J Series Registration Process

[BResource]

Hi All,

I was wondering if anyone knows the steps a J series phone goes through during registration.

I am trying to troubleshoot an SBC (Sangoma).

Knowing what files it pulls and what minimum settings and what it needs to maintain a registration would help greatly!

Many thanks!!!!

 

[Fr0gg3r - MaartenS]

I'll have some bad news for you.
Avaya J series is using a semi-propietary SIP protocol.

I tried to get the J series through an Audiocodes Mediant SBC2 years ago without success.

I talked to Avaya and Audiocodes to get it to work but never managed to get it working.
Avaya's feedback was that to get the J series through the Avaya ASBCE they had to change their own sbc ...

So how it works (if I recall correct)

The J series starts up.
It gets dhcp etc ..
Then the device itself (device extension) tries to register to the IPO using a REGISTER message.
After a successfull registration of the device the user automatically registers also, but it does that with an INVITE message.

-> Device itself registers using a REGISTER SIP message
-> User registers using an INVITE.

Now this is what I got working through our Audiocodes Mediant SBC.



The problem starts when you want to make calls, transfers, hold, etc...
-> callsetup is done with INFO messages.

A call setup from the J series is not done with an INVITE but with an INFO message (or at least I think is is an INFO, can be something else...)
This INFO contains the dialed number (example +33123456789) + some Avaya unreadable codes.
Then the IPO sends an INVITE back to that J series phone with the number. + IPO starts the outbound call to ITSP.
Your SBC will have no idea on what is going on.

The Avaya J series phones also have other firmware available: OpenSip firmware, so you can use normal sip.
But this apparently is not supported in combination with IPO. You will lose features when trying to use the OPensip firmware.

 

[BResource]

Really appreciate the reply!

What you say makes a lot of sense. When I was comparing packets the J series SIP messages have a lot more in them.

I managed to get the OpenSIP ones working though as you say with limited function.

That made me laugh to find out Avaya had to change their own SBC for the J series!

I wish they would come out with some friendlier phones!

 

[gwebster]

H.323/Digital phones on IPO are “stimulus” devices - i.e. all of the intelligence of feature activation/useage is in the IPO. The phone tells IPO that a physical button has been pressed and IPO tells the phone what to do.

Standard SIP is the opposite of that. The two ends are intelligent and have to know how to activate features. There are only about 19 features defined in SIP so you get a limited number of features.

J100 and IPO use a hybrid approach. The J100 is dumbed-down to use “stimulus” signaling over SIP. That is why a SIP J100 gets all of the same features on IPO as an H.323/digital set. But it also means a lot more non-standard SIP messaging.

 

[BResource]

There is a setting in the web management in Evironment settings to change IP Office Enviroment to SIP from CCMS.

Does this force the phone to become a standard SIP endpoint?

 

[gwebster]

I believe it does. But be aware that the functionality then becomes limited and the J100 will not act and behave like an H.323/digital set.