It looks like another manufacturing issue with the Avaya/Nortel IP phones. I’m not sure if it’s just me but it seems there have been quite a few of these over the years. It looks like a hardware revision change (different flash memory) might be to blame.
If you recently purchased an Avaya/Nortel 1150e IP phone and that phone was manufactured between December 10, 2009 and December 25, 2009 you might need to RMA the phone. Apparently problems can appear when you try to upgrade the firmware/software on the phone.
In addition, if you recently purchased a new Avaya/Nortel 1150e IP phone you should not attempt to downgrade the firmware/software. There is now a minimum supported firmware/software version for all newly manufactured phones because of the hardware change.
You can view the official customer service bulletin here.
The 1150e IP phone is primarily designed as a Contact Center handset. It has no physical handset since Contact Center users traditionally use wired/wireless headsets. We have about 100 1150e IP phones deployed throughout the organization and have been very happy with the product.
Cheers!
Hi micheal, I know this isnt the right place to post a question, but i wasnt sure where i could go to ask. so here it goes. I have been reading oyour blog for a while and though you might be able to help. the issue i have been struggling for months now is we have a bcm 400 4.0 updates up to a few months ago. we have both digital and ip phones connected to the system we have on remote small office that is connect by a firewall-to-firewall vpn to the main office. our issue is that sometimes from ip phone to digital the digital phone caller will not be able to hear the person on the other line (ip phone) but the ip phone sometime can hear them. I was wondering if you have ever come across a similar situation. the way we have been able to work around it was to unplug the ip phone then plug it back on. one time we had to unplug the Digital phone then plug it back in.
I know this is informal but figured i try to reach out since i havent been able to come up with anything. thanks
Hi Eli,
You could post your problem over in the discussion forums.
Are the IP phones connected to the same LAN (same physical location) as the BCM and digital phones? You mentioned firewall to firewall VPN tunnel but I’m not sure if you’re saying the IP phones are on the far side of the VPN tunnel and the BCM and digital phones are on the near side of the VPN tunnel.
I’ve seen a lot of one-way-speech path issues over the past 10+ years… some are network related while others are software (i2002,i2004,SRG,BCM,CS1000) related.
I would advise you to make sure that you have all the latest patches on the BCM… Nortel/Avaya use to make these available on their support website although I’m not sure if that’s still the case.
Outside of that you could try and isolate the problem when it occurs. Can you ping the IP phone that’s having an issue from the BCM? Can you ping the BCM from the IP phone? (There’s an option in the phone to ping if you’re not aware). If you can perform a packet capture (port mirror) this can often help to identify the issue.
It’s a complex problem but you need to break it down into manageable parts and remove each of those parts from the equation, repeating the process over and over until you’ve located the issue.
The easiest thing to start with is to make sure that the latest updates are applied to the BCM. You may also need to look at the VPN/firewall and make sure that the tunnel isn’t intermittently dropping. The VPN tunnel is main mode tunnel right? Both sides can bring up the tunnel? (Main mode = static IP addressing on both endpoints).
Good Luck!
Hi Eli,
We are experiencing the idential issue…was wondering if you’d ever solved the problem?
Best,
S’
http://forums.networkinfrastructure.info/nortel-ip-telephony/bcm-remote-1140e-phones-occasionally-have-one-way-audio/
Is there SIP firmware for the 1150E or just Unistim?
Hi Justin,
I haven’t seen a SIP firmware for the 1150e myself, all the Avaya/Nortel documentation mentions the 1120e, 1140e and 1165e but nothing about the 1150e. I would think there probably is a SIP firmware somewhere since Avaya’s Contact Center software is being merged in with Avaya Session Manager which is an all SIP solution.
Cheers!
Michael, I have a interesting issue…. We recently upgraded one of our call centers to the 1150e. Everything seems to function properly except the conference feature. If a call comes into the acd group then to an agent, then the agent needs to conference in a doctor it seems that once the agent presses the conf key to connect all parties everybody is muted until the agent presses the line key the call is on the the agent is dropped and the 2 parties are connected. Confused yet????? The old sets in use were 2004i’s and they work fine.
Hi Dave,
I’m going to guess that’s a known bug… what version of software are you running on your CS1000? I’m running full blown Avaya Contact Center off a CS1000E with software release v7.5 and about 25 1150e IP phones. Although we have the latest DEP list and even a few unreleased (controlled availability) patches for the virtual trunk on the Signaling Servers. I would probably suggest you start with having your voice reseller applied the latest DEP list, there are a few patches required for the 1150e depending on your software release.
Good Luck!