Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

Nortel IP Softphone 2050 Licensing Server

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ip_softphone_2050_317x4741We recently started deploying the Nortel IP 2050 Softphone v3.x for our work-from-home Contact Center agent pilot. With software release v3.x or higher you need a licensing server somewhere in your network. That means that yes you need to purchase licenses for all your concurrent 2050 users. It’s my understanding that Nortel has licensed various technologies in the 2050 that required it to deploy a licensing server as set forth in the licensing agreements with the various third parties.

We chose to deploy the Nortel IP Softphone 2050 Licensing Server on the same server that where we had the Nortel Enterprise Management System (NMS) application and the Nortel Enterprise Switch Manager (ESM) application already installed.

If your testing out the solution there’s no need to worry about needing a licensing server on day one as each installation of the 2050 comes with a 30 day demo/evaluation license.

After you have installed the License Server you’ll need to replace the file “counted.lic” in C:\Program Files\Nortel\IP Softphone 2050 Licensing Server (or where ever you’ve installed the software) with the license file you received from your reseller.

You can issue a “lmstat -a” from the installation director and it will output the number of total licenses installed and the number of available licenses. When you add licenses you just need to replace the file “counted.lic” and then restart the “Nortel IP Softphone 2050 Licensing Server Service” service.

Cheers!

What’s going to happen to Nortel?

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It’s quite clear from the poll (included below) that the vast majority of Nortel customers were originally very content to take a “wait and see” approach to the bankruptcy filing. I created that poll on January 15, 2009. It’s now March 29, 2009 more than 90 days later and I get the impression that a lot of folks are really scratching their heads. I would almost be curious to see how many folks have changed their mind in the last 90+ days.

[poll id=”4″ type=”result”]

There are all sorts of rumors around the street these days… everything from a sale to a complete divestiture of the company and it’s assets. While it appears that it’s still business as usual at Nortel (product is readily available, new software releases are being released, support is still responsive) you have to wonder what’s going on and what the end game might look like.

I’ve personally had Brocade (Foundry), Cisco, HP, and Juniper in to discuss their enterprise product offers around LAN/WAN routing/switching.  We have quite a few small and large projects that are literally in limbo and I’m not sure how much more uncertainty we (I) as a customer can withstand. I’m curious to what people think today about Nortel?

[poll id=”5″]

I’m interested in hearing your comments and/or thoughts?

Cheers!

Issues with wireless roaming and Ralink chipsets?

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We recently needed to replace the USB based wireless adapter we use in our CoWs (cart on wheels). The legacy D-Link DWL-AG132 (802.11a/g) was no longer being manufactured and/or available from suppliers so we selected the D-Link DWL-160 (802.11n/a/b/g) and that’s were the fun started. We utilize HP Thin Clients on our carts and dwa-160have been pairing them with USB adapters for the past year and a half (saves on having to purchase the chassis expansion kit and the PCI card).

Our initial tests showed no problems in connecting to our Motorola RFS7000 with AP300 (802.11a/b/g) radios utilizing 802.1x (WPA/TKIP). A few weeks later though we learned we had a problem with the combination and we eventually discovered that the problems revolved around roaming. We noticed that the DWL-160 didn’t want to roam until it had lost complete signal to the AP it was associated to and then only after about 10 – 15 seconds would it roam to another APl. We had a really large project and the time frame was extremely tight so we decided to run out and pick-up a different adapter. So we purchased a Cisco Linksys wusb600n(WUSB600N) Wireless-N USB Network Adapter with Dual-Band. We decided to simplify our testing environment by removing the Windows XP Embedded (Thin Client) and test on a simple Windows XP SP2 laptop. We also removed the authentication (802.1x) and encryption (WPA/TKIP) and just test using an open network. We quickly noticed that the problem was not only evident at the 2.4Ghz frequency (802.11b/g) but also evident at the 5 Ghz frequency (802.11a). The big surprise came we noticed that the Linksys behaved exactly like the D-Link in that it would not roam which would lead to poor connectivity. We started to peel back the onion and almost immediately found that both products were based on the Ralink Technologies chipset (RT-2870).

We’ve performed multiple wireless packet traces using AirPCAP and WireShark and they don’t show any issues with the wireless access points, however, they do show a lack of probing and some odd behavior by the wireless adapters (STA).

We’re in contact with both Motorola and Ralink Technologies and we have tried Ralink’s reference drivers (1.4.1) along with a beta driver they have provided but we haven’t seen any real improvement. We did find that if you enable “Fast roaming”, which can be found the in the Advanced Properties of the RA utility the STA behaves much better but it’s still a world apart from the roaming performance that we’re accustom to.

Has anyone else seen any issues with either the D-Link DWL-160 or the Linksys WUSB600N in a corporate network with respect to roaming? I can’t imagine that we’re the first folks to stumble upon this issue given that Ralink Technologies chipsets are in all these products.

