I’ve received a few comments about the Nortel i2050 Softphone and thought I would make a post about the software application.
The Nortel IP Software 2050 is a Windows-based application that runs on Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2000 Professional. This software solution is designed to work with Nortel IP-based phone systems providing Voice Over IP (VoIP) services. The application has gone through quite a few revisions and upgrades over the past few years. This software based application works best with a dedicated USB based headset such as Nortel Mobile USB Headset.
I’ve used the i2050 on and off for the past two years. I found that version 1.x was prone to crashing especially after the laptop/desktop had been up for sometime and the application had been running for a few hours. Nortel just recently (within the last year) released version 2.x which is a giant leap forward in terms of stability.
When used on a fairly modern PC with a 100Mbps switched Ethernet network the call quality is indistinguishable from Nortel’s hardwired Internet Telephones (i2002/i2004/1120e/1140e/1150e). I should comment that it’s my general opinion that a Nortel Internet Telephone sounds clearer than a traditional digital or analog TDM set. The i2050 supports all the features that the hardwired Internet Telephones support including multiple line appearances, hold, transfer, conference, intercom, etc.
I have used the i2050 in a telecommuter role in conjunction with a branch to branch IPSec tunnel using a Nortel VPN 1100 Router (branch office) and a Nortel VPN 1740 Router (main office). I’ve had the opportunity to test that specific telecommuter solution over Verizon xDSL, Comcast Internet Cable and Verizon FiOS. All three mediums worked fine, however, I did need to be conscious of what I was doing on the laptop/desktop to avoid any call quality issues on the i2050.
In July of 2006 Nortel and Microsoft announced that they would be entering into an alliance to develop unified communications solutions. This has left a few of us wondering about the future of the i2050 softphone since it looks like it might be directly competing with Microsoft Office Communications Server (formerly Microsoft Live Communications Server). Obviously the OCS client will have quite a few more features (presence information, file transfer, instant messaging as well as voice and voice communications) than the i2050 but it won’t be able to support the wide array of voice features available in the i2050.
In summary I really like the Nortel i2050 phone and believe it is a worthwhile business tool. I would caution anyone that is looking to deploy a large number to make sure they do their homework and perform adequate testing to ensure that the i2050 software will work fine on their desktop image and with whatever software applications are required.
Cheers!
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#1 by Michael McNamara on February 23, 2008 - 11:54 am
It looks like Nortel has just announced the general availability of Release 3.0 for the IP Softphone 2050.
You can find further details here directly from Nortel’s website.
Cheers!
#2 by Chandru on January 6, 2010 - 12:47 pm
Hi Michael,
Wish you happy new year. Keep up your good work as always
I have a query regarding the IP softphone i2050
Is this capable of doing QOS?
By default the hard phones mark voice signal as 40 and RTP packets as 46
Is there an option in softphone which can mark the packets form my desktop with these values and send to LAN switches and then to Nortel phone system?
Is the QOS availabe in softphone or only in hardphone?
I am looking for a way to mark these packets on the desktop itself so that the QOS marking is carried to the nortel system
I can mark these packets on the cisco switch with relevant port number. Can you help me with documenation showing all ports involved in nortel pbx
thanks for all your help
regards
Chandru
#3 by Michael McNamara on January 6, 2010 - 1:56 pm
Hi Chandru,
Happy New Year and thanks for the comments!
The 2050 should mark all egress packets with the appropriate DiffServ tags. I just did a quick packet trace using WireShark and the 3.4 version of the 2050 and it marked the RTP traffic with a DiffServ code point of Expedite Forward (EF/46).
You should only need to to configure the edge switch port to trust the DiffServ tags. You shouldn’t need to write any policies to re-mark the packets on the switch, just configure the switch to trust the QoS markings from the PC.
Cheers!
#4 by Chandru on January 6, 2010 - 11:28 pm
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the confirmation!!
I tried this with 2.00.0228 version and it is not marking the packets with any DSCP values
Is this a change in the 3.4 version. We will be using this soon as we need to have a license server
Is there any specific setting on the I2050 softphone? Can you share the packet trace and the setting of the I2050 phone
Thanks
Chandru
#5 by Michael McNamara on January 7, 2010 - 7:36 am
I wouldn’t expect the 2.x version to mark the packets… it’s just way too old. I believe the support for QoS came along with the introduction of the 3.x version of the 2050. There’s nothing you need to-do or set, it’s automatic just like the default behavior of the IP phones. I don’t think a packet trace would show you anything other than a RTP stream marked DiffServ (EF) between two IP addresses.
Good Luck!
#6 by Chandru on January 7, 2010 - 4:09 am
Hi Michael,
Can you also share the Cisco switch config?
cheers
Chandru
#7 by Michael McNamara on January 7, 2010 - 7:37 am
What switch are you using? What software is it running?
#8 by Chandru on January 7, 2010 - 11:43 am
I am using Cisco 3560 switch with different version of IOS and packets are getting marked in the hard phones correctly
I am capturing the traffic on the laptop where softphone is installed. May be i need to capture the traffic on the switch side and see if it is getting marked properly
Can you please let me know what switch you are using and are you capturing on the Laptop or machine where it is installed?
