Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

Nortel 6100 Series Wireless LAN Handset

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I recently received a Nortel 6140 WLAN handset to test within our network as a possible replacement for the Nortel 2211 handset.

The Nortel 6140 supports IEEE 802.11 a/b/g wireless LANs. It features Push-To-Talk (PTT) and speaker phone capabilities.

The first question I had was “how do I get to the configuration?”

In order to enter the Admin menu you need to perform the following

• with handset powered off
• press and hold Green Key
• then press and release Orange Key
• then release Green Key when “Admin Menu” is displayed
• enter password (default 123456)
• use the navigation keys to scroll through the options and select menus

I’ve been really impressed with the call quality on the Nortel 2210 and 2211 so I’m sure I won’t be disappointed with the Nortel 6140. Just as a side note Nortel is OEMing the phones from Polycom (formerly Spectralink), and those folks know how to make some really good phones.

Cheers

Update April, 10, 2008

Out of the box the phone will boot up and display “No Reg Domain Set”. This pertains to which country the device is being operated in so that it can conform to the rules and regulations set forth in that country that govern 802.11 wireless frequencies.

Reg. (Regulatory) Domain
The Regulatory Domain defaults to None on the wireless handset display.
FCC requirements dictate that the menu for changing the domain be available by password, which in this case is the LINE button. To change the domain, press LINE and then enter the digits that represent the domain for the site. You must enter both digits.
The following are domain digits:
• 01—North America
• 02—Europe (except Spain and France) and Japan
• 04—Spain
• 05—France
• 06—Korea
As of this writing, Spain and France are adopting the general European
Regulatory rules. Check with the wireless LAN administrator or supplier for
the correct domain to enter in these countries.

Once you’ve set the regulatory domain you’ll be prompted for which radio you’d like to use; 802.11a, 802.11b/g, 802.11g only.

Cheers!

Nortel IP Phase 2 Phones != Leap Year

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I thought I had seen it all until this morning.

While my PC showed the date as Friday February 29, 2008 my Nortel 1140E phone showed the date as March 1, 2008 (actual display reads “CS1000 03/01 8:14AM”).

The time/date on the Nortel Call Server was correct along with the time/date on the Nortel Signaling Servers. This was one of the weirdest issues I had ever seen. We opened a ticket with our voice reseller and waited for a response. It wasn’t too long before we recieved a reponse from the reseller along with an PDF document from Nortel.

It seems Nortel has released a bulletin describing a problem with Leap year that affects all Nortel IP Phase 2 phones. Unfortunately there’s no solution other than waiting for March 1, 2008 to actually come around (tomorrow).

Cheers!

Nortel i2050 Softphone

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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!

ISC DHCP Server (Nortel VoIP)

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I’ve received quite few messages from folks trying to setup and configure the ISC DHCP server that often comes bundled with all the major Linux distributions for Nortel Internet Telephony. Nortel has several “Technical Configuration Guides” that outline how to configure Microsoft’s DHCP Server but I don’t believe they ever discuss the ISC DHCP server.

I will admit that I really don’t use the ISC DHCP server these days. We’ve been using Lucent’s VitalQIP IP Management software to manage our internal BOOTP/DHCP/DNS/DDNS needs for the past 10 years.

However, since there was so much interest I decided to setup a lab (at home) with a i2002 phone and a server running CentOS v5.0. I installed dhcp-3.0.5-7.el5 via YUM and came up with a sample dhcpd.conf file that anyone should be able to modify to meet their specific needs.

#
# DHCP Server Configuration file.
#   see /usr/share/doc/dhcp*/dhcpd.conf.sample
#
# Sample dhcpd.conf file for Nortel Internet Telephony
#
# Notes: example dhcpd.conf file to illustrate how to configure Nortel
# Internet Telephone specific DHCP options for i2002/i2004 Internet
# Telephones and 2210/2211 Wireless Phones.
#
# *** WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING ** WARNING ***
#
# This is just an sample file with specific IP information. You'll
# need to customize this file to your specific IP address scheme
# before you can use it in your environment.
#
# *** WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING ** WARNING ***
#

ddns-update-style none;
not authoritative;

option nortel-callserver code 128 = string;
option nortel-2245 code 151 = ip-address;

# Vendor Class for i2002/i2004/1120e/1140e/1150e Internet Telephones
class "Nortel-i2004-A" {
match if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 14) = "Nortel-i2004-A";
option nortel-callserver "Nortel-i2004-A,192.168.200.2:4100,1,5;192.168.200.2:4100,1,5.";
option vendor-class-identifier "Nortel-i2004-A";
next-server 192.168.0.10;
}

