Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

Nortel i2050 Softphone

by

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!

You might also want to read these other posts...

  1. Nortel IP Softphone 2050 Release 3.4
  2. Nortel IP 2050 Softphone and Windows Vista
  3. Nortel IP Softphone 2050 Licensing Server

Comments

  1. 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. 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

    • 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!

      • Hi Micheal,

        peculiar problem with Nortel IP softphon 3.04 , os windows 7 32 bit
        VPN tunnel between 2 locations one location CS 1000, other location BCM 50 , Phone from CS 1000 end can talk to extension at BCM end but if we try any other external call, cannot hear anything, call is ringing but cannot hear anything, pl assist thanks Menon

        • Hi Menon,

          Are you sure you have all the proper routes in the VPN tunnel configuration? The laptop/desktop with the 2050 softphone should be able to ping the VGMCs, CS1000 and BCM50.

          Good Luck!

          • Hello Michael,

            Yes, from pc, we are able to reach all voice gateway.
            Can ping CS 1000, BCM 50
            The VPN config is fine.

            The funny thing is that this happens only from softphone that we are unable
            to hear the voice.
            From normal Nortel phone, the voice can be heard when we make the call

            Only when we are outside network and connect softphone and call, call rings
            but cannot hear the voice. Both parties cannot hear anything.

            But the ping works at that time,can ping BCM 50, CS1000 , the complete
            network

            Issue only with voice – cannot hear anything

            It is confusing, have latest Avaya 4 softphone 3050 on my laptop ,trying
            from there.

            It is not router issue as tried this from various places, from my house,
            others etc, same issue

            Pl advise

            best regards

            Menon

          • There are two different voice streams, one transmit and one receive. It gets fairly complicated, you need to perform a packet trace at your VGMC to see if both streams are there, if so then you’d need to work your way back to the endpoint to see where one of the streams stops showing up. There have been a number of software bugs on the CS1000 and BCM so you should probably contact your voice reseller and have them apply the latest dep lists (patches) to both products.

            Good Luck!

          • Hello Michael
            Just to update the latest situation reg IP Softphone 2050 ver 3.4
            I was mistaken.
            Actually, when I am calling the number in Mumbai over VOIP using softphone, it rings there and people in Mumbai, India can hear me very clearly.
            Following is problem :
            1) I cannot hear the ring passing through – 1st thing, for me do not know whether phone rings itself
            2) I cannot hear the voice at other end although they can hear me clearly

            I mentioned this because I think we are somewhat near the solution as the other end can hear me very clearly
            Other end is Mumbai , there they have BCM 50
            At my end in Dubai, I have CS 1000 . I cannot hear anything what they are speaking
            All ports are open for testing on both firewalls to test
            Ping goes through perfectly . I can ping all phones there in Mumbai.
            Also from Mumbai, they can ping all phones, firewall , gateway in Dubai , they can ping cs 1000 so is there some issue of port blocking as one side traffic in Dubai cannot be heard, please assist, thanks Menon

          • As I’ve mentioned previously this could be a communication issue or a bug with the BCM/CS1000. Since you are on an IP endpoint the BCM will attempt to setup the voice path (RSTP) between itself and whatever device you are running the softphone on. You didn’t mention if they were on an IP handset in India.

            You would need to verify (beyond just ping) that you the proper communications between those two end-points, that obviously includes the VPN that you are connected over.

            If they can hear you that indicates that the Tx RTSP stream is working properly and the it’s the Rx RTSP stream that’s having an issue. You would need to perform a packet trace at the BCM50 to verify that the Rx RTSP stream is visible at that point in the network. If it is then you have a network issue somewhere. If the Rx RTSP stream is not there then you have a software bug in the BCM.

            Good Luck!

