Topic Last Modified: 2010-09-02

If you are setting up your infrastructure to support automatic client location detection, you first need to decide which network elements you are going to use to correlate to locations. In Microsoft Lync Server 2010 communications software, you can associate the following network elements with locations:

The network elements are listed in order of precedence. If a client can be located using for more than one network element, Lync Server 2010 will use the order of precedence to determine which mechanism to use. The following sections provide more details using each network element.

Wireless Access Point

When a client connects to the network wirelessly, the Location Request determines the location using the WAP that the client is connected to. If the client is roaming, this may not be the closest WAP. One method to accommodate this is to prepend the location (such as a room number) with “Near” or “Close” to signify that the location is not exact.

LLDP Ports and Switches

Link Layer Discovery Protocol-Media Endpoint Discover (LLDP-MED) allows the network to advertise the switch and port information to a compatible Communication Phone Edition client, which Location Information Server can then correlate to a location.

Lync Server only supports using LLDP-MED for determining locations for Microsoft Lync 2010 Phone Edition. If you plan on supporting other Lync Server clients, you will need to provide an alternative mechanism such as using the WAP or subnet.

Subnet

A subnet is a common mechanism, supported by all Lync Server clients, that is used to automatically detect client location. Before deciding to use subnets, you should use the following questions to help determine if the granularity of the subnet is fine enough to accurately locate a client:

  • Does the subnet cover multiple floors?

  • Does the subnet cover more than one building?

  • How many offices are included in a single subnet?

If the subnet covers too wide of an area, you may need to use another mechanism to locate clients.

MAC

In order to use a MAC address to locate a client, you must first deploy a third-party SNMP application. An SNMP application takes a MAC address from the Location Information Server and returns matching port and switch information. The Location Information Server then uses this information to query the published locations for a matching location. If you use this option, make sure that the port information is in synch between the SNMP application and the published locations.