technology, networking and IP telephony
Nortel i2050 Softphone
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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about 2 years ago
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!
about 7 months ago
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
about 7 months ago
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!
about 7 months ago
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
about 7 months ago
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!
about 7 months ago
Hi Michael,
Can you also share the Cisco switch config?
cheers
Chandru
about 7 months ago
What switch are you using? What software is it running?
about 7 months ago
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
about 7 months ago
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!
about 7 months ago
Thanks Michael!!
about 6 months ago
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
about 6 months ago
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!
about 6 months ago
Thanks for the reply Michael. We’re using TelStrat Engage 2.0.1.1.
about 6 months ago
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!
about 6 months ago
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
about 6 months ago
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!
about 6 months ago
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
about 6 months ago
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!
about 5 months ago
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
about 5 months ago
Hi Hank,
If you are running software release 6.0 on your CS1000 you could potentially use a generic SIP client such as X-Lite or CounterPath. I believe there are Linux versions of those clients, although I’m not certain. I really wouldn’t advise moving to Linux in this scenario.
I’m not sure what specific issue you are having but there are plenty of options to use when protecting your users from themselves. You can also use an 1120e/1140e/1150e which now come with a VPN client built into the phone firmware. You still need another solution for PC connectivity such as Citrix, but I’ve heard the built-in UNIStim VPN Client (UVC) works very well.
You might want to have a look at this post and comments.
Good Luck!
about 5 months ago
Thanks Mic,For the time being I found a work around…will ask u more if ne= eded.
THANKS a lot again
Good work!
about 5 months ago
Michael:
That is very interesting news about the 3 phones with built in VPN clients. Thank you for that tidbit of info! On our initial deployment we used hardphones and Nortel BSR Routers. Given that we were working with a vendor who had not previously done this before, home-class DSL and Cable connections and a very compressed time line the results were disastrous. We ended up deploying softphones on older laptops which was only slightly less disastrous. Over the past year we’ve found a relatively inexpensive laptop, the Dell Vostro 15XX series, the latest version of the i2050 softphone and Nortel’s VPN client. As long as the laptop is free of viruses & malware, not in the middle of virus scanning, no big Internet download is underway and their Internet connection is good the voice quality is great. It just doesn’t always work out that way and the users just don’t understand. We’ve messed around with Codec size (compression percentage) with mixed results. We are now looking at Windows SteadyState as way to lock the systems down tighter and be able to recover to a known good configuration more quickly but that has its pitfalls too. I wish this were easier!
Thanks again,
Hank
about 5 months ago
I have a home user with a Nortel Ip softphone 3.x She has to click the headset button twice in order for callers to hear her. Have you heard of this issue? Most of the other users only have to click onece to be heard.
about 5 months ago
Hi Theresa,
I’ve never quite heard of this problem.
Have you been able to duplicate this problem yourself?
Are you saying your user needs to double click the ‘answer’ button in order to answer a call? Or are you saying that your user can answer the call with a single click of the ‘answer’ button but needs to click a second time in order for the caller to hear him/her?
Is it possible that she is muting herself or something? Is there an ‘answer on mute’ option within the i2050? I’m not sure myself but would probably need to test with the client.
I suspect there is something else going on here although anything is possible.
Good Luck!
about 5 months ago
user can answer the call with a single click of the ‘answer’ button but needs to click a second time in order for the caller to hear him/her
We have watched her place calls , she is not muting the phone.
about 1 month ago
I am still unable to duplicate the issue. We have narrowed it down to outgoing external calls only that user has to hot headset button twice. Incoming and internal calls are not an issue.
about 1 month ago
If you configure the same TN on a different laptop/desktop, is the problem exhibited on that device as well? You need to try and isolate some of the components and determine if this is a laptop/desktop issue or if this is a Call Server/softphone issue.
Likewise, if you give the user a new TN is the same behavior observed?
Does the problem follow the laptop/desktop or does it follow the TN?
Is this user part of a Contact Center installation or just a plain TN?
Good Luck!
about 4 months ago
hi
I’m using BCM50a and 3 pc runnig on ubuntu I need to know if I can install ip softphone 2050 under ubuntu and if is it possible how?
if it’s not possible do you propose another ip softphone that I can install under ubuntu and it can communicate with Nortel BCM50 ?
I tried ip softphone 2050 in XP but I faced an audio problem ..I can just hear the call ring but I can not hear the conversation ..I am using a normal headset ..
best Regards
about 4 months ago
Hi mimi,
If the BCM50a you have is SIP capable you could use a SIP softphone. You could probably find a SIP softphone for Ubuntu but I would not recommend that use Ubuntu for IP telephony. I would recommend that you focus on identifying the issue with your i2050 installation on our Windows XP device.
Have you applied all the available patches to you BCM50?
Good Luck!
about 4 months ago
Hi Michael
thanks a lot for your quick respone
I have already thought to use x-lite softphone for ubuntu or linphone which are both SIP softphones but I was wondering if the BCM can support them
“the BCM 50 protocols : Session Initiation Protocol or SIP Trunking ”
Does that mean that it is SIP capable and can use SIP softphone?
the audio problem of the ip softphone 2050 in windows XP has been resolved .
Thank you so much
about 1 month ago
Hi,
I am having 15000 ip phone users across 50 locations in my network. I am facing serious issues in managing TN ids across 50 locations. I need advice on how can i control the allocation of TN from the centralized server. Or is there any better way of restricting IP Phones and TN’s specific to their location.
Tx
Abhishek
about 1 month ago
The 11xx/12xx/2007 all support the ability to be do a lookup via TFTP/HTTP to a centralized file and match their MAC address with a specific Node ID and TN.
The 2050 does have a configuration utility which can be used to import a config file (including the node/tn). The config file would have to be customized and provided to each user.
about 1 month ago
Can i write to you directly or call you to understand this in detail? Alternately, if you can suggest me someone who can help me in controlling this in my environment.
Abhishek
about 1 month ago
Moreover, I don’t want any control at user end. The phone should take Node & TN id at the startup itself. Is there any way around it?
about 1 month ago
The 11xx/12xx/2007 capabilities are well documented in both the “IP Phone Fundamentals” NTP as well as the latest Product Bulletins.
about 1 month ago
Dear GWEBSTER, i have gone thru with the IP Phone fundamentals but couldn’t find DHCP procedure for Softphone 2050. Is it possible to boot softphone 2050 via DHCP in my environment. I want both ip address and TN info to be automatically assigned from DHCP server.
Tx