overview page.

• Added a requirement that node hostnames cannot contain an underscore (_) character.

• Fixed an issue where packet loss resilience sometimes did not work for the first few minutes of a meeting.

• Fixed an issue with media resilience that sometimes caused the bandwidth in use to significantly exceed the negotiated bandwidth for a brief period of time.

2019.05.20.1892m1

May 24, 2019

• Added new serviceability features to the Video Mesh node web interface (packet capture generation, log generation, and overview page enhancements). For more information about these features, see the Manage Webex Video Mesh chapter in the deployment guide at https://www.cisco.com/go/video-mesh.

• Added new alarm as part of the upcoming migration to the Amazon elastic container registry: "The Video Mesh Node was not able to download the required software from the Cisco cloud provider. The problem can happen because of multiple issues that are related to the network. Check your network connectivity to the public network and check your DNS settings. This can also happen because of changes to the firewall that is present between Video Mesh nodes and the internet."

  Video Mesh nodes will continue to upgrade, but you should take appropriate action to ensure that Video Mesh nodes can access the URL. For more information, see the Announcements tab.

• Fixed an issue where Skype for Business meetings incorrectly showed "l2sip-UA" as the meeting title and participant name.

2019.04.29.1873m.4

May 13, 2019

• Fixed an issue that caused content sharing to sometimes not be available when using SIP dial-out.

• Fixed an issue that caused cascades to sometimes not be recreated after temporary network issues, which led to split meetings.

• Fixed an issue that caused content share to fail in some scenarios.

2019.04.29.1873m

April 30, 2019

• No release notes for this maintenance upgrade.

2019.04.18.1869m.1

April 26, 2019

• Fixed an issue that caused wireless share from Webex Teams for Windows to not work in some cases.

2019.03.22.1829m.2

April 2, 2019

• Fixed an issue that sometimes caused UDP bandwidth tests to fail.

• Fixed an issue where NTP alarms on Control Hub didn't get removed once a faulty NTP server started functioning.

2019.03.19.1826m

March 22, 2019

• To make any configuration changes on a registered node, you must now put the node in maintenance mode first.

• The overview status page reports the connectivity check result for the Amazon container registry (ECR).

• Fixed an issue where there was a delay on some clients when switching active speakers and corrupted video when there was packet loss.

• Fixed CSCvo93454—One Way Video when Immersive System joins Webex.

• Fixed CSCvo87069—Video Mesh SIP Trusted Sources not Populating

2019.02.14.1788m.1

February 21, 2019

• Fixed an issue where three-screen endpoints were not being remotely muted by the Webex host.

• Fixed an issue where muting and unmuting sometimes didn't work for SIP endpoints.

• Video Mesh nodes now attempt to access a new URL for testing access to the Amazon-hosted container registry (https://615440818562.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/).

• Added new alarms that are generated on the Video Mesh nodes and are displayed in Control Hub when DNS query response time exceeds 1.5s in these scenarios:

  • When DNS server query time is longer than 1.5s: “DNS server <x>’s query response time of <number> ms exceeeds the maximum response time of 1500 ms.”

  • Alarm text for when DNS server query time is longer than 1.5s while resolving an NTP server: “While resolving <ntp-server>; DNS server(s) <x>’s query response time of <number> ms exceeeded the maximum response time of 1500 ms.”

2019.02.12.1786m

February 15, 2019

• This version is the candidate release for the TLS SIP trunk and transparent inspecting/non-inspecting proxy support for Video Mesh. For more information, see the deployment guide at https://www.cisco.com/go/video-mesh.

• Fixed CSCvo26600—Token validator doesn't get token validation key if initial CI request fails

2019.01.29.1773m

February 6, 2019

• This version is the candidate release for the dual network interface feature. For more information, see the deployment guide at https://www.cisco.com/go/video-mesh.

• Added new checks to periodically verify the validity of NTP servers that are configured on the Video Mesh nodes. Invalid NTP server warning messages are displayed on the Video Mesh admin interface on login and as alarms in Control Hub.

