Pexip Infinity v10 Release Notes

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Pexip Infinity v10 Release Notes
Pexip Infinity v10
                                        Release Notes
Contents
Introduction                                                                                                                               1
Upgrading to version 10                                                                                                                    2
New features and improvements in this release                                                                                              3
Issues fixed in v10                                                                                                                        4
Known limitations                                                                                                                          6

Introduction
This document contains the release notes for Pexip Infinity version 10, released on 30 July 2015.

Complete information about how to install and operate Pexip Infinity is available from the Pexip technical documentation website
at docs.pexip.com .

The website also contains comprehensive documentation on all aspects of deploying the Pexip Infinity platform. This includes how
to use the Infinity Connect client suite, and how to integrate Pexip Infinity with other third-party systems and call control solutions
including Microsoft Lync, Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco VCS and Polycom DMA.

Management Node host server sizing information
You must increase the size of the Management Node host server to 2 cores and 4 GB of RAM for any deployments with more than
10 Conferencing Nodes. We recommend increasing to 4 cores and 6 GB of RAM for any deployments with more than 30
Conferencing Nodes.

 © 2015 Pexip AS                                             Version 10.a July 2015                                          Page 1 of 8
Pexip Infinity v10 Release Notes                                                                Upgrading to version 10

Upgrading to version 10

Upgrading from version 4 or later to version 10
To upgrade Pexip Infinity software from v4 or later to v10:
1. Before upgrading, we recommend that you use your hypervisor's snapshot functionality to take a full VMware/Hyper-V snapshot
    of the Management Node. If upgrading from v8, due to incompatibilities resolved in v8.1, ensure that you take a non-quiescing
    snapshot. This snapshot will be required should you later need to downgrade, or if the upgrade fails. You may also want to take
    a snapshot of each Conferencing Node, although depending on the size and complexity of your deployment it may be easier to
    simply redeploy these from the Management Node in the unlikely event that this is required.
2. Reboot all Conferencing Nodes. There are two ways of doing this:
     o   Log in to the virtual hypervisor and reboot the machine using its processes.
     o   Connect to the Conferencing Node via SSH, login as admin, and issue the command sudo reboot.
3. Download the Pexip Infinity upgrade package for v10 from www.pexip.com/software-download.
4. From the Pexip Infinity Administrator interface, go to Utilities > Upgrade.
5. Select Choose File and browse to the location of the upgrade package.

6. Select Upgrade. There will be a short delay while the upgrade package is uploaded.
    After the upgrade package has been uploaded, you are presented with a confirmation page showing details of the existing
    software version and the upgrade version.
7. To proceed, select Upgrade.
   You are taken to the Upgrade status page, showing the current upgrade status of the Management Node and all Conferencing
    Nodes. This page automatically refreshes every 5 seconds.
8. When the upgrade completes, all systems will show a status of No upgrade in progress and have the new Installed version.
   If a Conferencing Node fails to upgrade, for example if it remains on a Waiting for calls to clear status, it should be rebooted.
    The upgrade process will then continue as expected.

If you are using VMware snapshots for backup purposes, we recommend that you delete those snapshots after approximately two
weeks, providing your upgraded system is operating as expected. This is because Virtual Machines, in general, should not run with
snapshots over time.

Upgrading from version 3 to version 10
To upgrade Pexip Infinity version 3 software to the latest version, you must first upgrade to version 6. To do this:
1. Download the Pexip Infinity v6 upgrade file (contact your authorized Pexip representative for the link to this file).
2. Follow the steps outlined above, but when asked to Choose File browse to the location of the v6 upgrade file.
3. Verify that the upgrade has completed successfully.
4. Download the Pexip Infinity v10 upgrade file.
5. Follow the steps outlined above, and when asked to Choose File browse to the location of the v10 upgrade file.

For more information
For full details on upgrading Pexip Infinity, see the Upgrading the Pexip Infinity platform .

 © 2015 Pexip AS                                              Version 10.a July 2015                                           Page 2 of 8
Pexip Infinity v10 Release Notes                                                         New features and improvements in this release

New features and improvements in this release
Feature                        Description

VMR provisioning from          Pexip Infinity Virtual Meeting Rooms can be bulk-provisioned from directory information contained in a
Active Directory / LDAP        Windows Active Directory LDAP server, or any other LDAP-accessible database.

