[ad name=”ad-articlebodysq”]When Nortel originally released the ADAC (Automatic Detection And Configuration) feature in the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch it required the switch to be pre-programmed with all the possible MAC addresses that an IP phone might connect with. The switch applied a dynamic configuration to any switch port where ADAC was enabled and the MAC address of the device was within the ADAC MAC address table range. In the article entitled, Nortel ERS 5520 PwR Switch, I documented a list of MAC address ranges to add to the ADAC configuration. In a subsquent article entitled, ERS 5520 Switch v5.1 Software, I surmised that it was no longer necessary to maintain the ADAC MAC address table.

It would now appear that my assumption was totally wrong.

The remote site that had the problem never had the ADAC MAC address table updated beyond what is in the default configuration. When the phone booted into BOOTC mode to perform the upgrade it wasn’t sending the necessary LLDP information to the switch so the switch wasn’t adding the voice VLAN to the port. The only problem was that the phone was using the voice VLAN tag and original IP address so while it’s requests made it to the server the phone never recieved an answer because the voice VLAN was not a member of the port that the phone was connected to. Once we added all the MAC addresses to the ADAC table everything starting working properly. Now when the IP phone booted into BOOTC mode ADAC immediately recognized the MAC address and applied the voice VLAN to the switch port allowing the IP phone to communicate with the SRG50 and the Succession 1000M Signaling Server.

no adac mac-range-table
adac mac-range-table low-end 00:0a:e4:75:00:00 high-end 00:0a:e4:75:ff:ff
adac mac-range-table low-end 00:13:65:00:00:00 high-end 00:13:65:ff:ff:ff
adac mac-range-table low-end 00:14:c2:00:00:00 high-end 00:14:c2:ff:ff:ff
adac mac-range-table low-end 00:16:ca:00:00:00 high-end 00:16:ca:ff:ff:ff
adac mac-range-table low-end 00:17:65:00:00:00 high-end 00:17:65:ff:ff:ff
adac mac-range-table low-end 00:18:b0:00:00:00 high-end 00:18:b0:ff:ff:ff
adac mac-range-table low-end 00:19:69:00:00:00 high-end 00:19:69:ff:ff:ff
adac mac-range-table low-end 00:19:e1:00:00:00 high-end 00:19:e1:ff:ff:ff
adac mac-range-table low-end 00:1b:ba:00:00:00 high-end 00:1b:ba:ff:ff:ff
adac mac-range-table low-end 00:1e:ca:00:00:00 high-end 00:1e:ca:ff:ff:ff
adac mac-range-table low-end 00:22:67:00:00:00 high-end 00:22:67:ff:ff:ff

The short story here is that you need to maintain the ADAC MAC address table if you want to avoid any IP phone firmware upgrade issues.

As a side note you also need to make sure that you disable filter-unregistered-frames on all switch ports.

I’ve inquired with Nortel about this problem but I’m still waiting for a response. It’s quite possible that this issue has already been “discovered” and will be resolved in a future release (or even resolved in this release).

Cheers!

We have another large IP phone deployment coming up in the next few months and thought it would be a good time to upgrade prior to deploying potentially another 300+ IP phones.

We’ve just started upgrading our Data Center (our testbed if you will) with the latest firmware.

• 0604DCG for Phase II IP Phones (2001, 2002 & 2004),
• 0621C6H for IP Phone 2007,
• 0623C6J, 0624C6J, 0625C6J and 0627C6J for IP Phone 1110, 1120E, 1140E and 1150E respectively
• 062AC6J for IP Phone 1210, 1220, and 1230

I’m happy to report that everything appears to be working properly. The regular i2002 and i2004 handsets work fine. The 1140e works fine with the Plantronics Bluetooh headset and the 1150es still work fine in our three call centers. We are using LLDP/ADAC with all of our phones as a way to standardize their configuration. We utilize CRQM for Contact Recording and that seemed to work fine along with Contact Center 6.0 when used with the 1150e phones.

We did have one or two problems with the Default PVID changing on the Nortel ERS 5520 switch after the upgrade (power cycle). I initially thought it was related to our previous experiences with ADAC which I discussed in this post. However, this problem only involved the PVID and not the entire VLAN so additional testing will probably be required to try and isolate this issue.

I have yet to test either of the new provisioning options, including the new DHCP option (“Nortel-i2004-B”)  or the new “Info Block” files retrieved over TFTP. I talked about the new DHCP options when firmware 2.3 was released back in May 2008.  I’m curious if either of these options will help ease the initial configuration of the IP handsets.

You can find the release notes for the Nortel UNIStim Release 3.1 here.

Cheers!
[ad name=”ad-articlefooter”]

As a rule of thumb I enable Spanning Tree with Fast Learning on all our edge switches since the auto MDI-X feature makes it very easy for a user or inattentive network engineer to physically put a loop in the connect by connecting to edge ports with the same patch cable.

Cheers!

Update: Thursday December 18, 2008

I’ve fixed the broken link above… Thanks Bob!

The vast majority of Internet telephones are defined as either “i2002” or “i2004“. The 1150e is a special phone designed for Call Centers and is defined as an IPACD The Wireless LAN phones (2210/2211/2212) should be defined as “i2004“. Here’s a list of phones and how their associated TN should be defined;

It took me quite a few minutes to figure out how to define the 1150e the first time we purchased one a few months ago.

Cheers!

“How can you reboot/reset an i2002/i2004 without unplugging it?”

Well there is good news. You can reboot them without physically disconnecting the CAT 5e/6 cable (or the power supply if your not using the PoE functionality). The bad news is the key sequence is fairly complicated. The following key sequence will also work for all of Nortel’s Internet telephones (i2002, i2004, i2007, 1120e, 1140e, 1150e).