2019.01.14.1764m.1

January 18, 2019

• Fixed an issue where video was only transmitted one way during a meeting and some devices or clients couldn't see the video stream.

2018.10.04.1692m

October 5, 2018

• No release notes for this maintenance upgrade.

November 2024

End of Support for Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) and Multiplex (MUX)

Video Mesh will no longer support the TelePresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) and Multiplex (MUX) used for CTS, TX, and IX devices in compliance with Webex deprecating the TIP/MUX protocol.

February 2024

• The Video Mesh platform is now integrated with the ThousandEyes Enterprise agent, enabling you to perform end-to-end monitoring across your hybrid digital ecosystem. This integration equips you with a wide array of network monitoring tests. Issues anywhere in your network infrastructure can be diagnosed with greater precision, improving the efficiency of your deployment.

  For more information on enabling ThousandEyes for your organization and configuring tests, see ThousandEyes Integration with Video Mesh.

• In accordance with the previous announcement regarding Container registry migration to Amazon ECR, we expect to complete the migration by mid-March, 2024. Kindly ensure connectivity to ECR by allowing the URL, "*dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com" in your application firewalls and proxies.

December 2023

Container registry migration from Docker Hub to Amazon ECR

Video mesh container registry that hosts images will be changed from Docker Hub to Amazon ECR. This migration is scheduled to take place in February 2024. We kindly request customers to ensure connectivity to ECR by allowing the URL, "*.amazonaws.com" in their application firewalls and proxies. This step is necessary to prevent any potential issues during upgrades.

August 2023

We've improved versatiltity and functionality of Video Mesh node APIs by adding a whole host of new APIs with varying functions. Admins can now choose between 3 categories of APIs that can aid them in different stages of node deployment. They are as follows:

• VMN Administration APIs

• VMN Network APIs

• VMN Server Certificate APIs

July 2023

Webhooks for Video Mesh Alerts

Video Mesh now supports alerts through Webhooks, enabling organization admins to monitor certain aspects of their deployments effortlessly. They can choose to be notified of events like call overflows and call redirects, minimizing the need to log in to Control Hub for monitoring their deployment.

In this phase, the following event types can be monitored through webhooks:

• Cluster Call Redirects – Calls redirected from a particular cluster.
• Org Call Overflows – Total call overflows to cloud for an organization.

Video Mesh Node APIs

We have introduced a set of APIs that will help organization admins create, update, download, and delete certificates related to Video Mesh Nodes. See Video Mesh Node APIs for more information.

June 2023

We've refined the graphs and charts of the Analytics dashboard to augment the Client Type Inclusion feature.

• You can see cluster-specific data in the Resources tab.

  Select a cluster in any of the donut graphs or charts and then click Apply. This action also filters the data for all other graphs, so you only see the data that's relevant for your selected cluster.

• We've added two new graphs to the Resources tab. They are Total call joins by endpoint type and Total call joins by endpoint type trend. You can select clusters and specific endpoint types, to show only the information you need.

• On the Engagement tab, we've grouped the Call legs by endpoint type graph into the following types:

  • SIP devices
  • Webex App desktop
  • Webex App mobile
  • Webex App VDI
  • Webex devices

May 2023

Web client support

Calls made through web client can now land on Video Mesh nodes, providing your organization with greater versatility in the types of calls supported.

March 2023

New reachability test and improved monitoring tool

We've added a reachability test to the existing set of monitoring tests. The reachability test runs with the media health monitoring tests, both periodically and on-demand. We've also improved the monitoring tool to give more detail in the test results, and updated the overview page to provide simpler, more intuitive access to detailed information.

We've changed the UI path to reach the Video Mesh monitoring tool. You can find the new Video Mesh tab at Troubleshooting > Video Mesh instead of Troubleshooting > Status > Video Mesh as before.

The monitoring tool overview page groups the tests into Signaling, Cascade, and Reachability, helping you to fine-tune your troubleshooting process.

