Overview of monitor ports for passive recording

Owned by Verba Support
Aug 19, 2015
4 min read

This topic describes the recommendations for configuring monitor ports.Internal calls - Verba can a record a call between two IP phones if signaling messages are monitored for at least one of the stations and the RTP media streams are monitored at least for at least one endpoint.

Incoming and outgoing calls - Verba can record an incoming or outgoing call if signaling messages for an IP phone are monitored and the RTP media streams are monitored for at least one endpoint. Verba is also record the IP trunk traffic directly, if the signaling is set to SIP.

Conference calls - Verba can record a conference call if all signaling messages for the participants are monitored and the RTP media streams are monitored for every endpoint, that participates in the conference.

The following scenarios are supported in the Verba system:

  • Internal call between monitored phones
  • Incoming and outgoing call between a monitored phone and a gateway
  • Internal call between a monitored and a not monitored phone
  • Incoming and outgoing call between a monitored gateway and a not monitored phone
  • Conference call among monitored phones

The above listed scenarios can be combined depending on your switching infrastructure. e.g. in some cases monitoring the PBX port cannot be done or the network topology does not allow monitoring all of the phones.

Internal call between monitored phones

Scenario description: Internal call between two IP phones (SCCP, SIP) when both phones are monitored on the same port.

Using this scenario, only those IP phones which have to be recorded are monitored. Incoming and outgoing calls (calls which go through a gateway) are also recorded.

Incoming and outgoing call between a monitored phone and a gateway

Scenario description: Incoming and outgoing call between an IP phone (SCCP, SIP) and a gateway (H.323, MGCP or SIP) when the IP phone is monitored.

Internal call between a monitored and not monitored phone

Scenario description: Internal call between two IP phones (SCCP, SIP) when one of the phones and the PBX are monitored on the same port.

With this scenario, you can record calls between a monitored and a not monitored IP phone, because monitoring one of the call endpoints will provide RTP media streams, and monitoring one of the IP phones will provide signaling messages for both endpoints.

Incoming and outgoing calls between a monitored IP phone and a not monitored gateway are also recorded.

Incoming and outgoing call between a monitored gateway and a not monitored phone

Scenario description: Incoming and outgoing call between an IP phone (SCCP, SIP) and a gateway (H.323, MGCP or SIP) when the gateway and the PBX are monitored on the same port.

With this scenario, you can record calls between a not monitored IP phone and monitored gateway, because monitoring one of the call endpoints will provide RTP media streams, and monitoring the PBX will provide signaling messages for the IP phone.

Internal calls between not  monitored IP phones are not recorded.

Conference call among monitored phones

Scenario description: Conference call among IP phones (SCCP, SIP), when all the phones are monitored on the same port.

With this scenario, you can record conference calls among monitored IP phones, because monitoring the call endpoints will provide RTP media streams and signaling messages for the IP phones. In a PBX environment, conference calls flow in a star topology, where the center of the star mixes the audio channels (a mixer can be the PBX or another media resource e.g. a gateway, if transcoding is necessary).

If one of the IP phones is not monitored, the audio stream of the conference for that device will not be recorded.

If a conference participant is connected through a gateway (whether it is monitored or not), the conference will be not recorded for that device.