HDX 7000 MPplus 4 Port licence - 5 Participant Call

[Anonymous]

Hello,

What we were attempting to do is perform a IP video conference to 4 other offices all with Polycom devices across our internal network. Including ourselves this would be 5 participants.

Due to the limitation of our Polycom HDX 7000 to 4 participants we had one party call another first so we could piggy back both of together as the 4th participant.

The video conference reservation on our network is Mbps. I called each single party at Kbps and the combined 4th party as Kbps (384*3=1152)+512)+20%=1996.8Kbps)

Although the initial setup looked and appeared to work OK after about 10 minutes the ‘piggy backed’ session disconnected. I redial 4 or 5 times but each time it disconnected after a short period. When I called each of the 'combined' sites individually the call was stable and no disconnection occurred.

Anyway, this was a long explanation for a simple question:

Will this ever work?

[Anonymous]

Hello, 

The idea is called cascading video conference. The HDX systems were meant to do this. How many units in the call have MP keys installed. If you only have just the one then the other would be using the MP trial and would drop the call after being the call for about the time stated. Also what software version are your running on the HDX systems?

[Polycom_Video_E]

Let me expand on Russell's response.

Any system that has more than 2 participants will need the MP (Multipoint) license to accomplish what you are attempting.  When you add the system which has already dialed another EP (endpoint) then that EP is hosting 2 other sites (the system it originally dialed plus the EP setting up the MP) for a total of 3, which requires the MP license.

The HDX Admin Guide has a good description of this and the limitations of the configuration. 

If this will be a configuration that you will be doing on a regular basis I would suggest looking at the RealPresence Group 700 (Group Series) as your host site as it can host 8 SD connections (7 remote + itself).  Or you can look at one of the Polycom MCUs like the RealPresence Platform (Multipoint options).