                               This means, for example, that you can automatically provide a personal VMR for every employee in an
                               organization. Data such as employee names can be imported from the directory and used to generate a unique
                               name and alias for each VMR, following a pattern such as meet.@example.com. Other VMR
                               attributes such as PIN numbers can also be generated, depending upon how you configure your VMR template.

                               After the VMRs have been generated you can periodically re-run the provisioning process to resynchronize your
                               VMRs to cater for additions and removals to the directory.

Lync IVR gateway               Within on-prem Lync deployments a Virtual Reception can act as a "Lync IVR lobby" to route calls based on the
                               Lync Conference ID into any ad hoc or scheduled Lync multi-party conference.

                               This means that Lync users can schedule and use Lync conferences in the normal way. A Lync conference ID is
                               generated when an on-prem Lync deployment is configured with a dial-in access number. Non-Lync users
                               (H.323, SIP, Infinity Connect endpoints etc) can then dial a URI or IP address of the "Lync IVR lobby" and enter
                               that Lync conference ID to join the Lync conference from the video endpoint. Lync users and video endpoint
                               users can then see each other and present to each other.

Pexip StudioSound™             Pexip’s new StudioSound™ audio feature brings recording studio technology and quality to video, audio, and
                               web conferencing. It greatly improves the overall experience by making conferences and meetings sound better,
                               with improved intelligibility.

                               StudioSound™ is part of the standard Pexip Infinity feature set and is utilized automatically in all conferences.

Infinity Connect clients       Infinity Connect desktop clients for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, and Infinity Connect Mobile clients for
can register and receive       Android can register to Pexip Infinity Conferencing Nodes.
calls
                               This means that users who have registered their Infinity Connect client can be dialed in to a Pexip conference,
                               and can receiving incoming calls placed via the Pexip Distributed Gateway.

Infinity Connect               Further enhancements have been made to Infinity Connect clients. These include:
enhancements                     l   Ability to preview your own video (self view) and check camera and microphone settings before joining a
                                     call.
                                 l   New toolbar icons to start video, or to start audio-only when joining a call.
                                 l   Ability to send DTMF tones (via the keypad) to another participant.
                                 l   Host or Guest indication in the participant list.
                                 l   "Currently speaking" badge in the participant list.
                                 l   Each participant is shown as a single entry in the participant list, even if they are sending multiple media
                                     streams.
                                 l   Information about each participant is now available by clicking on their name in the participant list.
                                 l   Ability to stop sending a presentation to a participant is now available in all clients.
                                 l   Ability to send anonymous usage statistics to Pexip. (This helps us improve the operation of the Pexip
                                     Infinity platform based on real-life customer usage data.)

New audio-only indicator       Audio-only participants are now represented by an avatar on the left side of the video window. Whenever an
                               audio-only participant is speaking, their avatar slides out to show their name; the most recent video participant
                               to speak will remain in the main video window. You can use an external policy server to personalize the avatar for
                               individual participants, otherwise the avatar will be an icon of a telephone handset.

                               Note: You can no longer use themes to customize the audio avatar (although the audio_avatar.jpg file is still
                               included in a theme, it is not currently used). This functionality will be included in a future release.

© 2015 Pexip AS                                                     Version 10.a July 2015                                                    Page 3 of 8
Pexip Infinity v10 Release Notes                                                                                Issues fixed in v10

Feature                        Description

Separate RTMP streams          Pexip Infinity can stream the main video and presentation content channels separately over RTMP.
for video and
                               This means that when streaming a conference over RTMP — to streaming and recording services such as
presentation content
                               YouTube — viewers can simultaneously access the main video stream of the participants and a separate
                               presentation content stream.

Active speaker shown           When sending presentation content to a single-stream endpoint such as Skype or broadcasting via an RTMP
when receiving single-         stream (when not dialed out with dual streaming), Pexip Infinity sends the video stream of the active speaker in a
stream presentation            small window in the upper right corner of the presentation.

Send content with a            Pexip Infinity can now send presentation content to Lync Room Systems (SMART and Crestron) in main video
video thumbnail to Lync        with the active speaker as a thumbnail. This allows both content and main video to be seen whenever an LRS
Room Systems                   system connects directly to a Pexip VMR.

