Hi Matt,

Which DHCP vendor option are you using? Nortel-i2004-A or Nortel-i2004-B? The 2000 series IP phones have an issue with the maximum length of the string whereas the 1100 series don’t have that issue.

The problem was documented somewhere… where now I can’t remember.

Good Luck!

Hi Stuart,

Sorry I missed your post. If the IP phone hangs at “Starting DHCP…” then there is a problem with either your switch configuration or your DHCP configuration. I would suggest you manually configure the IP address of the IP phone to start with. That will help you confirm you have IP connectivity, after that you can work on figuring out what’s happening with your DHCP requests assuming that the IP phone works with a static IP address.

Good Luck!

We are getting parse errors on 2004 sets but not 1140’s. Any thoughts ? Thanks.

Matt

I am trying to get a Nortel 1140e working with a Juniper Netscreen SSG5, i am hitting the wall at the “starting DHCP” error message.

Have you ever had eny experience with the this type of setup and do you have any advice?

Stuart

Hi Max,

As Gord mentions above Avaya (formerly Nortel) has a number of ways you can configure/provision their IP phones these days.

I would recommend you review the IP Telephony Deployment Technical Configuration Guide for all the options.

http://support.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/100123695

I personally using LLDP-MED with the Nortel-i2004-A DHCP option string successfully with thousands of IP phones. I’ve researched the Nortel-i2004-B DHCP option string and the TFTP/HTTP provisioning but I haven’t found the time so need to make any changes.

Good Luck!

Do you know of any detailed lists that can tell me the DHCP options available to me?

Hi Max,

You can use DHCP for everything include the voice VLAN assignment if you wish… it really comes down to the path of least resistance. If you only have 10 IP phones to setup it might be easier to just hard configure those 10 IP phones with the voice VLAN ID and then utilize DHCP to assign the S1 information. If have 150 IP phones then you might want to try and configuration everything centrally. If your switch equipment supports LLDP-MED you can also look at using that to assign the voice VLAN ID.

Good Luck!

Excellent post. Thank you!

We are new to VoIP at my office and I have some questions. Is it realistic to think that I can have DHCP supply all the options my IP phones will need? Or can DHCP only supply the Signaling Server info, and everything else will need to be setup manually (i.e., Enabling Voice 802.1Q, setting Voice VLAN, Enabling Data VLAN, setting Data VLAN)?

We have Nortel 1140Es.

Thanks!

Have you ever gotten this to work? Do you have any other IP phones in the office?

Are you providing DHCP option 128 to the 2033?

With the correct information?

I believe the port on the BCM/SRG is 7300 while the port on the CS1000 is 4100 so you need to change that value in your DHCP option if you are copying my sample DHCP string above.

Nortel-i2004-A,10.1.1.10:7300,1,5;10.1.1.20:7300,1,5.

Depending on the firmware you have you should be able to static the IP address and program the S1 information into the 2033 manually. You realize the S1 information is the IP address of the BCM/SRG along with the port number.

I wouldn’t focus so much on the fact that you believe it’s loosing it’s IP address. I would make sure that it’s configured properly. It may be that it’s not configured properly and that is causing your symptom.

Good Luck!

Hi Michael,

Thank you for your time and reply on this.

We have Nortel Business Element Manager and a BCM (monitor), not sure whether the Element Manger is a call server or not.

This (2033) is the ONLY IP Phone we have, it is plugged into a normal Patch port (RJ-45).

DHCP Server on our Network : Windows 2008 Server

Phone set on DHCP : Gets an IP Address and then looses it after a while

Phone Set to Static IP : Keeps it then looses it.
Have tried changing cables etc.

Nortel Business Element Manager can become a DHCP Server too, but I have set it to Relay and still the same behaviour.

Your assistance would be really helpful as there seems to be no article or how-to I could find on this.

Thanks

I’ve never personally used a 2033 but I’m guessing that at a minimum you’ll need to provide it DHCP option 128 as detailed in the post above. What version of software are you running on the Call Server?

Good Luck!

Hi Michael,

We only have one IP Phone, HP Layer2 switches, Windows 2008 Server as a DHCP.

We plugged the Nortel 2033 IP Phone into one of the patch, it will get a IP Address but will loose it after a few minutes.

We then setup a DHCP on Nortel BCM software, same behaviour, after reading your post I think we may have to add an Option as well.

What would you recommend ? Do we need to add a dhcp option too ?

it is the only device connected to that Patch and nothing else is connected to the phone.

We have even assigned static ip address to no avail, it will loose after a while.

Would be grateful for your assistance on this.
Kind Reagrds

As you mentioned it works perfectly if we made it as manually for the first time however there are hundreds of phone and we need to find out a way with zero touch for registering out of box 1230 IP Sets.

Thanks

Hi Serhat,

Is this still the same issue you were having with the 1230 bootloader?

It if is you should be able to overcome the problem by setting up a small DHCP scope in the data VLAN with option 128. This should allow the phone to connect to the Call Server and upgrade, after which it will reboot and should ignore DHCP scope you created in the data VLAN since it’s configured for LLDP.

You may want to browse the discussion forums, I believe we’ve had quite a few discussions around such problems only with different IP phones.

Cheers!