          • Hello Michael,

            Now we discovered one more thing. Apart from softphone ip 2050, we tried to do calling direct from Dubai to Mumbai through ip phone.
            In Dubai, we have CS 1000 Meridian system, we also use Nortel 1220 IP phone in Dubai.
            In Mumbai, we have BCM 50 system and ip phone which is Nortel 1220 IP phone
            In Mumbai we have internet 5 mbps lease line and in Dubai we have 100 mbps line so internet no choke up
            What we observe is that from Dubai, when we use dialing code to dial Mumbai numbers (any number ) randomly, within 3 minutes, the call get disconnected.
            However ,from Dubai, if we dial specific numbers in Mumbai which is call forwarded from our Dubai extension to Mumbai through PABX , it works fine
            What could be the issue? We are at our wits end.
            Also we do call forward from Mumbai office to Dubai office for certain numbers and that is fine
            Pl assist
            Thanks
            Menon

  3. 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

    • 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!

  5. 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

    • 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!

  7. 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

  8. 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

    • 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!

  9. 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

    • 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!

  10. 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

    • 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!

  11. Thanks Mic,For the time being I found a work around…will ask u more if ne= eded.

    THANKS a lot again
    Good work!

  12. 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

  13. 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.

    • 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!

      • 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.

      • 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.

        • 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!

  14. 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

    • 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!

  15. 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

  16. 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

  17. 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.

  18. 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

  19. 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?

  20. The 11xx/12xx/2007 capabilities are well documented in both the “IP Phone Fundamentals” NTP as well as the latest Product Bulletins.

  21. 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

  23. I am using HP thin client 4750e (brand new) i have installed the softphone I2050 ver 2.01.0260. When i click on the softphone icon (i2050.exe) it says that i need to install an email client.

    Is this normal and do I need to do this? Am I missing something??

    Thank you

    • Hi Al Silva,

      That’s the really old version of the i2050 softphone which might give you problems down the road. It might be looking for a MAPI interface although I can’t really say. This is during the actual installation? Or during the configuration and/or startup?

      What operating system is running on the HP 4750e? Perhaps you meant the HP t5740e? The HP t5740e ships with Windows 7 but only has an Intel Atom N280 processor. I’m not sure how successful you’ll be in running the old 2.0 version of the 2050 IP Softphone on a thin client that depending on what you’ll be doing with it might already be strapped for horse power.

      I believe the minimum supported version for Windows 7 is the 2050 IP Softphone Release 3.4 although Avaya recently released 4.0 for the 2050 IP Softphone.

      http://blog.michaelfmcnamara.com/2010/05/avaya-ip-softphone-2050-release-4-0/

      You’ll find the installation instructions for the 2.0 software release at Avaya’s support website;
      http://support.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/100096439

      Good Luck!

  24. Hi everyone,
    I have many i2050 softphones installed in my environment about 1000, and it would be very useful for us in operations to have a way of centralize de configuration of those softphones ( i mean those configuratios that are made in the softphone itself including TN), does any one can give me some idea how to do that?
    Note: on the other ip phones like model 1120 we implemented autoprovisioning with dhcp and tftp servers and it works great, we have a centralized tftp server with configuration files for that phones that relies on the mac address of the phone.

    please help :)

    • Hi Fernando,

      The 2050 IP phone isn’t supported with TFTP or DHCP provisioning. You would likely have better results using a software package distribution system such as Altiris or SMS to package the installation and then make the necessary configuration changes to the client automatically.

      You can review the IP Phone Fundamentals regarding how to repackage the MSI installation package;
      http://www.michaelfmcnamara.com/files/avaya/NN43001-368_06.07_IPPhFND.pdf

      I should point out that version 4.1 of the 2050 resolves and issue with the MSI installation package.

      Good Luck!

      • Hello Michael
        we have softphone 2050 – tried with version 3, 3.4 , Avaya 4.2
        same issue
        person at opposite end cannot hear anything what I am talking

        I am speaking with headphone, person cannot hear anything
        what is reason
        what is solution for this

        pl advise

        thanks
        menon

        • Hi Menon,

          There can be several causes of a OWSP (one-way-speech-path). The most common is problem with the communications between the i2050 and the Voice Gateway Media Card (VGMC). You can easily see this problem in a packet trace of the network. If there is a firewall, or NAT between the i2050 and the VGMC that will usually be the culprit. There can be some other causes, patches (DEP list) on the Communications Server, etc.

