Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

Avaya BCM50s experience manufacturing issue

by

Well it would seem this isn’t the best way to be introducing the Avaya name. Avaya (formerly Nortel) has released a technical support bulletin advising customers and resellers of a potential problem with BCM50 v3.0 units that were recently shipped. The bulletin advises that the affected BCM50s will generally fail within days of installation due to a short on the motherboard. The bulletin also warns technicians not to swap parts between affected units and non-affected units although the bulletin is vague on giving solid reasons why other than to say “potential for the failure mode to cause damage to other components in the BCM50 including the hard drive. If the damaged parts are used in another BCM50 unit it might cause further damage to an otherwise good unit.”

How can I tell which BCM50s are affected?

You need to check the following three items;

1) PEC Code:  NT9T6502E5  (BCM50 3.0)

2) Data of Manufacture: October 24, 2009 through and including November 26, 2009

3) Serial number starting NNTMENxxxxxx (units with serial numbers starting NNTMHDxxxxxx are not affected)

Have a look at the graphic below from Avaya included in the technical support bulletin.

Cheers!

Reference;

2009009889.4.pdf

UNIStim Firmware Release 4.0 for Nortel IP Phones

by

Nortel 1165e IP Phone
Nortel 1165e IP Phone

Nortel has released UNIStim firmware 4.0  for their IP phones;

  • 0621C7A for IP Phone 2007,
  • 0623C7F, 0624C7F, 0625C7F and 0627C7F for IP Phone 1110, 1120E, 1140E and 1150E respectively and
  • 062AC7F for IP Phone 1210, 1220, and 1230

No UNIStim software release 4.0 is being offered for the Phase II IP Phone 2001, Phase II IP Phone 2002, and Phase II IP Phone 2004.  The Nortel IP Phone 200x series (except the 2007) was manufacture discontinued as of November 29, 2009.

The enhancements available with UNIStim software release 4.0 for IP Phones include:

  • UNIStim VPN Client (UVC) in the IP Phone 1100 series
  • Feature and Application Licensing
  • Secure Signaling using DTLS
  • Secure Call Recording (SCR)
  • Designed for Operability (DfO)
  • Enhancements to Certificate Support

The product bulletin for the 4.0 release listed the same fixes (two of which were for the 2004 model) as the previous UNIStim 3.4 release. I’m going to guess that someone forgot to update that section of the product bulletin with some relevant information.

The big news with this release is the built in VPN client for the IP Phone 1100 series, the UNIStim VPN Client (UVC). Unfortunately this initial release doesn’t support encrypting/tunneling the traffic to/from the PC port, only the traffic to/from the Signaling Server and Voice Gateway Media Cards is encrypted with the VPN connection. The initial release is certified to work wtih Nortel VPN Router (NVR) family running software release 8.00 or greater. (NVR software release 8.00 has been qualified on the NVR 1010, 1050, 1100, 600, 1600, 17xx, 27×0, 4600 and 5000).

Please refer to the release notes and the product bulletin for complete details.

Cheers!

Nortel IP Softphone 2050 Release 3.4

by

Nortel has released the IP Softphone 2050 Release 3.4 (Build 3.4.003) for Windows PC.

The following enhancements are available;

  • Support for Microsoft Windows 7
  • Log file improvements

The following issues have been resolved;

  • (090304-89596) IP Softphone 2050 freezes when calls are answered on Nortel USB Headset
  • (081009-83319) IP Softphone 2050/3.3 One-way speech path
  • (090903-09977) IP Softphone 2050 getting double DTMF tones on CS2100
  • (090317-99855) New Call Voice Notification fails to say the CLID properly
  • (090526-47034) Translation error in GUI – correct word “Release” in French, German and Spanish
  • (090515-40414) Agent voice is recorded on IPCR after Mute key is activated
  • (090510-36664) IP Softphone 2050 Logs have no limit in size

There were some qualifications that should be mentioned. The release notes specifically indicate that 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 are not supported although it doesn’t mention that they don’t work. The release notes also make mention that while the IP Softphone 2050 may run in VDI (Virtual Desktop Interface) from both VM Ware and Citrix Xen Desktop, neither are supported. I couldn’t imaging the potential issues of running a softphone in a VDI configuration but I guess someone has been toying with the idea.

