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!

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!

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!

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