Improved status                When viewing the status of conference participants, Infinity Connect and Microsoft Lync clients are now shown
reporting for Infinity         as a single participant instance, regardless of whether they have active media streams or if they are presenting
Connect and Lync clients       content.

                               Each participant's status shows the individual media streams, and for completed conferences it may show
                               multiple instances of each stream type (for example if the participant had started presenting, stopped and then
                               started presenting again).

Reject calls via external      When responding to a service configuration request, an external policy server can instruct Pexip Infinity to
policy                         reject the call associated with that service request.

                               If the policy server does not return the service configuration data and it does not instruct Pexip Infinity to reject
                               the call, then Pexip Infinity will continue with its standard processing behavior (it will attempt to obtain the
                               relevant information from its own internal database).

Improved scalability for       Scalability improvements for WebRTC video handling in distributed conferences.
WebRTC calls

Login history                  You can view the 100 most recent attempts to log in to the Pexip Infinity Administrator interface.

Limited duration               As an alternative to generating a full diagnostic snapshot, you can specify the number of hours to include in a
snapshot                       limited duration snapshot.

Customizable Lync              The Lync contact list avatar that is displayed for contacts reached via the Pexip Distributed Gateway can be
contact list avatar for        customized. You can do this by modifying the presence_avatar_image.jpg file contained in the default theme.
gateway contacts

Issues fixed in v10

Pexip
Ref #     Limitation

4621      When automatically deploying a new Conferencing Node, the progress bar on the Deploying Conferencing Node page will no longer
          stop at 96% for successful deployments.

4619      When dialing out to an RTMP URL, if the target of that RTMP URL is a CNAME record in lower case, and the target A records are in
          upper case (or vice versa), the lookup will now succeed.

4578      You can now restore a backup taken via the Pexip Infinity Administrator interface even if, since the backup file was produced, any
          Conferencing Nodes have been added or removed, or the Management Node has been redeployed.

© 2015 Pexip AS                                                   Version 10.a July 2015                                                  Page 4 of 8
Pexip Infinity v10 Release Notes                                                                           Issues fixed in v10

Ref #   Limitation

4402    Conference Status no longer incorrectly reports the instant messaging count as 0, even when messages are exchanged in a
        conference.

4173    You can now change the name of a system location without any risk of a loss of service, and without having to reboot any
        Conferencing Nodes.

3665    The participant list displayed on both the Management Node and the Pexip Infinity Connect client now only shows a single
        participant instance for any Lync client connected when content is being shared.

2004    In very rare circumstances, a presentation that has been sent for a long period of time from a standards-based video endpoint may,
        at times, stall and thus prevent forwarding from one slide to another. If this happens the presentation image will now convert to
        grayscale. The presenter can then resolve this by disconnecting and re-connecting to the conference.

Microsoft
Ref #   Limitation

4303    Plain text messages sent to Lync 2013 iOS and Android clients will no longer trigger a 415 error code in response.

4018    Lync presence indications are now properly presented on Lync for iPad clients. (Note that avatars may not be presented correctly;
        this cannot be controlled.)

3689    If a RADVISION H.323 endpoint joins an AV-MCU conference through the Pexip Distributed Gateway, video will no longer be lost
        after a prolonged period of time.

3374    Locking and unlocking spotlight of endpoints connected into the Microsoft AV-MCU via the Pexip Distributed Gateway no longer
        intermittently results in participants seeing the audio indicator instead of video.

3157    Participant status of an AV-MCU no longer improperly reflects an old call ID within the Administrator and Support logs on the Pexip
        Management Node.

Cisco
Ref #   Limitation

4565    In a VMR conference, a presentation to a DX80 is no longer susceptible to failing after a few seconds.

4413    If an outbound call is initiated from Pexip to a VCS Expressway that does not inherently trust the remote Pexip node, and where the
        SIP TLS FQDN is configured on the Pexip Conferencing Node, the protocol is SIP TLS, and the endpoint registered to the VCS
        Expressway starts sharing content before someone else shares first, content will not be properly received by the Pexip Conferencing
        Node. This issue has been resolved in v10.

Polycom
Ref #   Limitation

4620    When using older Polycom CMA or RealPresence Desktop clients, G.719 audio no longer causes audio issues with low bandwidths
        (512k and lower).