February 2023

Video Mesh developer APIs for troubleshooting & integration with third-party monitoring systems

• In this phase of the Video Mesh Developer APIs, we have introduced enhancements that enable organization admins to take complete control of troubleshooting their Video Mesh Deployments.
• Admins can now trigger various On Demand Troubleshooting tests such as Network, Media Health Monitor and Reachability Tests from the Developer Portal. They can also view detailed results of the tests they triggered, helping them gain deeper insights into the health of their deployment.

November 2022

Cluster renaming in Control Hub

You can now edit the names of your Video Mesh clusters in Control Hub. We've also added Unicode support to the cluster names.

September 2022

Video Mesh Developer APIs

The Video Mesh Developer APIs provide a powerful and flexible way for organization admins to retrieve detailed metrics for monitoring and insightful analytics data of their Video Mesh deployments through the Webex Developer Portal. They can seamlessly integrate their existing monitoring applications with these APIs and automate monitoring of their Video Mesh clusters and nodes. The APIs are available at https://developer.webex.com/docs/api/v1/video-mesh. A sample client is available at https://github.com/CiscoDevNet/video-mesh-api-client.

July 2022

Media Health Monitoring tool change

We have changed the frequency of periodic cluster-wide, cluster-specific, or node-specific tests. These tests ran hourly in previous releases. They now run every 6 hours.

April 2022

Keep your media on Video Mesh for all external Webex meetings

In previous releases, you controlled the use of Video Mesh for meetings only for your internal sites. For meetings that are hosted on external Webex sites, those sites controlled if Video Mesh could cascade to Webex. If an external site didn't allow Video Mesh cascades, your media always used the Webex cloud nodes.

With the Prefer Video Mesh for All External Webex Meetings setting, if your Webex site has available Video Mesh nodes, your media runs through those nodes for meetings on external sites. For details, see https://help.webex.com/en-us/article/nzvixgk/Keep-your-media-on-Video-Mesh-for-all-external-Webex-meetings.

January 2022

Port updates

For an upcoming release in February 2022, Video Mesh requires opening the following port range for Media Cloud Cascades:

These ports are in addition to the existing port 5004. Open the UDP 50,000–53,000 port range in your firewall configuration. You'll see service disruptions if these ports aren't open when the upcoming release goes out.

As listed in Network Requirements for Webex Services, the Expressway already uses this port range for the Webex cloud. So, most deployments don't require any updates to support this new requirement for Video Mesh. But, in deployments with more stringent firewall rules, update your firewall configuration to open these ports for Video Mesh before the February release.

October 2021

Globally Distributed Media

Video Mesh now uses globally distributed media (GDM) capabilities of Webex to achieve better media routing. To achieve optimal connectivity, Webex selects the nearest cloud media node to your enterprise when performing Video Mesh cascades to Webex. Traffic then passes through the Webex backbone to the Webex microservices for the meeting. This routing minimizes latency and keeps most of the traffic on the Webex backbone and off the internet.

August 13, 2021

Private Meetings

The Private Meeting feature enhances the security of your meeting by terminating the media on your premises. When you schedule a private meeting, the media always terminates on the Video Mesh nodes inside your corporate network with no cloud cascade. Unlike normal meetings, if the local nodes are full, the media does not cascade to the Webex cloud.

All participants in a private meeting must belong to your organization. They can join using the Webex App or an authenticated video system. Participants with VPN or MRA access to your network can join a private meeting. But nobody can join a private meeting from outside your network.

See the Private Meetings section in the deployment guide at https://www.cisco.com/go/video-mesh and the Schedule a Webex Private Meeting article.

February 9, 2021

Access Nodes from Control Hub for Full Administrators

We enhanced Control Hub to enable Full Administrators of your Webex organization to access Video Mesh nodes from Control Hub.

Only a Full Administrator for your Webex organization can use this feature. Other administrators, including Partner and External Full Administrators, don't have the Go To Node option for the Video Mesh resources.

See the Access Overview of Webex Video Mesh Node From Web Interface section in the deployment guide at https://www.cisco.com/go/video-mesh.

