As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Overview of the G.722 Wideband Codec

What sounds twice as good as G.711? G.722 of course! Ok, maybe the math doesn't quite work out there, but take a look at the frequency range differences:

G.711: 300 Hz to 3.4 kHz
G.722: 200 Hz to 7 kHz

The wider frequency response of G.722 and the proprietary "Wideband" codec have more than double the width of G.711. As a result, fidelity is much better, and music even sounds good. It doesn't meet the audiophile's strict standards for a home theatre, but from a phone handset or headset, the difference is striking.  Keep in mind that a wideband headset or handset is required to realize the audio performance benefits of G.722.  As an added benefit, G.722 consumes the same amount of bandwidth (64 kb/s) as G.711. 

The Downside

Not all devices and features support G.722. As such, be careful where G.722 is enabled within your enterprise. For example, problems with call park and ad hoc conferences arise when G.722 is enabled. When you use the enterprise parameter with features such as ad hoc conferencing and call park, change the setting to "Disabled" and update the device pools for the phones.

Enabling G.722 Across the Cluster

By default, the cluster is enabled to advertise G.722 as an available codec if both phones support the codec.

Codec negotiation involves two steps. First, the phone must advertise the supported codec(s) to Cisco Unified Communications Manager (not all phones support the same set of codecs). Second, when Cisco Unified Communications Manager gets the list of supported codecs from all phones that are involved in the call attempt, it chooses a commonly supported codec based on various factors, including the region pair setting.

The following phones support G.722 as either SCCP or SIP devices:
  • Cisco Unified IP Phone 7971G-GE
  • Cisco Unified IP Phone 7970G
  • Cisco Unified IP Phone 7961G-GE  
  • Cisco Unified IP Phone 7961G
  • Cisco Unified IP Phone 7941G-GE  
  • Cisco Unified IP Phone 7941G 
Enterprise Settings

The default for the Advertise G.722 Codec enterprise parameter enables G.722 on all phones in the cluster. The default value of the phone configuration Advertise G.722 Codec Product-Specific parameter uses the value that the enterprise parameter setting specifies. 

If the Advertise G.722 Codec enterprise parameter is set to Enabled, the administrator can override this by using the G.722 Codec Enabled service parameter. This service parameter determines whether Cisco Unified Communications Manager supports G.722 negotiation for none, some, or all devices. Valid values specify "Enabled for All Devices" (support G.722 for all devices), "Enabled for All Devices Except Recording-Enabled Devices" (support G.722 for all devices except those that have call recording enabled), or "Disabled" (do not support G.722 codec).
 
More detail found here.

2 comments:

  1. I just ran into an issue where we tried to do a supervised transfer that failed. Call came in to secretary from the outside, she hit transfer to her boss's phone, he answered and she told him there was someone on the line for him, and when she hung up the call dropped.

    Before she hung up for the transfer to go through, I checked on her boss's phone and noticed the connection between boss and secretary was using G722.

    I disabled G722 via the service parameter, and it worked fine.

    Can you explain to me what was going on with this? Probably the gateway didn't support G722?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joe,

    See the thread here: https://supportforums.cisco.com/message/3301673

    Without seeing your configs and topology, it's difficult to nail this down with certainty, but it usually boils down to the PSTN not supporting G.722. When you disabled G.722, everything end-to-end used G.711. If disabling G.722 allowed the transfer to work, I'd expect either a lack or exhaustion of transcoding services from G.722 to G.711 somewhere.

    ReplyDelete