          Have you started by disabling the firewall on the desktop/laptop?

          Good Luck!

  25. Hi Michael, thanks for your answer,i am not familiar with repackaging MSI, i will read the documentation on the link you sent me, thanks a lot.

  26. I’ve used the IP Softphone 2050 for the past 1.5 years while telecommuting with success. I was using a DSL line and less than 3 weeks ago converted to Verizon FiOS. Since the FiOS installation I’m unable to connect to the Softphone. I’ve got an internet connection and successful connected to my company’s VPN. With my IT dept’s help, we’ve ruled out that the problem is on their end. (I’ve been able to successfully connect everywhere else but my home)
    Verizon has been absolutely unhelpful to me after roughly 5 hours of time with phone & chat techs.

    Have you ever heard of a problem like this AND would you have any suggestions of how I might troubleshoot this on my own since Verizon said they have next level techs BUT I’d have to pay extra for this service.
    Thanks in advance,
    Glenn

    • Hi Glenn,

      The connectivity for the IP Softphone 2050 runs over your corporate VPN correct? If that’s the case then I would think your IT department should be able to help you troubleshoot. Are you sure the 2050 Softphone is configured properly? Are you able to ping the Call Server? What are you using for VPN? Version? What version of the 2050 Softphone are you using? What error do your get?

      As long as the traffic to/from the Call Server is over your VPN tunnel I don’t believe your provider has any real bearing other than providing the basic connectivity. It could be Verizon DSL or Verizon FiOS or Comcast Cable or Sprint Cellular… as long as the VPN tunnel is up and running all the traffic will be tunneled across that connection and the provider can’t really even tell what type of traffic it is other than it’s encrypted.

      Good Luck!

  27. Thanks Michael. I’ll look into this with my IT guys to see if they can verify all that you’re pointing out. I’ll let you know how it goes.
    Much appreciated, Glenn

  28. Michael, I am testing a Nortel i2050 softphone rel. 3.0 on a CS1000 server. I cannot get the phone to ring when a call is incoming. The indicator does flash but no sound in either the pc speakers or the USB headset. Any suggestions ??

    • Hi Kay,

      There are a few things to check… you’ll need to look at the configuration settings. You should be able to find the settings under Start -> All Programs -> Nortel -> IP Softphone 2050 -> IP Softphone 2050 Settings. Select the Sound Devices option on the left hand side of the screen. You need to verify that the “Handsfree/Ringing/Paging device” is set to whatever device you want to ring. It would generally be set to the sound card of the computer which would in turn have speakers connected to it. With that configured properly you need to check the sound device from the Control Panel to verify that the volume is set properly.

      Good Luck!

  29. Hi Guys,

    I have a nortel option 11c with succession 1000. I want to setup some IP phones remotely using DSL to connect to me or some softphones. Don’t know where to start. ATT sold us this phone but they have disappeared from support. Can anyone help me out get all this setup correctly? I can pay of course. Thanks!

    • Hi GQ,

      You’ll need to provide either a hardware or software based VPN connection if you want to connect over the Internet. I would strongly recommend you look at a SSL based VPN solution. They offer the same legacy IPSec VPN connections along with the latest HTTPS/SSL VPN connections which can sometimes be easier to maintain.

      I’m currently utilizing the Juniper SA4000 product myself but I have over 3000 users to keep happy. You might want to look at the low end SA700 product or perhaps a small Cisco ASA if you’re a Cisco shop.

      Good Luck!

  30. Hi,

    My name Abhilash , i am the of Nortel softphone 2050. Will you help how to disable the hotkey option into softphone setting manu.

    Thanks & Regards

    Abhilash Jena

  31. Hi Michael,

    I’ve read many of your posts on a wide variety of subjects and theyve been a great help! Thanks!

    I hope you can help with a specific issue.

    When we purchased our option61c, quite a while back, we also purchased a few 2050 softphone licenses with it, for investigation of it and how well it works.

