We have an office that will get 9611G series IP phones, connecting via the WAN to the main servers (S8800 pair). Can you please give me some quick advice on how to ensure this doesn't turn into a nightmare (we're doing it ourselves, not an Avaya BP)? I have some test phones setup and working, but they were mostly manually configured with the IP, etc. Now we need to setup the new site to use DHCP for the IP phones, etc. If someone has a document that goes over the basics of how to do this kind of deployment or if you know where to find a doc like that, i'd appreciate it! We'd like to keep it as simple as possible, but also make sure it's flexible and not setup in such a way that we'd be in trouble later if we needed to make some changes. I'll ask some specific questions below though....
Basically, I want to be sure that....
- Phones can use DHCP to get an IP address.
- Phones will be on a different VLAN, but sharing the same physical connection as a PC that may end up on a different VLAN.
- Phones will need to be able to have their traffic marked on the LAN/WAN for QOS purposes (quality of service)
- Phones will need to register to the main server pair, but then re-register to their own local S8300 if the main servers are not available due to a WAN outage.
- Phones will need to know where to find the TFTP/HTTP server for getting firmeware updates, 46xxsettings.txt file, etc. I plan on using the Avaya MV-IPTEL program that I've been using for my test phones.
- Phones must end up in the correct IP Network Region and also assigned to the correction 'Location' so we can manage the bandwidth properly, make them use the correct ARS patterns, etc.
Some specific questions (I appreciate your help!)...
1:
DHCP server unavailable....how do you make sure the phones keep their old IP address if the remote site loses its WAN link and those phones must re-register to the local S8300 in something like a G430 gateway? I thought I heard there's an option on the phones/46xxsettings.txt file that you can tweak to be sure the phone will keep the IP it had when the DHCP server was last contacted? We want to be sure that if the WAN link goes down and the phones can't reach the DHCP server if they reboot, they will just timeout and keep the old address they have until the DHCP server accessible later.
2:
Register phones to 'processor ethernet' (PE - the main IP of the S8800 server pair) or C-LAN card? My understanding is that it's best to register these H.323 IP phones to the PE address.
3:
Backup server if main S8800 server pair is unavailable? Someone in the past mentioned that I can use the Network Regions form for the phones in question to define which LSP the phones would reregister to if the main S8800 pair was not available, like in a WAN outage situation. Is that true? If so, do I enter this on page 2 in the 'Backup Servers' section?
4:
IP-Network-Map? This is where you define the IP address range associated with the IP phones for a particular location, correct? So when the phone registers, CM knows this phone (based on its IP) should be in a certain network region, right? And when you define what 'location' is associated with this network region on the network region form, this puts the phone in that 'location' and your specific ARS entries for that location will be used for these phones....right?
5:
DHCP Option 242 I've played around with this using one IP phone. The entry below seems to work for DHCP. I'm just not sure if we need the full entry in the native/data VLAN or if we can simplify the data VLAN entry in DHCP option 242....because maybe the phone only needs to know what the voice VLAN is when it boots up and once it knows that it will reset and put itself on the voice VLAN and request an IP from DHCP for the voice VLAN???
Fake IP addresses for example purposes.
VLAN 2 (voice VLAN):
MCIPADD=123.111.111.333,MCPORT=1719,TFTPSRVR=123.444.555.666,HTTPSRVR=123.444.555.666,L2Q=1,TLSSRVR=123.444.555.666,TLSPORT=411,L2QVLAN=2
VLAN 1 (data/native VLAN):
MCIPADD=123.111.111.333,MCPORT=1719,TFTPSRVR=123.444.555.666,HTTPSRVR=123.444.555.666, L2Q=1,TLSSRVR=123.444.555.666,TLSPORT=411,L2QVLAN=2
For the native/data VLAN DHCP Otion 242 entry, could we get away with a very basic entry like this? L2Q=1,L2QVLAN=2
Do we only need to have a simple entry like that to tell the phone that the voice VLAN is 2, and then the phone reboots once it knows that and puts itself on the voice VLAN and contacts the DHCP server to get an IP for VLAN 2?