Chandru
#9 by Michael McNamara on January 7, 2010 - 5:32 pm
I’m using Nortel’s ERS 5520 switches so everything is automatically configured with ADAC/LLDP-MED. At a minimum you need to enable QoS with “mls qos” and then set each edge port to trust the DiffServ markings with “mls qos trust dscp”. You also need to change the CoS to QoS mapping on the Cisco switches, “mls qos map cos-dscp 0 8 16 24 32 40 46 56″.
You may wish to review this blog post; http://blog.michaelfmcnamara.com/2009/01/lldp-with-cisco-3750/
Let’s take any further discussion to the forms. While the discussion is a good one it’s getting off-topic.
Thanks!
#10 by Chandru on January 8, 2010 - 5:55 am
Thanks Michael!!
#11 by Pete on February 8, 2010 - 2:37 pm
Have you heard anything about i2050 v3.01 soft phones crashing when being recorded by the IP IDVR server? We had these phones intermittently crashing but users that were not configured for call recording had no issues. We installed version 3.04 and the problem went away. I’ve been trying to find release notes to see if this was a known problem but cannot find any release notes.
Just wondering if you’ve seen this before.
Great Blog
Thanks,
Pete
#12 by Michael McNamara on February 8, 2010 - 7:19 pm
Hi Pete,
Who’s IP recorder software are you using? I’ve been using Nortel’s CRQM (only implemented the call recording portion) and had no such reported issues across about 12 different users.
You can find the release information for the Nortel IP Softphone 2050 Release 3.4 right here on this blog.
Good Luck!
#13 by Pete on February 9, 2010 - 9:38 am
Thanks for the reply Michael. We’re using TelStrat Engage 2.0.1.1.
#14 by Michael McNamara on February 9, 2010 - 7:07 pm
Hi Pete,
I don’t have any personal experience with TelStrat Engage. When doing a quick search all I came up with on Google was this reference to a Nortel compatibility document.
I can only guess they ‘fixed’ something as you surmised but perhaps didn’t document it completely.
Cheers!
#15 by yasir on February 19, 2010 - 3:21 pm
Hi
is there any free sip capable lldp-med softphone?
i checked i2050 but doesnt seem to have support for sip server like i m using asterisk.
plz guide
thanx
#16 by Michael McNamara on February 19, 2010 - 10:02 pm
Hi Yasir,
The Nortel i2050 softphone is designed operate solely with Nortel voice products such as the Business Communications Manager (BCM) and the Call Server (CS) 1000. It utilizes the UNIStim signaling protocol with H.323 and RTP. If you are looking for a SIP compatible softphone I would suggest you start with X-Lite or it’s big brother Bria at CounterPath. I’ve utilized X-Lite in the past with Asterisk and found that it works very well.
Good Luck!
#17 by yasir on February 20, 2010 - 12:51 pm
Thanks for your response
But I was looking for LLDP-MED SIP softphone or any LLDP-MED softphone which I can use with open source easily available servers.I have used xlite but it is not LLDP capable ,u can setup a few QoS options manually only.
My setup is asterisk with 1120 E with F/W 0624c4L which is UNiStim ;all I want is to confirm if LLDP-MED capable switch sends instructions to a LLDP-Med capable phone ,it should automatically configure it with parameters like voice vlan tag,dscp etc seeing in wireshark packets of LLDP-Med;right now I do see switch sending LLDP-Med messages with configured parameters but phone keeps on sending its own parameters.
I have tried upgrading the firmware to min unistim or to any higher unistim via tftp but no success.If I can upgrade the 1120E firmware that would be fine also to Sip,I dont know what I am doing wrong but all I am doing is directly connecting phone with windows tftp server(tftp32) ,assigning tftp add on phone and rebooting,the f/w and config file is in the root directory.The config file is simple and tells to force upgrade via tftp,3-4 lines.
Thanks again and further response welcome.
Yasir
#18 by Michael McNamara on February 25, 2010 - 10:24 pm
Hi Yasir,
Your inquiry is a little odd in that I’ve never heard of anyone looking for LLDP-MED functionality in a softphone. The latest version of the Nortel 2050 Softphone will automatically mark the RTSP voice stream packets with DiffServ codepoint EF (Expedite Forward). It also works with the QoS Scheduler within Windows to try and make sure that the application isn’t starved for bandwidth by any locally running applications.
Do you have the 1120e configured to utilize LLDP-MED for the Voice VLAN? It’s a configuration option within the phone itself, although it can be configured centrally through a DHCP response or provisioning file.
You need to configure the TFTP server IP address into the 1120e before it will try to download the 1120e.cfg configuration file. You might be able to pass DHCP option 66 (I think that’s the TFTP server option) in your DHCP response and see if it likes that.
Good Luck!
#19 by Hank on March 11, 2010 - 4:10 am
Hey guys. Is there a softphone client that works with the Nortel CS 1000 or BCM that runs on a Mac or linux? We have about 200 users in the field on laptops using the the I2050 softphone–and mostly successfully. The laptops are just fragile with regards to user activity. We could and should lock them down tighter but a linux solution might be a better answer. The laptops need to run the sofphone, connect to Citrix and browse the web, that’s it.
Thanks