Nortel has released UNIStim firmware 3.2 for the their IP phones;
– 0604DCJ for Phase II IP Phones (2001, 2002 & 2004),
– 0621C6M for IP Phone 2007,
– 0623C6N, 0624C6N, 0625C6N and 0627C6N for IP Phone 1110, 1120E, 1140E and 1150E respectively and
– 062AC6N for IP Phone 1210, 1220, and 1230
There is a lot of information in product bulletin which can be found here.
I did notice that Nortel has made changes in this firmware release that will now allow the Cache IP option to function when the Voice VLAN (via automatic methods such as DHCP, LLDP-MED) is also enabled. Previously these features were exclusive of each other and wouldn’t operate together. While the Cache IP option violates some basic DHCP principles it provides a solution should your DHCP server be down while the phone is performing it’s initial boot up or renewing it’s DHCP lease. I’ve had the Cache IP option save me on a number of occasions and since I use DHCP lease times of at least 3 months for all IP phones I’ve never had an issue with IP address conflicts. Here’s the text from the product bulletin concerning the change to the Cache IP feature;
Recall that the ability to provision “Cached IP” is provided within the IP Phones to allow phones, which has been configured to use DHCP, to remain in service in the event of a DHCP server failure (or loss of connection to the DHCP server). The use of a cached IP address, however, is not compliant to the DHCP specification. Therefore the ability to decide whether one wishes to cache the IP address or not is a configurable option. The default setting is compliant with the DHCP specification resulting in service denial until connection to the DHCP server can be re-established. Only if Cached IP is enabled will the phone be more resilient in the event of broken communication to the DHCP server. In UNIStim firmware prior to release 3.2 the ability to provision Cached IP was not available – and was greyed out in the manual configuration menu – when the Voice VLAN was configured as Auto. Since in the past, “Auto” meant that the VLAN ID was obtained from DHCP in a Nortel vendor option, caching the IP address had no value if the phone could not also obtain its Voice VLAN ID. With UNIStim firmware release 3.2, the ability to configure Cached IP is now mutually exclusive to whether the Voice VLAN is configured as Auto. Since the Voice VLAN can also be obtained automatically from LLDP, the request to cache the IP address is valid. But also to ensure the phone still operated even if the Voice VLAN ID is being obtained from DHCP as well, if Cached IP is enabled, then the Voice VLAN is cached along with the IP address.
There are also a number of new Info block options that might be of interest to folks so I would advise that you review the product bulletin.
Cheers!
Have you had any issues with bluetooth headsets after this upgrade?
Mine stopped working, so I re-paired it, and now when I use it, I get silence, then an ever increase in volume of static, then finally it cuts out.
Hi Bill,
I haven’t actually loaded this specific firmware just yet but I am still using the Plantronics Voyager 510 with an 1150e and it works fine with the previous version of firmware. The older version and newer version included the following text concerning bluetooth headsets;
Some models of Plantronics Bluetooth headset may unexpectedly become unpaired.(applies to IP Phone 1140E and 1150E)
An issue was uncovered with certain Plantronics Bluetooth headsets (including the formerly validated Plantronics Voyager 510/510S) in which the headset may unexpectedly become unpaired. If the unpair occurs during an active call, all audio will be lost to and from the headset. In such a situation the call will remain active and the user is recommended to switch to handset or handsfree. Due to the severity of this issue, Nortel does not recommend the use of the Plantronics Voyager 510/510S headset. For a complete list of wired and wireless headsets that Nortel has confirmed provide acceptable audio quality when used in conjunction with Nortel IP Phones please refer to the product bulletin Headsets for Nortel IP Phones, P-2006-0084-Global-Rev7
Cheers!
This firmware has really been a bluetooth disaster for us.
The previously supported headsets are now no longer supported and nortel recommends a different brand entirely.
This is un-excusable, to tell your clients to throw away all the crap that was recommended.
I hope they have a better fix than telling us to waste as much money as nortel does.
I can certainly understand your frustration… I can only guess that there was a problem with the Bluetooth implementation in the Voyager 510 that created some significant problems that Nortel wasn’t able to workaround. Let me ask around to see if I can come up with a response from Nortel, although I know that won’t help you out.
