Location Service

Learn how the Vocera system locates client devices and smartphones on the network.

Vocera Client Gateway maintains a registry of Vocera smartphones, mapping their MAC addresses to call signaling addresses. A call signaling address is an IP address and port on which a device listens for SIP messages. The client devices or smartphone registers itself with the gateway when it boots up or changes its IP address due to subnet roaming. It also periodically registers with the gateway as a keep alive mechanism.

If you install multiple VCG servers (see Installing Multiple Vocera Client Gateway Servers), you can configure Vocera smartphones to support registration with multiple servers. Whenever the client device needs to register with a VCG (such as at boot-up or when the connection with the previously associated VCG fails), it randomly selects one of the VCG IP addresses from the complete list it has been configured with. If registration at that VCG fails, the smartphone randomly selects one of the remaining VCG IP addresses from the list. The smartphone attempts to connect to all of the VCGs in random fashion until it achieves a successful connection. If a successful connection is not achieved after trying the entire list of VCG servers, the smartphone will wait 10 seconds before beginning the registration process again.