Thank you sir.
Original Message:
Sent: 02-06-2024 18:19
From: Nir Galpaz
Subject: 8x8 Geo Routing
Dear Ryan,
I appreciate your post. However, the Geo routing mechanism should not have any significant impact within the United States. Nevertheless, I would like to share my contact details with you privately to ensure that your company can work effectively with the 8x8 solution.
Best regards,
Nir
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Nir Galpaz
8x8 Vice President, Technical Services & Support
Original Message:
Sent: 02-05-2024 14:07
From: Ryan Anderson
Subject: 8x8 Geo Routing
Hello Nir,
I too have had many issues related to the 8x8 Geo routing behavior. We have phones on a multi-site pbx that have park buttons lose calls, park buttons with delayed response, dropped calls, paging ATA's stop working/lock up or are delayed... Turns out, some the devices having issues are pinging off East Coast Data centers and using East Coast resources (SBC's, etc) when the PBX is stood up in the Santa Clara data center. So there is a fragmentation of devices because of the geo issues. Under DNS review, we are using 8x8's GTM servers they recommend! Turns out, under our own research, one of them is in the West Coast (san jose) and one in the East (Virginia)? So if the recommendation is to use "localized DNS servers" why would 8x8 itself provide DNS servers geographically fragmented & separated? We are now having to go back through all sites and remove the East Coast 8x8 GTM server IP. As Jonny mentioned, we have NO issues with ALL other hosted pbx/cloud services..
I highly recommend you put this at the top of list for the developers in 24.
This is off 8x8's website..they don't say one is West or East. But if you look them up in iplocation.net, you can see they are.
- 8.28.0.9 is out of Virginia
- 192.84.18.11 is out of San Jose
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Ryan Anderson
Original Message:
Sent: 12-05-2023 13:50
From: Nir Galpaz
Subject: 8x8 Geo Routing
Dear Jonny and Paul
I would like to express my gratitude for your response and for your valuable contributions to this forum.
After careful consideration, we have identified several benefits and drawbacks of implementing Geo routing in an 8x8 format.
We are committed to continuously reviewing and adjusting our technology as necessary.
I propose that we further examine the specifics of each case through our support cases.
Original Message:
Sent: 12-05-2023 02:44
From: Jonny Marlborough
Subject: 8x8 Geo Routing
No, nothing has changed. The 8x8 support approach to everything is to have us prove that issues aren't caused by the network, and we've even had support cases where agents insist that the 8x8 Work client apps need to use DNS servers located in-region which is impossible to control when people work wherever they are able to, and also contradicts the information in this thread.
8x8 is the only application we support that consistently has issues with geolocation. It's a problem that is 'fixing' itself as people move to MS Teams for calling but 8x8 don't seem interested in making any improvements in this area.
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Jonny Marlborough
Original Message:
Sent: 12-04-2023 12:38
From: Phil Casson
Subject: 8x8 Geo Routing
Hi Jonny
Did you ever get a satisfactory resolution to this? We are having the same problem. UK phones are registering in the US causing delay in the speech path.
8x8 solution is to hard code the UK DNS servers for the phones. Not ideal when they are on a corporate network with shared resources..
Thanks
Phil
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Phil Casson
Original Message:
Sent: 12-29-2022 04:41
From: Jonny Marlborough
Subject: 8x8 Geo Routing
Hi Paul,
Absent any sort of public feature request forum I am replying here as it seems the most relevant place, please feel free to move the reply to a more appropriate place if one exists.
Firstly I would like to say that 8x8 geo routing, or the failure to accurately geo route, is the single most common cause of issues across our customer base of 500+ seats. We have no issues with any other cloud services - Office 365, Google Workspace, Zoom etc. all correctly connect to the data centres most relevant to where the user is currently located. I believe that 8x8s approach of directing telephone handsets to regional datacentres based on where 8x8 believe the DNS server making the request is located is fundamentally flawed in the era of anycast DNS, and the issues it causes can never really be fixed if you persist with this approach. In your post above you recommend using local DNS servers even down to picking the correct coast in the United States. As an example, Verizon's DNS is now anycast, so there are no local DNS servers. My understanding of how other services geolocate is to look at where the client is located, not where the client's DNS requests came from, which is why they seem to work without the issues we see from 8x8.
It's probably worth taking a step back here and understanding that we are talking about physical handsets - people don't move these around much, they are even less likely to move the handsets distances far enough where the latency to the region they were using it in originally becomes a problem. We already build sites as part of the configuration of tenants, and we assign users to sites. Why are you bothering to geo locate handsets? - just assign them to the regional data centres relevant to the physical location of the site we have assigned people to. I am completely comfortable with the concept of having to move a user to a new site if they move country if the trade-off is that London desk phones stop trying to use 8x8 services hosted in Singapore. For softphone apps you have already solved the geo routing problem, and those are the only things likely to move frequently and without IT being involved.
As a stop-gap measure, could your own GTM start to resolve the services required for many phones to work? I reset a Polycom Trio 8800 the other day and out of the box it couldn't connect to time.windows.com which meant it couldn't verify the validity of the SSL certificate needed to connect to your own provisioning service. You also don't resolve the polycom.com address required to get software updates onto the phone, so they get stuck on (very) old versions.
The way that desk phones function at the moment on your platform feels like nobody has tried to use them, and your support team are frequently hostile to the idea that any of these problems are 8x8s to solve.
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Jonny Marlborough
Original Message:
Sent: 10-13-2021 05:14
From: Paul Chase
Subject: 8x8 Geo Routing
Geo Routing Explained
Geo routing is accomplished by the following method. The device does a DNS lookup of 8x8's FQDN. 8x8's GTM (Global Traffic Manager) Servers use the Public IP address of the DNS Server that did the actual lookup to identify the region that this device should use.
Important factors for Geo Routing
The DNS server's public IP MUST belong to the region the device is in.
For example, the device is located in Cleveland, OH (USA) the DNS Server used for the lookup should reside on the "east coast". If the DNS Server is in Ohio, proper Geolocation is achieved, BUT if is located in Utah the geo routing will be routed improperly to the west coast.
The device owners should be aware of SDWAN, VPN, MPLS, Private Links that could create improper routing.
Example User is In Cleveland Ohio, using workD Softphone on a laptop. When their Software VPN is disconnected they are geo routed to East Coast due to using the user's local internet and local DNS Server. But if they connect their VPN which is located in San Jose, CA the DNS Server is Updated to use the San Jose, CA DNS Server, and possibly internet fom Ca which eventually forwards to a West Coast IP. Geo Routing is incorrect. EVEN IF Split Tunneling is used on the VPN as it is all about the DNS Server's IP address
When Using a Privately controlled DNS Server the DNS Server's Public IP must be properly identified for the region.
Example: In extreme conditions, the DNS Server is located in India with a Public IP of 20.20.20.20 but for some reason that IP is tagged as being in China, this would cause improper Geo Routing.
Corrective Actions
To correct improper Geolocation, the following steps are recommended
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Paul Chase
8x8 Network Engineer (Pre-Sales and Deployment)
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