August 26, 2020

DNS Caching

If DNS responses to your Video Mesh nodes regularly take more than 750 ms, you can enable DNS caching. With DNS caching on, the node caches DNS responses locally. Local caching makes requests less likely to cause connectivity alarms, call drops, or call quality issues. DNS caching can also reduce the load on your DNS infrastructure.

DNS caching is currently disabled by default. To turn it on, see the Enable or Disable DNS Caching section in the deployment guide at https://www.cisco.com/go/video-mesh.

Webex Events Support

Webex Video Mesh now supports Webex Events.

August 7, 2020

Short Video Address Format for Webex Meetings

On WBS39.9 and later sites, users can join meetings using the shorter <meeting_number>@webex.com video address format (instead of <meeting_number>@<site_name>.webex.com). Video Mesh now supports this shorter address format.

The deployment guide at https://www.cisco.com/go/video-mesh has instructions on handling the shorter format when setting up a Video Mesh deployment.

To use the short video address format with an existing Video Mesh deployment, add a route or dial pattern to handle the format. For more details, see the appropriate task that includes "short video address" in the guide, depending on how you configured your call control environment:

• Configure Unified CM Secure TLS SIP Traffic Routing for Webex Video Mesh

• Configure Unified CM TCP SIP Traffic Routing for Webex Video Mesh

• Configure Expressway TCP SIP Traffic Routing for Video Mesh

By default, meeting invitations currently still use the longer format. To change the format for your Webex site, see Display the Short Video Address Format for Webex Meetings and Events.

July 9, 2020

New Network Interface MTU Configuration Settings in the Video Mesh Node Web Interface

You can now manually set the maximum transmission unit (MTU) size on the internal network interface and the MTU on the external network interface, if enabled.

All Webex Video Mesh nodes have Path MTU (PMTU) discovery that is enabled by default. With PMTU, the node can detect MTU issues and adjust the MTU size automatically. When PMTU fails because of firewall or network issues, the node can have connectivity issues to the cloud because packets larger than the MTU drop. Manually setting a lower MTU size can fix this issue.

You can find the manual MTU settings on the network settings page Advanced tab in the Webex Video Mesh Node web interface. For more information, see the deployment guide at https://www.cisco.com/go/video-mesh.

June 26, 2020

New VMNLite Deployment Option

Deployments of mainly Webex Teams and cloud-registered endpoints use more switching and fewer transcoding resources than the standard configuration provides. Deploying more, smaller virtual machines on the host optimizes resources for this scenario.

For this reason, we’re introducing a new "VMNLite" option for deploying multiple Webex Video Mesh Nodes to your host server running VMware ESXI or vCenter. VMNLite requires the following specifications for each virtual machine:

• 23 vCPUs for Video Mesh Node

• 20-GB main memory

• 80-GB local hard disk space

With these specifications, you can deploy (or replace a singe existing virtual machine with) multiple instances, depending on the hardware:

Our testing shows a 50% improvement in switched call performance with 3 VMNLite nodes on a single CMS1000 compared to deploying a single virtual machine.

As with the standard configuration, you can't have coresidency with other services on VMNLite virtual machines.

For more information, see the deployment guide at https://www.cisco.com/go/video-mesh. For steps to replace your standard configuration with VMNLite, see the Manage and Troubleshoot Webex Video Mesh chapter.

June 9, 2020

New Weekly Automatic Software Upgrade Option for Video Mesh Clusters

You can now schedule automatic software upgrades on your Video Mesh clusters to happen on a weekly basis instead of daily (the default). You can postpone an upgrade one time. If you set a weekly schedule, postponing means that the upgrade occurs during the following week's upgrade window.

You can set the upgrade schedule while registering a new cluster, or modify the schedule of an existing cluster. For more information, see the Video Mesh documentation at https://www.cisco.com/go/video-mesh.

April 24, 2020

External Network Interface, Routing Rules, Container Network options in the Video Mesh Node Web Interface

The Video Mesh web interface contains more new features to make handling network changes easier. You can enable the external interface in a dual network interface (NIC) deployment from the web interface. You can then fine tune the routing for Video Mesh nodes by adding user-defined route rules for external and internal interfaces. And you can change the container bridge IP address and subnet.