Did you have any problems with the UNIStim 3.1 firmware release (0625C6J for the 1140e)?
Good Luck!
We actually jumped from 0625C4L to C6N so I can not pinpoint the exact release of firmware that caused this issue.
Everything worked great on 0625C4L
Usually the Bluetooth headsets are designed more to spec than I would expect the Nortel phone to be designed to spec.
There is a general problem with Bluetooth headsets on C6N. A new version will be released within the next week or so.
Just recieved new firmware 0625C6O and is working now.
Do you have to have a support login to get it? I do not see it on the regular downloads for 1140e.
Our sales engineer sent it to us.
Our rep got back to me, and I now have the new firmware loaded.
So far so good, my headset works again.
I will be testing the rest tommorow.
C6O has been posted to http://www.nortel.com/support
Hello,
I’m curious if there are people who has experience with the I200x serie and TFTP server for using to connect a phone to the CS1000 Release 5.5 based on a list with MAC adresses and node?
Hi Montananl,
I believe you’re referring to the new info block capability. Unfortunately I haven’t yet tested this myself although I’m still running release 4.5.
You may have better luck posting in the Tek-Tips forum; http://www.tek-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=798
Good Luck!
Hi Michael,
We are preparing for a firmwareupgrade on our 1140e to C6O. During testing the stuff, we see that with lldp enabled the dhcp config will be ignored. We want to configure the phone with dhcp in combination with lldp. In previous releases it works ok. It seems a bug or maybe a side effect of combination of configurations
Do you have experience with this firmware ?
Gr. Frans
Hi Frans,
I have not yet loaded 0625C60 on any of my Signaling Servers so I haven’t done any testing as of yet. We use both LLDP (VLAN and QoS assignment) and DHCP (IP address and S1 & S2 information) on all of our i2002/i2004, 1140e and 1150e phones. I would be very surprised if this feature didn’t work. Perhaps your confusing some of the options. You can’t use LLDP and DHCP for VLAN assignment, it’s either one or the other. LLDP-MED will provide the phone the voice VLAN ID and then the phone will make a DHCP request in that VLAN looking for DHCP Option 128 if the phone is configured for Full DHCP.
You can’t using DHCP Option 191 in combination with LLDP because they are redundant.
If you look at this post the options should be similar although there are a few new options.
A few references;
http://blog.michaelfmcnamara.com/2007/10/nortel-i2002i2004-internet-telephone/
http://blog.michaelfmcnamara.com/2007/10/dhcp-options-voip/
http://blog.michaelfmcnamara.com/2007/10/dhcp-options-voip-part-2/
http://blog.michaelfmcnamara.com/2007/10/nortel-ers-5520-pwr-switch/
Let me know how you make out… I’ll try to load the new firmware just to confirm that it works properly.
Thanks for the comment!
We have had a real issue with phones not working if the DHCP server fails which has been primarily caused by the CACHED IP option not supporting the VLAN=AUTO option. I have loaded version 3.2 of the firmware and tested again (because 3.2 states this is fixed!) and it still fails… the phone boots up and works for 20-30 seconds and then drops back to “Starting DHCP” – Server Unreachable.
If I manually assign the VLAN information then the phone works fine using it’s cached IP.
I was under the impression that 3.2 fixed the cached IP issues by caching the VLAN information too?!
I have tried the 3.4 version but that does the same.
Any ideas!?
Rob
Hi Rob,
You might want to post specific problems in the discussion forums; http://forums.networkinfrastructure.info/nortel-ip-telephony/
With that said how are you assigning the voice VLAN?
Are you using DHCP to assign the voice VLAN ID or are you using LLDP-MED/ADAC to assign the voice VLAN ID from the Ethernet switch.
If you configure VOICE VLAN=AUTO I believe the phone removes the CACHED IP = YES/NO from the configuration options. If you are using LLDP-MED I believe the caching feature still works although I’m not exactly sure.
In my 6 years of using VoIP I’ve never had an issue with our DHCP server (VitalQIP) that caused a service interruption to our IP phones. If you are concerned about your DHCP server there are options out there that provide DHCP services in a high-availability configuration.