# Vendor Class for 2210/2211 Wireless Phones
class "Nortel-221x-A" {
match if substring(option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 13) = "Nortel-221x-A";
option nortel-callserver "Nortel-i2004-A,192.168.200.2:4100,1,5:192.168.200.2:4100,1,5.";
option nortel-2245 192.168.200.25;
option vendor-class-identifier "Nortel-221x-A";
next-server 192.168.0.10;
}

# Network Definition
shared-network "mynetwork" {
 subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
 option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
 option routers 192.168.0.1;
 option domain-name "acme.org";
 option domain-name-servers 192.168.0.1;
 default-lease-time 28800;
 max-lease-time 86400;

   # IP Address Pool for generic devices
   pool {
      range 192.168.0.50 192.168.0.100;
      deny members of "Nortel-i2004-A";
      deny members of "Nortel-221x-A";
   }

   # IP Address Pool for i2002/i2004/1120e/1140e/1150e
   pool {
      range 192.168.0.150 192.168.0.175;
      allow members of "Nortel-i2004-A";
      deny members of "Nortel-221x-A";
   }

   # IP Address Pool for 2210/2211
   pool {
      range 192.168.0.176 192.168.0.199;
      deny members of "Nortel-i2004-A";
      allow members of "Nortel-221x-A";
      }
 }
}

In the example above I setup two DHCP scopes; one for the standard hardwired Nortel Internet Telephones (Nortel-i2004-A) and another for the Nortel Wireless Phones (Nortel-221x-A). Hopefully this example should be fairly easy to follow just remember to edit all the site specific IP information.

Cheers!

Nortel Wireless Phones (VoWLAN)

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A few folks have asked me to comment on the Nortel Wireless Phones (VoWLAN). I currently have ~ 100 Nortel Wireless 2211 Phones deployed across six locations. One site has ~ 60 phones deployed across a very large hospital campus. You should know that the Nortel Wireless 2200 Series phones are OEM’d from Spectralink. Spectralink makes some really great wireless products and Nortel has chosen a good partner in their endeavor. I would honestly have to say that the product works well and I’m generally impressed by it. I also have ~ 10 Nortel Wireless 2210 Phones but we found these phones did not have as good a signal reception/strength as the 2211s nor did they hold up to the abuse of a health care environment well.

You’ll need a Nortel Succession Call Server (along with a Succession Signaling Server and Voice Gateway Media Card) configured for “IP Line” before you’ll be able to deploy any wireless phones. If you already have any of the Internet Telephones deployed then you have already have “IP Line”. Once you have your Call Server connected to the network you just need to deploy the Nortel WLAN IP Telephony Manager 2245 (Wireless Gateway). The 2245 wireless gateway converts the Spectralink Voice Priority (SVP) used by the phones to UNIStim/H.323 used by the backend Succession equipment. Of course you’ll need a wireless network(802.11b) in place to carry the traffic. We use Motorola’s WS5000 and WS5100 Wireless LAN Switches. We’re also in the process of evaluating the RFS7000 from Motorola.

Note: we’ve currently identified an issue with the WS5100 v3.x that causes the Nortel Wireless phones to randomly watchdog and reboot themselves. We’ve also identified this same problem on the RFS7000 v1.x. We are currently only providing VoWLAN services on Motorola Wireless LAN switches running v2.1.3 software. Motorola and Nortel are aware of the issue and are working towards a solution.

The Nortel 2245 wireless gateway will literally proxy all communications between the phones at the Succession backend equipment. This requires that the 2245 assign a proxy/secondary IP address for every wireless phone (this is done in the configuration of the 2245). From the wireless network standpoint the wireless phones will have an IP address issued by the DHCP server, but the 2245 will replace that IP address with a second IP address it will use to communicate with the backend Succession environment. This is so when the Succession backend tries to signal the phone it will send the traffic back to the 2245 wireless gateway which will then transcode the signal/data and send it the actual IP address of the wireless phone. The Nortel 2245 wireless gateway also works to provide QoS for the wireless voice traffic.

Nortel has just recently release the 6120 and 6140 Wireless Phones which support 802.11a/b/g wireless networks. I’ll be evaluating those in the coming months to see how they fair against the current products.

Technical Stuff
The Nortel 2210/2211 Wireless Phones can be configured in DHCP with the vendor class of “Nortel-221x-A”. They will accept the same DHCP option code of “128” with the same format as the i2002/i2004/1120e/1140e/1150e Internet Telephone. You’ll also need to pass DHCP option 151 (IP address of the 2245 server). Software upgrades are performed over TFTP using DHCP option 66 (IP address of TFTP server).

Hopefully that’s enough to give you the basics.

Cheers!

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