For more information about how to access the updates to the web interface, see the Manage and Troubleshoot Webex Video Mesh chapter in the deployment guide at https://www.cisco.com/go/video-mesh.

March 20, 2020

Cisco Webex Teams EMEAR Data Residency Support

Organizations in the Cisco Webex Teams European data residency region. can now use Video Mesh. This support includes both newly created phase 2 EMEAR organizations and existing phase 1 EMEAR organizations.

For more information, see Data Residency in Cisco Webex Teams.

September 18, 2018

Quality of Service (QoS) Enhancements for Video Mesh

Video Mesh nodes now conform to recommended quality of service (QoS) best practices by enabling port ranges that allow you to differentiate audio and video streams in all flows to and from the Video Mesh nodes. This change will let you create QoS policies and effectively remark traffic to and from the Video Mesh Nodes.

Accompanying these port changes are QoS changes. Video Mesh nodes automatically mark media traffic from SIP registered endpoints (on-premises Unified CM or VCS Expressway registered) for both audio (EF) and video (AF41) separately with appropriate class of service and use well-known port ranges for specific media types.

The source traffic from the on-premises registered endpoints is always determined by the configuration on the call control (Unified CM or VCS Expressway).

For more information, see the QoS table at Ports and Protocols Used by Webex Video Mesh and the steps to enable or disable QoS in the Video Mesh Deployment Task Flow in the Deployment Guide for Cisco Webex Video Mesh ( https://www.cisco.com/go/video-mesh).

February 12, 2018

Multistreaming Support for All Participants in Cisco Spark and Cisco WebEx Meetings

If you host meetings on local hybrid media nodes through Cisco Spark Hybrid Media Service, you can take advantage of features included in multistreaming support. Multistream provides better bandwidth utilization on average, particularly for the cascade link between the Hybrid Media Service nodes and the Cisco Spark public cloud media nodes.

For more information, see Multistreaming Support for All Participants in Cisco Spark and Cisco WebEx Meetings.

January 5, 2018

Support for Cisco WebEx and Cisco Spark Meetings, Port Changes, and OVA Update

Cisco Spark Hybrid Media Service now supports on-premises SIP registered endpoints joining Cisco WebEx meetings and Cisco Spark meetings. The service also includes new usage and adoption reports in Control Hub. You must make sure your WebEx site is on the Cisco WebEx video platform version 2.0 to take full advantage of Hybrid Media Service. (You can verify that your WebEx site is on video platform version 2.0 if it has the Media Resource Type list available in the Cloud Collaboration Meeting Room site options.)

Port Changes

• The Hybrid Media Service now requires a new destination port (5006).

• TCP/UDP Port 33434 is no longer supported by the service.

For a full list, see " Ports and Protocols Used by Hybrid Media Service" in the Deployment Guide for Cisco Spark Hybrid Media Service.

OVA Update

The service requires you to download and install the latest OVA update on your Hybrid Media Nodes. To download the latest OVA, from the customer view in https://admin.ciscospark.com, go to Services > Hybrid Media > Set Up > Settings.

Upgrade each Hybrid Media Node in your cluster by doing the following steps:

1. Move the node to maintenance mode. See Move a Hybrid Service Node in to Maintenance Mode.

2. Deregister the node. See " Deregister Hybrid Media Node" in the Deployment Guide for Cisco Spark Hybrid Media Service.

3. Delete the Hybrid Media Node VM from the VMware vSphere client or from vCenter.

4. Install the new Hybrid Media Service OVA and software, set the newtork configuration, and reregister the Hybrid Media Node to the Cisco Collaboration Cloud. See " Deploy Hybrid Media Service" in the Deployment Guide for Cisco Spark Hybrid Media Service.

5. Move the node out of maintenance mode. See Move a Hybrid Service Node in to Maintenance Mode.

To read about all the feature changes, new deployment steps, and guidance for preparing the WebEx site, see the Deployment Guide for Cisco Spark Hybrid Media Service at https://www.cisco.com/go/hybrid-services-media. The New and Changed Information section of the guide links to updated sections.