Good Luck!
Thanks for the response Michael.
I am using VLAN=AUTO… the statement at the top of this page (and on the 3.2 bulletin) states..
“Since the Voice VLAN can also be obtained automatically from LLDP, the request to cache the IP address is valid. But also to ensure the phone still operated even if the Voice VLAN ID is being obtained from DHCP as well, if Cached IP is enabled, then the Voice VLAN is cached along with the IP address.”
We had an issue recently when we lost power to the site, when the power came back online the DHCP server had a failure and took a long while to boot… our secondary DHCP server ran out of available addresses so the phones all failed until the primary became available.
Now, we can get around this issue by increasing the size of the scopes on the secondary or having a tertiary but I believe the phones should use their cached IP and VLAN information… it seems quite simple to me.
Rob
Hi Rob,
I’ll guess that you’re using DHCP and option 191 to assign the voice VLAN. If you leave VLAN=AUTO and leave LLDP=NO then the phone will look for DHCP Option 191.
Could you explain how your testing? I’m curious if your testing is including your standby DHCP server and if it’s sending a DHCP NAK which the IP phone might not be expecting.
So if the IP phone sends a DHCP request and receives nothing it should use the cached IP and VLAN if enabled. If the phone sends a DHCP request and receives a DHCP NAK (because the standby server is out of IP addresses) then the phone might not use the cached IP because it received a DHCP NAK.
So this might not help you in your scenario but I might be able to test in my lab if the cached IP and VLAN actually work when there is no DHCP server available.
Cheers!
The full config is as follows…
In the DATA VLAN we use option 227 VLAN-A to push the phone to use the Voice VLAN.
In the VOICE VLAN we use option 227 to setup the S1, S2 & general network settings for the phone (duplex, speed, etc)
In the VOICE VLAN we use option 230 to setup the other options like menu password, backlight timer, brightness, etc.
I have also used TFTP provision using option 66 within DHCP and the same still happens. I am guessing that the issue may have something to do with the phone needing to get a data VLAN address first, the PVID for each switch port is set to the data VLAN. However, saying that this shouldn’t really matter if the phone is caching the IP address and the VLAN and if I manually set the VLAN it doesn’t have any problems.
We use 470’s, 5500’s & 4500’s across the estate and we moved away from LLDP-ADAC because I have been told the 470’s didn’t support it so we were using MAC addresses which caused an admin overhead because lots of the phones fell outside the range that Nortel supplied!
Hope that all makes sense.
Rob
Hi Rob,
Just a quick note… DHCP options 226 and 227 are Avaya specific options. You should be using DHCP options 191 (VLAN ID) and 128 (S1 & S2).
In any case I tested this today using 0604DCJ on an 2002 IP phone. I found the “Cached IP” option was not visible in the phone configuration once I enabled “Voice VLAN”. With the phone configured for Voice VLAN ID over DHCP I booted the phone up. I then removed the DHCP forwarding/relay configuration on the lab ERS8600 switches. I rebooted the phone and the display returned “DHCP server unavailable”. I re-configured to the phone without Voice VLAN, and then enabled Cached IP. I then reconfigured Voice VLAN over DHCP and the phone now booted up properly. I removed the DHCP forwarding/relay configuration and rebooted the phone. The phone now sits at “Starting DHCP…”.
This would seem to confirm your findings although I’ll be curious to try the later firmware. You might want to try (if you haven’t already) enabling the Cached IP option prior to enabling the Voice VLAN option.
I would suggest you ask your voice reseller to open a ticket with Nortel. I will try to ask around to the few contacts I still have left at Nortel. Please let us know what you find out.
Cheers!
Thanks for the response Michael,
The Nortel documentation gives a long list of available DHCP options for the Nortel-i2004B and 227 & 230 are amongst them. We can’t use 128 or 191 due to other services on our network that use these options. Using 0625C60 software (and above) I get both the cached IP & auto VLAN options no matter what I select. We turn on the cached IP using a scope setting but I have set this manually as well (just in case!) and it still fails.