We have about ten Contact Center users utilizing the IP Softphone 2050 v3.x with Contact Center 6 on a Nortel Succession 1000 4.5 Call Server. These users work out of their home and are connected across a Juniper SSL VPN SA4000 appliance utilizing Juniper’s Network Connect client software. We provide them an HP NC6900 laptop with all the software and they connect to their home network and Internet broadband. It’s been very successful so long as the Internet broadband connection remains stable.

You can find the complete release notes here and here.

Cheers!

Nortel IP Telephony Deployment Technical Configuration Guide

by

TelephonyIPDeployment1Nortel released a new version of the Nortel IP Telephony Deployment Technical Configuration Guide in September 2009 that is really another treasure trove of technical information for Nortel customers.  You’ll recall back in September that I posted about the Nortel Large Campus Technical Solution Guide. This is another highly technical document written with focus on IP telephony and the use of Nortel specific Ethernet switching products.

The document covers standalone Nortel IP Phone sets and how they can be deployed on various Nortel switches. It also covers features on Nortel switches related to VoIP with configuration examples. Overall, topics that will be covered include the following:

Ethernet switch platforms that support PoE:

  • Ethernet Switch 470-PWR
  • Ethernet Routing Switch 5xxx: 5520-24T-PWR, 5220-48T-PWR, 5650TD-PWR, 5698TFD-PWR,
  • Ethernet Routing Switch 45xx: 4526T-PWR, 4550T-PWR, 4524GT-PWR, 4526GTX-PWR, 4548GT-PWR
  • Ethernet Routing Switch 25xx: 2526T-PWR, 2550T-PWR
  • Ethernet Routing Switch 8300

VoIP technologies:

  • Power over Ethernet (PoE)
  • Auto configuration via DHCP for VoIP Phone sets
  • Auto provisioning using tftp or http
  • Quality over Service (QoS)
  • Authentication using EAPoL (802.1x)
  • Auto Detection Auto Configuration (ADAC)
  • LLDP

If you are working with Nortel IP telephony products I would highly recommend you give this document a quick review.  It’s about 257 pages in length it’s very detailed providing lots of examples.

Cheers!

Factory Reset Nortel IP Phone

by

I know I’ve been asked this question quiet frequently and I finally got around to digging up the answer. Here are the details from the Nortel technical configuration guide with a few grammar changes and some formatting thrown in.

You can factory reset a Nortel IP phone that is already running UNIStim firmware release 3.0 or later.  You will need to be running the following firmware at a minimum for this procedure to work;
IP 1110 (0623C6E), IP 1120E (0624C6E), IP 1140E (0625C6E), IP 1150E (0627C6E), IP 1210 (062AC6E), IP 1220 (062AC6E), IP 1230 (062AC6E), IP 2001 (0604DCD), IP 2002 (0604DCD), IP 2004 (0604DCD), and IP 2007 (0621C6D).

The UNIStim firmware release 3.0 for IP Phones introduces the ability to restore an IP Phone to a “factory default” configuration. This can be useful when redeploying an IP Phone from one location to another, when starting to use an IP Phone with unknown history, or to reset to a known baseline configuration.

With UNIStim firmware release 3.0, and greater, the following keypad sequence is used to reset all provisioning parameters to a “factory default”:

[*][*][7][3][6][3][9][MAC][#][#]

Where the MAC corresponds to the MAC address of the IP Phone which can be found on a label on the back of the IP Phone.

Since a MAC address can contain the letters A through F, the letters A, B and C can be entered via the [2] key on the dial pad, and letters D, E and F can be entered via the [3] key.

For example, an IP Phone with MAC address 00:19:E1:E2:17:12 would be reset to “factory default” when the sequence **73639001931321712## is entered on the keypad.

Cheers!

Recent Posts

Categories

SUBSCRIBE BY EMAIL