Cheers!

Home Telecommuting

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I’ve talked about telecommuting myself from time to time and it seems like a lot of people are talking about it these days. And while gas prices have come down considerably from the records set during the 2008 summer the economic woes are really massing to drive both companies and workers to seriously look at home telecommuting.

Within my organization we’ve been testing different technologies and solutions over the past 6 months. We broke the all the options down into two basic classes. The first was an all hardware solution while the second was an all software solution. A standard leased laptop was necessary to provide the end user (call center agent) access to the back-end applications necessary to-do his/her work. We also didn’t want to involve any home personal computers for the purpose of security and regulatory compliance.

All Hardware

  • Nortel Business Secure Router 222
  • Nortel 1150e IP Phone
  • Standard leased laptop

All Software

  • Standard leased laptop
  • Nortel i2050 IP Softphone
  • Juniper SSL VPN Client (Network Connect)

When you factor in all the ISM licensing costs the all hardware solution starts to get very pricey but will provide the best possible quality and stability. On the flip side the all software solution will be more cost effective but could provide less quality and depending on the applications being run could by less stable over an 8 to 12 hour shift (call center agent).

We’ve had about 5 users (2 all hardware, 3 all software) deployed over the past few months with great success. We’ve had a number of issues with the local cable provider (Comcast Cable) going up and down occasionally but those problems were resolved when a cable technician replaced a splitter at the pole.

The other issue we needed to tackle was how to provide remote control support for our Help Desk and Engineers over the Internet. We turned to Ultra VNC and are using it’s Single Click solution in conjunction with it’s repeater add-on. It provides a great cost effective solution to using a commercial solution such as WebEx or GoToMyPC.

Cheers!

RSMLT Configurations

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We recently started deploying RSMLT in place of VRRP and have run into very few problems. With that said there is one option that is disabled by default that is a must for anyone running in an RSMLT configuration. Since the peer IP addresses are learned dynamically a problem can occur if both ERS 8600 switches go down but only one of them returns to service. In my environment we’ve been using .1 and .2 for our ERS8600 interfaces with DHCP serving up .1 as the default gateway. If the .1 ERS8600 never recovers the .2 ERS8600 will never be able to learn the IP peer interface and hence will not be able to answer requests for .1 from the DHCP clients.

I would advise anyone using RSMLT to enable rsmlt-edge-support with the following command; config ip rsmlt rsmlt-edge-support enable. You will need to be running software release 4.1.4 or later.

RSMLT implementation does not use a Virtual IP address but instead uses Physical IP addresses for redundancy. At the same time, RSMLT can be deployed in either L3/routed configurations, or L2/edge configurations, where previously one might have used VRRP (and back-up master). Now previously, if there was a power outage or shutdown of both switches within a Dual Core IST pair and for some reason only one switch came back-up, clients using the powered-off switch’s IP/MAC as their default gateway would lose connectivity to the network. In such a scenario, even through RSMLT is enabled on the switch it was unable to backup for the Peer as it was unaware of the Peer’s IP/MAC address. With this new feature, the RSMLT Peer’s IP and MAC addresses are stored in the config file and will be used upon next reboot, if the IST link does not become active and operational. Otherwise, the switches will learn from their Peer as normal; see below for additional information.

This feature can be enabled/disabled by the following CLI command:

config ip rsmlt rsmlt-edge-support <enable/disable>

When the configuration file is saved, if the rsmlt-edge-support flag is enabled and RSMLT peer is UP, the peer IP address and MAC address is also automatically saved.

The peer information is cleared by the following CLI command.

config ip rsmlt clear-rsmlt-peer [<vlanId>]

NOTE: if the peer information is cleared the switch could stop forwarding for the peer.

After both the Dual Core IST switches have come back-up, and if the IST comes up and is operational, if a RSMLT Peer enabled message is received from the peer, then normal RSMLT operation is followed. If the peer has either an IP or MAC change, then a new save config must be performed in order for the new information to be saved, and RSMLT L2 Edge support to operate correctly. However, if the IST Peer up message is not received (for example RSMLT is not enabled properly) and the rsmltedge- forward flag is enabled, then first the RSMLT Hold down timer is started to allow routing protocols to converge; during this time user operation could be affected. Once the hold down timer expires, saved peer information is picked up and Switch starts to backup for the Peer by adding the previously saved MAC and ARP records. The Holdup timer is then started and once this timer expires the previously added MAC and ARP records are deleted and the switch stops backing up for the Peer, as the Peer is not running proper RSMLT for the VLAN. It should be noted that RSMLT is a per VLAN parameter, and therefore all affects are on a per VLAN basis, not necessarily per switch. In L2 Edge support mode the Local values of the HoldDown timer (default value of 60 seconds) and HoldUp timer (default value of 180 seconds) will be used.

Cheers!

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