Here’s the key sequence you’ll need to follow;

1. Mute key,
2. Up Navigation key,
3. Down Navigation key,
4. Up Navigation key,
5. Down Navigation key,
6. Up Navigation key,
7. Mute,
8. 9,
9. Goodbye key

Here’s a graphic that might make it a little easier to understand;

Once you strike those keys the i2002/i2004 Internet Telephone will reboot itself at which time you can reconfigure the phone by striking the four soft keys just below the display while the “Nortel Networks” logo displays on the LCD.

Here’s a picture of the Nortel i2002 Internet Telephone.

• 4×24 Character LCD
• Headset Jack
• Handsfree speaker phone
• 802.3af PoE (Class 2)
• Internal Switch (10/100Mbps)
• XAS (Application Gateway) support

Here’s a picture of the Nortel i2004 Internet Telephone.

• 8×24 Character LCD
• Headset Jack
• Handsfree speaker phone
• 802.3af PoE (Class 2)
• Internal Switch (10/100Mbps)
• XAS (Application Gateway) support

You can see that both phones are fairly similar and they run the same software/firmware. We use a single CAT5e/CAT6 cable drop to connect the phone and then connect the end-user’s desktop/laptop to the PC port on the phone. We employ QoS to guarantee that the voice VLAN gets the appropriate priority and queuing over the data VLAN.

How do you get started?

I will outline how we configure the i2002/i2004 phones for LLDP (Link Layer Discovery Protocol / 802.1ab) and LLDP-MED for the voice VLAN assignment. We configure every phone with the same configuration throughout the enterprise. We rely on LLDP and DHCP to provision the phones with site specific information such as voice VLAN, IP address, Succession Call Server, etc.
You can of course statically configure all that information into the phone manually but then you’d need to visit the phone anytime you needed to make a change and if you had to replace a phone you’d need to re-program it to match the original settings (assuming you had them documented somewhere).

As of August 3, 2007 the phones are shipping with firmware 0604D31. This firmware does NOT support LLDP and will not have an option to enable LLDP. In order to properly deploy LLDP on the Nortel i2002/i2004 Internet telephones you’ll need to be running firmware 0604DBG or later. In order to upgrade the phone you’ll need to get it to connect to the Call Server (that means you’ll probably need to static the configuration through the phone). Once the phone connects to the Call Server it will automatically pull down the latest firmware that has been installed on the Call Server.

If you don’t have a PoE (Power over Ethernet) switch you’ll need to use a power supply to power the phone. As the phone is booting you’ll need to strike the four soft buttons at the bottom of the display window while the text “Nortel Networks” is being displayed. This will allow you to confirm that the phone is configured properly from the factory.

You should configure the i2002/i2004 IP phone as follows; (depending on what version of firmware is installed on the phone you might not see all the options below)

• EAP Enable? [1=Y, 0=N]: 0 (Default – no EAP authentication)
• LLDP Enable? [1=Y, 0=N]: 1 (we are going to need LLDP)
• DHCP? [0-No, 1-Yes]: 1 (we are going to need DHCP)
• DHCP: 0-Full, 1-Partial: 0 (we want to get a full DHCP response)
• Speed[0-A,1-10,2-100]: 0 (Auto negotiation)
• Cfg XAS? [0-No, 1-Yes]: 0 (Default – we don’t use XAS)
• Voice 802.1Q[0-N,1-Y]: 1 (Default – mark voice VLAN pakcets with 802.1Q tags)
• Voice VLAN? [0-N, 1-Y]: 1 (we want a Voice VLAN since we’ll be attaching a PC to the PC port)
• VLAN Cfg? 0- Auto, 1-Man: 0 (Automatically configure the Voice VLAN)
• LLCP MED? 0-No, 1-Yes: 1 (Voice VLAN will be configured using LLDP-MED)
• LANFILTER? [0-No, 1-Yes]: 1 (filter Voice VLAN packets from the PC port)
• Ctrl pBits[0-7,8-Au]: 8
• Media pBits[0-7,8-Au]: 8
• PC Port? [0-OFF, 1-ON]: 1 (Default – leave PC port enabled)
• Speed[0-A,1-10,2-100]: 0 (Default – leave Autonegotiation enabled on PC port)
• Data 802.1Q[0-N,1-Y]:1 (Default – mark data VLAN packets with 802.1Q tags)
• DATA VLAN? [0-N, 1-Y]: 0 (Default – we’re going to use the PVID on the switch port)
• Data pBits[0-7,8-Au]:8
• PCUntagAll? 0-No, 1-Yes: 0
• DUPLEX [0-AUTO, 1-FULL]: 0
• GARP Ignore? [0-No, 1-Yes]: 0
• PSK SRTP? [0-No, 1-Yes]: 0 (Default – you can encrypt the RTP stream if necessary)

If everything has been setup and configured properly (including the Call Server, network switch, DHCP server, etc) the phone will boot and will prompt you for a “Node Number” and “TN”.

I’ve jumped the gun by telling you how to configure the phone before configuring all the back-end equipment, including the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5520 PwR and the DHCP server. In my next installment I’ll cover how to configure the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5520 PwR and what you’ll need to configure in your DHCP server.

Troubleshooting

If the phone hangs with “Starting DHCP…” on the display for more than 60 seconds you’ll need to start troubleshooting. You’ll need to confirm that the phone is configured properly and you’ll need to confirm that it’s grabbing the proper IP address from the DHCP server. Just remember that the MAC address can be found on the back of the phone.

Cheers!