I have raised a ticket with Nortel and I will update this page with findings!
Thanks
I didn’t realize that there are different DHCP options if you use the Nortel-i2004B string, I’ll need to look into that.
I re-tested last night using LLDP-MED to assign the VLAN, as opposed to DHCP assigning the VLAN, and the cached IP option worked (although even upgrading the phone the option still doesn’t appear in the configuration menu whenever VOICE VLAN is set to Auto).
I will comment that it took quite some time before the phone actually booted, at least 2 or more minutes.
Cheers!
Another question or two to throw in there.
On C6O firmware if the LLDP fails for some reason, will the phone then try and use DHCP to find its Vlan info?
What if the DHCP scope that responds doesnt contain this info, does it then just use the NO VLAN option and fall into the native vlan for the switchport?
That was three questions technically, sorry.
Hi Shogaxx,
There is a “VLAN Fallback to Default” if LLDP-MED fails to provide the proper VLAN information to the phone. I would suggest you Google for “VLAN Fallback to Default VLAN”.
You can also post on the forums; http://forums.networkinfrastructure.info/nortel-ip-telephony/
Cheers!
I have a fault in with Nortel about this now so I will let you know the outcome. I have already submitted some packet traces showing the fault and my supplier has recreated the problem too. Watch this space…
We have issues in upgrding the Nortel Ip-1140E phones, The switch(Opt-61C SG) was upgraded from Rls 4.50W to 5.50J as part of the Switch upgrade i believe we require to have the Ip-Phones to be upgraded to the current firmware.
While we try to do the phone firmware upgrade in specific to 1140E Ip-Phones from 0625C3C to 0625C6R the phone tries to pick up the software & goes into reboot after that the phone comes back up & says Start DHCP….
Then after that it keeps hanging after that & does not do anything further i have waited for a while & see that it keeps rebooting after every 4-5mins & does not seem to come up at all.
I have made sure that i have the DHCP scope are set right i have defined options 128 (Nortel-i2004-A) , 191(VLAN-2063.), 224(Nortel-i2004-B) inspite of it the phone does not seem to come up. But when you revert back the firmware from 0625C6R to 0625C3C the phones come up with no issues.
This happens to only Ip-1140E phones only & i have no issues with Ip-1120, 1220 series phones they are all in the current version of 0625C6T.
Yet an another thing that i have noticed in the phone is if i un check the VLan filter setting option in the Ip-1140E phones i am able to upgrade the phone firmware with no issues.
Can you please let me know what would be the default settings for the ip-1140E phones & what are the recommendations to get this issues fixed.
Hi Visu,
I’ve replied to your post on the discussion forums here.
Cheers!
Will the i2004 phase 0 & phase 1 IP phones operate on the new release 6 PBX software? The phones are currently working on PBX release 3.0 – looking to upgrade PBX software from 3.0 to 6.0…
Hi Chuck,
I believe they will work, actually yes they will work although that could and probably will change beyond perhaps 7.0 as Avaya moves to a SIP displacing UNIStim as the protocol of choice.
Cheers!
I have a Nortel IP Phone 1230 which keeps reverting to DHCP even though I’ve set the static IP that we use for the initial setup of these phones.
It looks as though it takes the static IP, never complains, or spits an error, but when it boots, it boots back to DHCP mode which will not work for us. We are using a static IP for the initial setup of the phones and are down to the last few phones before we’re done.
How can I get this phone to stop doing this?
Please and thanks!
dale
Dale,
Is the phone trying to update firmware when it boots? I’ve seen Nortel phones drop back to ‘defaults’ when they get certain types of Firmware update. We don’t use any static addressing at all now, even our test environment is fully DHCP because we have had so many issues with static DHCP. Can’t really suggest a fix for you other than putting a temporary DHCP server on the LAN you are using.
Tftpd32.exe is a good program which can put a DHCP server on your desktop PC or laptop if you need to get around the problem.
dear sir
we are using plantronics 975 with ip1140e and it works ok but in the time the battery flat off and i recharge it again the ip1140e do not reactivate the connection and the ip1140e it gos with continuing the last connection for that i have to reboot the ip1140e to make the connections again