© 2015 Pexip AS                                                Version 10.a July 2015                                               Page 5 of 8
Pexip Infinity v10 Release Notes                                                                                  Known limitations

Known limitations

Pexip
Ref #   Limitation

5117    Occasionally, an RTMP participant may be left as the only participant in a conference, and that participant cannot be disconnected
        by the administrator. This can occur if an invalid URI is used as the RTMP dual stream address when adding an RTMP participant.

5113    Occasionally, jpeg or PDF slide presentations may be slow to start. This can occur if the slides are high resolution, or when using a
        policy server to supply personalized audio avatars. A workaround is to use screen sharing instead and to use full motion presentation
        viewing.

5110    Pexip Infinity will not be able to initiate an audio/video WebRTC call with Chrome 46 (currently in beta). This will be resolved in a
        future release of Pexip Infinity.

5109    A VMR synchronization template pattern that contains unicode will cause the sync of that template to fail. (The substitution of a
        variable that contains unicode content does work as expected.)

5085    Output recorded in the support and administrator logs may not properly reflect connectivity failures to LDAP / Active Directory
        when used for VMR synchronization. Detailed information regarding the failure cause can be found in the developer logs.

5078    The Management Node may not properly create a backup file if the system includes themes that are in excess of 2.5 GB of hard disk
        storage. To resolve the issue you must delete the oversized themes via the Administrator interface.

5061    If an Infinity Connect client is presenting a slide, and then another Infinity Connect client starts presenting a slide (stealing the
        presentation), the Infinity Connect client that is now presenting does not see their own slide being presented in their own
        presentation control thumbnail.

5046    If an Infinity Connect Web App user calls a Virtual Reception and then enters the same Virtual Reception alias into the Extension field,
        rather than the alias of the required VMR, the Web App will sit in a continuous loop rather than present an error message as
        expected.

4980    The conference and participant history detail records do not store the "Streaming or recording device" indicator.

4971    A dual-streamed RTMP participant can only be added via the Infinity Connect clients. You cannot add a dual-streamed RTMP
        participant via the Administrator interface or management API.

4945    If an Infinity Connect participant is presenting, and another Infinity Connect participant starts and then quickly stops presenting,
        this can cause the initial presenter's screen to look like it is still presenting, but presentation is stopped on all participants.

4914    In some cases, in-band DTMF tones may not be detected if they are input too quickly. This is resolved through using out-of-band
        DTMF tones.

4899    In very rare and specific cases, the Pexip outbound RDP encoder may experience transmission failures when sending consecutive
        slides of a presentation that contains very detailed visual images or graphs.

4840    Some incoming unicode URIs may not be properly matched against configured Pexip Distributed Gateway rules, depending upon
        the resulting format of that URI after it has been encoded within Pexip Infinity.

4836    If an Infinity Connect participant joins as a control/presentation only participant, and then escalates to full audio and video
        capabilities on a Conferencing Node that is out of resources, the participant will be disconnected.

4793    If a VMR synchronization template pattern contains an incorrectly formatted filter expression it may render with unexpected
        results.

4665    Incoming audio is not properly recognized on an incoming SIP call from SPIRENT iOS clients.

© 2015 Pexip AS                                                  Version 10.a July 2015                                                   Page 6 of 8
Pexip Infinity v10 Release Notes                                                                               Known limitations

Ref #   Limitation

4399    If a Lync client is receiving w448p main video resolution and participant names are enabled, the participant name for one of the
        participants connected into the conference will display unnecessarily small.

4312    Occasionally, group chat messages may not be displayed to Infinity Connect Web App participants who are using Internet Explorer.

2010    If during a single conference a new presentation stream is started but fails to connect, the last frame from the previous presenter
        may be visible to the participants of the conference.

Cisco
Ref #   Limitation

4761    After upgrading to version 10, some MXPs may no longer be able to connect over TLS to Pexip Infinity, if the endpoint connects
        directly to a Conferencing Node (e.g. because it is registered to Infinity, or it using IP dialing). Please contact support@pexip.com if
        you experience this issue.

4142    If the presentation channel already active from an MXP is taken by another connected participant, the MXP may not properly
        receive presentation content.

Microsoft
Ref #   Limitation

5100    If a Conferencing Node being used as a gateway into a Lync AV-MCU conference is near processor capacity and another endpoint in
        the AV-MCU conference starts sending content, a participant may be inadvertently disconnected from the conference. To resolve
        this, the endpoint can dial back into the conference.

