Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

Avaya IP Phone 1150E Stop Shipment

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Avaya 1150e IP PhoneIt looks like another manufacturing issue with the Avaya/Nortel IP phones. I’m not sure if it’s just me but it seems there have been quite a few of these over the years. It looks like a hardware revision change (different flash memory) might be to blame.

If you recently purchased an Avaya/Nortel 1150e IP phone and that phone was manufactured between December 10, 2009 and December 25, 2009 you might need to RMA the phone. Apparently problems can appear when you try to upgrade the firmware/software on the phone.

In addition, if you recently purchased a new Avaya/Nortel 1150e IP phone you should not attempt to downgrade the firmware/software. There is now a minimum supported firmware/software version for all newly manufactured phones because of the hardware change.

You can view the official customer service bulletin here.

The 1150e IP phone is primarily designed as a Contact Center handset. It has no physical handset since Contact Center users traditionally use wired/wireless headsets. We have about 100 1150e IP phones deployed throughout the organization and have been very happy with the product.

Cheers!

Nortel IP Phone 1200 Series

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Nortel 1220 IP PhoneWe recently purchased two Avaya/Nortel 1220 IP phones for testing in our environment as a possible replacement to the manufacture discontinued i2002/i2004 IP phones. We’re evaluating whether we should purchase the 1120e/1140e or the 1220/1230 as our standard IP phone going forward. An obvious concern going forward is that the phone support the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) so that it will be potentially capable of inter-operating with whatever soft switch or PBX we might have in the backend, be it the Avaya Aura or the legacy Avaya/Nortel Call Server 1000.

I should warn folks that the phone is sold with different SKUs depending if you want it running the UNIStim or SIP protocol. Upgrading the phone between the UNIStim and SIP firmwares is not supported by Avaya/Nortel. With that said I was successful in upgrading/converting a UNIStim SKU’d phone with the SIP firmware available from Avaya/Nortel’s Software Communication System (SCS). I did have some issues downgrading/converting the same set back to UNIStim, although I eventually found the workaround that was needed to trick the SIP firmware into believing I had newer firmware. I can share that with anyone that is interested or if anyone is stuck in a similar position.

The default configuration password is:

26567*738

Cheers!

Update: Monday February 22, 2010

It might be easier to remember the password as follows:

COLOR*SET

UNIStim Firmware Release 4.0 for Nortel IP Phones

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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

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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

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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!

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