    I recently decided to try to get one set up and running as a handy test phone.

    The version I happen to have is v1.4. I know that is old, but since its just in our R&D area, its fine for the current uses.

    I’ve tried installing it on a win2k machine (including doing the windows qos install and the nortel qos service install), and on an XP machine.

    In each case I have installed a nortel usb audio adaptor on the pc being tested.

    I’ve run the configuration utility and set the switch type, – left server addr at DHCP – also tried manually setting the addr and port (4100), and tried forcing qos on and off.

    The result in all cases is the ubiquitous ‘Server Unreachable’.

    We have IP phones currently in use here (via dhcp) (the i200x series) and I have verified network settings for the PC nic lines I am working with by plugging my IP phone into the PCs network line, and it comes up just fine.

    On our IP phones, of course, when you first plug them in, you point the phone to a specific TN as it comes up – as well as a specific node number.

    I was presuming that I would get similar type prompts from the i2050 software when it started connecting.

    Is there something I need to set up on the pbx side to make this work? How do I set the Node ID? How do I point the TN?

    The manuals Ive seen all seem to start at the desktop and dont specify the pbx side config at all.

    Any suggestions?

    Thanx!

    • Hi Keith,

      There’s a lot of prerequisites that need to be in place before you can have any IP telephony including IP softphones.

      Your questions and comments lead me to believe that you are not familiar with the CS1000. If that is the case I would highly recommend that you contact your voice reseller for support. In order to make a CS1000 (legacy Option61) IP capable you need either an ITG (Internet Telephony Gateway) card which is no longer supported or today you need a Signaling Server and associated Voice Gateway Media card(s).

      With that hardware in place then you need to configure the CS1000 with all the necessary information and ultimately program the TN (the actual set).

      This all assumes that you have a network capable of handling VoIP traffic and you have a QoS configured properly throughout.

      You would need to refer to the CS1000 manuals no the 2050 manuals for information on how to configure the TN.

      Here are all the manuals for the CS1000M;

      http://support.avaya.com/css/Products/P0715/All_Documents

      Good Luck!

      • Hi Michael,

        Thanks for the reply. We DO have IP telephony already in place in our system/network and I have a good handle on working with the physical IP phones – creating TNs for them – etc. Which also means we have Signaling servers and MGCs, necessary networking, in place.

        (as a matter of fact I verified the proper network line config for the PCs by plugging my own IP phone into the PC line and verifying it could acquire the switch and get a dial tone.)

        It is specifically the softphones that I am not familiar with.

        On a physical IP phone, it prompts you for the TN as it comes up: thus far on the softphone I’ve seen no such setting or prompt – of course since it is not finding the server I doubt that it would.

        Also you can Force the Node ID – I also dont see a way to do this.

        You can force Voice VLAN setting on the physical phone to eliminate any suspicion of DHCP issues

        but I dont see any sign of those settings, or even a way to verify that they picked up the correct DHCP settings – beyond using the i2050 softphone diag to verify they are at least getting the correct server ip/port addresses

        Finally, I dont know if there is additional configuration required on the PBX specifically for dealing with softphones, beyond the standard DN/TN config.

        Thanks for the link to the docs, I will try to do some searching, but as you know – nortel docs are notorious for trying to find stuff in unless you know exactly what you’re looking for. It would be really helpful if you could point me in the right direction for those specific questions.

        Thanks again!
        k

        • AHA!

          Remember my mentioning that I had put my IP phone on the network line to verify the net settings? I FORGOT AND LEFT IT IN LINE with the PC running the softphone!

          It didnt like that! I removed my phone and plugged straight to the switch and voila!

          That doesn’t address my problems with the Win2K client as my phone was definitely NOT left inline with it, but maybe that relates to the nortel qos driver you have to install or something….

          At least I know what the softphone is supposed to look like/do when it is connecting!