5040    If an Infinity Connect participant makes an audio-only call through the Pexip Distributed Gateway to a Lync client, the call connects
        as audio-only as expected. If that Lync client then escalates the call and connects to another Lync client as audio only, then escalates
        to video, the Infinity Connect participant may disconnect unexpectedly.

5020    Microsoft Lync or Skype for Business clients that connect into a Pexip VMR as audio-only may not be properly considered an audio-
        only call, but rather a video call that does not support video.

4926    Participants calling into Lync/Skype for Business through the Pexip Distributed Gateway may experience inconsistent call rejection
        messages if a Conferencing Node is placed into maintenance mode.

4812    In some instances, one of two messages sent to a VMR from two Lync clients not previously connected may not be properly
        retained by the VMR. To resolve, re-send the message.

4694    A presence subscription message from consumer Skype is not properly recognized as a Microsoft-specific message.

4465    Audio may fail to resume if a Skype client behind a NAT mutes its microphone for a prolonged period of time while connected to a
        Pexip VMR.

4382    Rarely, outbound calls made from Infinity to Lync clients registered to a Lync Edge server will fail. Re-attempting that same call
        should succeed without issue.

4373    Outbound video calls made from the Lync 2010 client for iOS may only connect using audio rather than automatically escalating to
        video as expected.

4358    If a Lync 2013 for Windows client joins a VMR as a video participant, pauses video, ends video, then resumes video, the main camera
        stream will not properly resume. This issue can be resolved by stopping and starting video again.

© 2015 Pexip AS                                                 Version 10.a July 2015                                                  Page 7 of 8
Pexip Infinity v10 Release Notes                                                                               Known limitations

Ref #   Limitation

4262    If a Lync participant in an AV-MCU multi-party conference is presenting while another device joins the AV-MCU conference via the
        Pexip Distributed Gateway, the Lync presenter will see a "Someone has joined and can't see what's being presented or shared"
        notification. However, the gateway participant will be able to see the presentation. The notification will disappear after
        approximately 15 seconds.

4210    Intermittent Distributed Gateway calls to the Lync AV-MCU will experience loss of video from AV-MCU when the remote client
        resumes a call previously placed on hold.

4195    Participants connected via the Pexip Distributed Gateway into the AV-MCU may not receive presentation content from Lync
        participants. This occurs if the Lync user has a screen resolution where the width is an odd number of pixels, such as a resolution of
        1437x758.

3744    Skype clients do not send DTMF tones to federated environments, therefore they cannot connect to PIN-protected Pexip Infinity
        conferences. The recommended workaround for conferences with Skype users is to use a semi-secure conference — no PINs for
        guests, and to use the conference locking feature with admittance control via the Infinity Connect Web App.

3719    If a standards-based endpoint transmits a dual stream presentation at a very low resolution, the transcoded presentation will be
        sent in native resolution to any connected Lync clients. This may create a sub-optimal experience depending on the PC screen
        resolution of the Lync end-user PC.

2497    If a Cisco VCS is used as call control between a Conferencing Node and a Lync 2013 FEP, only audio calls are possible. Lync FEP and
        Conferencing Nodes should be neighbored directly then audio and video calls will work as expected.

        The Lync 2013 client always uses VSR packets to negotiate the video mode even for RTVideo calls. However, Pexip Infinity assumes
        that Lync clients will always use video preference RTCP extensions to negotiate the RTVideo resolution and only looks for X-H264UC
        when processing VSRs.

Polycom
Ref #   Limitation

4684    An incoming H.239 presentation from an H.323 Polycom RealPresence endpoint may not be properly recognized if that call flows
        through a Sonus SBC.

3798    Starting and stopping a presentation many times may stop a Polycom HDX endpoint from sending the presentation stream.

VMWare
Ref #   Limitation

---     Disk access on ESXi 4.1 is typically considerably slower than on ESXi 5 and above. Tasks that require significant disk access, such as
        importing large conference configurations or writing many frequent log entries, may take over 5 times as long on ESXi 4.1 as
        compared to ESXi 5.1.

© 2015 Pexip AS                                                 Version 10.a July 2015                                                  Page 8 of 8
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