Can you please advice me on the issue?
LLDP is not used and we have configured the option 191 and 128 for data vlan and option 128 for voice vlan but the 1230 phone still stucks in starting DHCP.. mode and cannot take and IP from the DHCP.
Option strings is as below
option 191 : Option 191 –> VLAN-A:41.
option 128 : Nortel-i2004-A,10.90.41.10:4100,1,5;10.90.41.10:4100,1,5.

How Can I resolve this problem, please asuggest me on this issue ?

Thanks and Regards

Firstly thanks for your answer. It has not got a firmware. It is a brand new 1230 out of box set. Actually If you upgrade the firmware manually then everything goes very well. But we need to do auto-provisioning with this out of box bootloader. Option 66 is enabled on DHCP and LLDP is enabled. However on phone bootloader I learned that option 66 and LLDP is not supported.

Thanks

Hi Serhat,

Have you confirmed the configuration on the IP phone itself? I have yet to really test the 1200 series IP phones so I don’t have too much experience with them. Does the phone have the latest and greatest firmware on it?

You should be able to tell from the network switch if the IP phone is sending LLDP TLVs, does ADAC go active on the port when the IP phone boots up?

There are so many questions and/or possible hang-ups here. Let’s assume that you have a version of firmware on the IP phone that supports LLDP-MED;

1) is the network switch configured properly?
2) is the IP phone configured properly?

If so, does ADAC go active on the port when the IP phone boots up? Does ADAC add the Voice VLAN to the port when it goes active?

Are you able to perform a packet trace to confirm what the IP phone is sending/recieving?

You may want to browse the discussion forums, I believe we’ve had quite a few discussions around such problems only with different IP phones.

Good Luck!

I have a problem with new out of box 1230 IP Set registration with bootloader to DHCP. It can not get IP Adress from DHCP, and the issue is as below ;

The default data VLAN is in our network untagged. When the switch port is set to the default data VLAN, it should get the VLAN from the LLDP and go then directly to the Voice VLAN DHCP to get the IP address. Obviously with the bootloader, LLDP is not supported, since the IP Phones remains in the data VLAN and send a DHCP request in the Data VLAN.
Even if LLDP was not supported, the Phone should get the Voice VLAN from the Data DHCP since Option 191 is sent But the IP Phone ignores the information of the Offer sent by the Data DHCP.

However if the port setting is changed to the Voice Vlan as default everything goes very well without touching anything.

Can you please help or advise me on this issue ?

Thanks

Serhat GUVENILIR

Link is broken to the referenced document. I found it at the below URL:

http://www142.nortelnetworks.com/mdfs_app/techdoc/enterprise/cs1000/EM_IP1100/pdf/553-3001-368_26.00_IPLDIO.pdf

Posted elsewhere, but relevent here.

An issue noted when configuring Nortel IP sets within a Cisco data environment. Set firmware, anything supporting 802.1Q.
The symptoms of failure are DHCP parse error or DHCP server unreachable.
Both option 128 and 191 are configured as DHCP standard option strings and formatted as detailed in above notes (Windows Server 2003 so no “” marks).
Port security and “sticky MAC” were the cause of the problems. Setting a device count of 2, one for the phone and one for the PC, each in different VLANs and setting the port to remember MAC address of devices, causes the registration process to fail. The phone originally gets its address lease from the data range. The set should then react to the VLAN-A 191 option and throw away the data subnet address and be leased a voice VLAN address. However, the Cisco switch sees this activity as another device, a third device, attempting to register on the port and is barred. With port settings at 3 devices, and ceasing the sticky MAC process, the set registration works and the set ends up in the Voice VLAN.
If it is imperative forthe port security to be set at 2 devices and sticky MAC to be implimented, then the following should be observed.
Remove option 191 in DHCP and when setting up the phone, manually enter the 802.1Q Voive VLAN option by inserting the tag number. The set will then be directly steared to the correct DHCP scope and attain a Voice subnet IP address lease.

So for full DHCP and VLAN tagging, Cisco sticky MAC should be set to NO and port device count greater than 3.

Hi NestIP,

You need to make sure that your DHCP server isn’t serving up an DHCP object that doesn’t have option 191 and/or option 128.

I have most of the IP phone models you mention and really haven’t see any issues although I’m running the latest and greatest firmware. I would suggest that you upgrade your firmware. You could also perform a packet trace to see why the phone is just sitting at “Starting DHCP…”. When I’ve run into that condition I’ve always found 1) either the phone is mis-configured 2) the DHCP address offered by the DHCP server didn’t have the proper options.

Please feel free to post your specific problems over on the forums; http://forums.networkinfrastructure.info/nortel-ip-telephony/

Good Luck

I have a Windows 2003 Server with DHCP options activated. Then I have the followings Nortel IP Phone; 1120E, 1110, 1230, 2004 and 2033.

I have seen problems only on the 1120E and 1110 Telephones, becouse I’ve discovered that if I give it a partial address and assign the VLAN ID manually, that it picks up an IP address within the voice scope.

Too I have seen that sometimes the telephones with full DHCP options they stay in DHCP Starting, and they never pass to NODE and TN confirmation.

I have the Windows DHCP Server with:

1) Vlan Data Scope with 191 option.
2) Vlan Voice Scope with 128 option.

Thanks.