Simple advice for IP phone deployment?

[J1121]

I'm looking for some basic advice/guidance with regard to a new IP phone deployment (we've been using digital phones every day but have did some minor testing with IP phones).

The setup is pretty common I think. We have a large main site where the S8800 lives. We have multiple remote sites connected over the MPLS WAN. Those remote sites have an Avaya gateway (G700, G430, G650, etc) with a LSP or ESS (although the ESS is setup to act like LSP). We have a Cisco network infrastructure.

What I'm curious about and would like some basic feedback and guidance on is this....

1. DHCP: Assuming your DHCP is normally handled at the main site or one of your other large sites, how do you handle DHCP for the IP phones at the remote/smaller sites if that remote is cut off from the main site because of a WAN outage?

2. File server for the IP phones: I've heard many people say they simply use the Avaya MVIPTEL application to serve out the files to the IP phones. I've heard others say they use something else. I'm familiar with MVIPTEL and it's been working fine for my few IP phones for awhile now, so do you see any real reason why we should NOT use MVIPTEL for a large install of say 3,000 IP phones (growing over time)? People say the number of IP phones doesn't matter because you should only reset phones in smaller groups like by network region so they're not all looking for the file server at the same time. I'm inclined to continue using MVIPTEL on a beefy virtual machine unless someone can tell me a great reason to not do that.

3. QOS: I've seen an Avaya best practices for IP telephony powerpoint floating around but it's from 2007. I also have the latest Avaya IP telephony deployment guide and the deployment guide for the 9600 series phones (what we'll be using). Does anyone know of an up to date Avaya guide (application notes, whatever) that shows how a good install of Avaya IP phones would look like on a modern Cisco infrastructure, regarding QOS and related settings?

 

[avayasmith]

1) The 9600 sets retain their IP address and scope option 242 settings (in flash memory I think), and they get their backup server info from the 2nd page of their network region form.

2) Some people use the 8300 as the firmware file server, but I'd recommend staying with MVIPTEL. It's stable, and takes the load off of your 8300s. And...you already have it working.

3) I have issue 7 of the IP Telephony Deployment Guide from 2010 if you're interested.

i prefer clarity to agreement - dennis prager

 

[mojoputter]

I would also get a network assesment done or you will be troubleshooting network issues for the rest of your LIFE!!!

 

[J1121]

So, the IP phones can maintain the IP they last had if they can't find the DHCP server? If so, that would be great. It would be a very unusual situation for one of our sites to be without a WAN connection for more than a few hours...but if we had a huge problem with weather or something out of our control and it was down for something like 2 days, would the IP phones still be able to keep that IP and keep itself registered to the local LSP server? Is there a setting you have to be sure is setup right for this to happen?

I have the same version of that guide. Thanks

Regarding the network assessment, we use VoIP every day but only between the site's gateways. We don't have IP endpoints is all. We have tons of traffic flowing and already QOS'd (in our own way) between the sites (marking the medpro traffic only for example, by specifying the IP addresses of the Medpros in the router's QOS setup). We have a good team of people that handle the LAN/WAN so I think we're ok there. Avaya never fusses about us getting network assessments anymore. They know not to pester us about that ;-) What we have works and it works very well. We've just never installed a bunch of IP phones before. That part is new to us.

 

[NewNic]

As far as DHCP, If you wan goes down but your far end Data switches stay up the phone will never seek out to renew there address, only if the data switches loses power or the phones reset.

As part of the File server, the 46xxsettings file there is a spot to tell the phone how long to wait for dhcp responce, once it times out the phone retains its last known ip address.

 

[J1121]

Would that be this setting you're talking about?

DHCPSTD and VLANTEST?

I assume the default of 0 for the DHCPSTD setting would allow the phone to keep that IP address....and the VLANTEST setting simply tells it how long to look for the DHCP server before it gives up and keeps using the IP it had last?

##################### DHCP SETTINGS ######################
##
## DHCPSTD controls whether the phone continues to use an
## expired IP address if the phone received no response to
## its address renewal request. 0 for yes, 1 for no.
## SET DHCPSTD 0
##
## VLANTEST specifies the number of seconds to wait for a
## DHCPOFFER when the phone is using a non-zero VLAN ID.
## (0-999)
## SET VLANTEST 60
##

 

[NewNic]

Correct