Provisioning zone file

[pluff]

Can someone please clarify how the provisioning zones are determined?

Assume we have two sites, A & B. A single provisioning server is located at site A and call centre phones connected directly to site A are located at site B.

How can I use the zone files SiteA.prv and SiteB.prv?

As far as I can tell you can only do this with DHCP by adding for example zone=SiteB to the Nortel-i2004-B string so this means I can't have different zone files accessed from a single network unless I have different VLANS (messy)

This all sort of makes sense untill I see the "zone=headqtrs # Zone ID" entry in the system.prv file example in IP Phone Fundementals. Why alocate a zone if there can only be one?

Guess I am missing something?

 

[allenmac]

You are correct, your DHCP server will need to know how to assign the proper zone to a phone before the phone can use the site.prv file.

In my enterprise, my local network switches give out the DHCP settings for the phones, so it is easy to include the zone string for each phone before the phone talks to my central provisioning server.

The other way to get around this is to include the unique site settings in the MAC-Address.prv file for every phone.