          Its the little stupid things that get you!

          thanks again…
          k

          • Spoke too soon… at the same time I removed my phone from in-line, I forced the switchport to vlan 100 (our voice vlan) (‘swi acc vlan 100’ instead of just ‘voice vlan 100’)

            When I thought removing my phone from inline fixed the issue, I removed the ‘swi acc vlan 100’ and the phone lost connection again.

            So somehow it is not getting its voice vlan setting. The port configs are:
            description Vlan100 test
            switchport access vlan 100
            switchport mode access
            switchport voice vlan 100
            speed 100
            duplex full
            priority-queue out
            mls qos trust dscp
            spanning-tree portfast
            spanning-tree bpduguard enable

            the DHCP strings are:
            128: Nortel-i2004-A,..1.2:4100,1,5;..1.2:4100,1,5.
            and
            191: VLAN-A:100.

            of course the s represent real numbers

            These all work with the I200x’s that we use, Am I missing something, or is there something different about the softphones?

            thx
            k

          • Thanks Michael,

            The info that it doesnt use voice vlan was just what I needed!

            The conclusion is that, in cases like ours – where the voice vlan and data vlan are separate, you must use a multi-homed host to use the i2050 (and possibly all nortel softphones)

            For our test phone setup, I just installed the phone on a laptop with its wired port plugged into the vlan100 switchport, and let the laptop connect wirelessly to the data vlan. I was able to do late-night script testing from home while controlling the softphone via some remote desktop software. It worked great!

            Thanks for your help!
            k

          • Hi Keith,

            I would think that a single network connection will suffice unless you are running some really bandwidth intensive applications.

            The old QoS scheduler in Windows XP and Windows 2000 provided the 2050 IP softphone the ability to preempt the other applications running on the desktop/laptop with respect to access of the NIC.

            I would recommend you so some testing before embarking on trying to run a dual homed machine.

            Good Luck!

  32. Can anyone tell me nortel IP soft phone can be made working in remote desktop services environment.? i want to make them work under remote desktops or you can say virtual machines. Though the full duplex communication is allowed in RDS but just want an assurance over this problem. all the opinions are appreciated.

    • Hi Farhan,

      Utilizing a soft phone in a VDI or VM environment probably the best idea at this early stage in the technology. There are known issues pushing multimedia to client devices and such a time sensitive application such a a soft phone probably isn’t going to work well when you try and scale the solution to any significant size.

      There is a reference in the latest software release notes for the 2050 that VDI or VM is not supported at this time.

      Good Luck

  33. Is it too late to ask a question? I work from home 50% and can successfully call and receive phone calls. My only issue is that I cannot get the computer to “ring” loudly (instead of/in addition to) the headset. I would not like to wear my headset all the time. I have turned up the volume in the volume mixer as well as the settings in the 2050 software itself. It won’t do anything but a teeny tiny small beep. Do you have any ideas?
    Thanks!
    Heather

    • Hi Heather,

      What version of the 2050 softphone do you have installed and what desktop OS?

      I believe you can set the call notification to ring both the headset and the speakers (assuming you have some connected).

      Cheers!

  34. Hi
    I have successfully tried to launch the Softphone via RDP. I can hear the recipient properly but the recipient hears my voice as very robotic.
    I can confirmed I have optimised my RDSH Windows 2008 R2 server. I used a sound recorder and recorded my voice via RDP and it worked fine.
    It is just in the i2050 Softphone that I am experiencing this issue.
    Are there any settings that I can optimised to improve my audio quality?

    • You could probably get it to work by 1) throwing a huge server at it that’s doing nothing else and 2) making sure you have tons of idle bandwidth.

      It’s not supported because your actually encapsulating the audio in Microsoft’s RDP protocol which is not designed for realtime voice/video. You can search Google for the challenges of bringing multimedia to VDI clients, the same problems exist in that environment.

      Good Luck!

      • Thanks for the reply. The funny part is that I can hear the person clearly. It is just the redirection via microphone.
        I tried using Microsoft Sound Recorder and it recorded my voice clearly. So I would think that it is still possible but someone this softphone is doing things differently from Microsoft Sound Recorder and it is not processing the microphone correctly.

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