My Cisco LAN switch port setting looks like this, for my example:
switchport access VLAN 1
switchport mode access
switchport nonegotiate
switchport voice VLAN 2
spanning-tree bpduguard enable
Basically, I want to be sure that....
- Phones can use DHCP to get an IP address.
- Phones will be on a different VLAN, but sharing the same physical connection as a PC that may end up on a different VLAN.
- Phones will need to be able to have their traffic marked on the LAN/WAN for QOS purposes (quality of service)
- Phones will need to register to the main server pair, but then re-register to their own local S8300 if the main servers are not available due to a WAN outage.
- Phones will need to know where to find the TFTP/HTTP server for getting firmeware updates, 46xxsettings.txt file, etc. I plan on using the Avaya MV-IPTEL program that I've been using for my test phones.
- Phones must end up in the correct IP Network Region and also assigned to the correction 'Location' so we can manage the bandwidth properly, make them use the correct ARS patterns, etc.
Some specific questions (I appreciate your help!)...
1:
DHCP server unavailable....how do you make sure the phones keep their old IP address if the remote site loses its WAN link and those phones must re-register to the local S8300 in something like a G430 gateway? I thought I heard there's an option on the phones/46xxsettings.txt file that you can tweak to be sure the phone will keep the IP it had when the DHCP server was last contacted? We want to be sure that if the WAN link goes down and the phones can't reach the DHCP server if they reboot, they will just timeout and keep the old address they have until the DHCP server accessible later.
2:
Register phones to 'processor ethernet' (PE - the main IP of the S8800 server pair) or C-LAN card? My understanding is that it's best to register these H.323 IP phones to the PE address.
3:
Backup server if main S8800 server pair is unavailable? Someone in the past mentioned that I can use the Network Regions form for the phones in question to define which LSP the phones would reregister to if the main S8800 pair was not available, like in a WAN outage situation. Is that true? If so, do I enter this on page 2 in the 'Backup Servers' section?
4:
IP-Network-Map? This is where you define the IP address range associated with the IP phones for a particular location, correct? So when the phone registers, CM knows this phone (based on its IP) should be in a certain network region, right? And when you define what 'location' is associated with this network region on the network region form, this puts the phone in that 'location' and your specific ARS entries for that location will be used for these phones....right?
5:
DHCP Option 242 I've played around with this using one IP phone. The entry below seems to work for DHCP. I'm just not sure if we need the full entry in the native/data VLAN or if we can simplify the data VLAN entry in DHCP option 242....because maybe the phone only needs to know what the voice VLAN is when it boots up and once it knows that it will reset and put itself on the voice VLAN and request an IP from DHCP for the voice VLAN???
Fake IP addresses for example purposes.
VLAN 2 (voice VLAN):
MCIPADD=123.111.111.333,MCPORT=1719,TFTPSRVR=123.444.555.666,HTTPSRVR=123.444.555.666,L2Q=1,TLSSRVR=123.444.555.666,TLSPORT=411,L2QVLAN=2
VLAN 1 (data/native VLAN):
MCIPADD=123.111.111.333,MCPORT=1719,TFTPSRVR=123.444.555.666,HTTPSRVR=123.444.555.666, L2Q=1,TLSSRVR=123.444.555.666,TLSPORT=411,L2QVLAN=2
For the native/data VLAN DHCP Otion 242 entry, could we get away with a very basic entry like this? L2Q=1,L2QVLAN=2
Do we only need to have a simple entry like that to tell the phone that the voice VLAN is 2, and then the phone reboots once it knows that and puts itself on the voice VLAN and contacts the DHCP server to get an IP for VLAN 2?
My Cisco LAN switch port setting looks like this, for my example:
switchport access VLAN 1
switchport mode access
switchport nonegotiate
switchport voice VLAN 2
spanning-tree bpduguard enable