VPN Phone Issues

[twitchy087]

IPO Server Edition 9.1.3
9608 VPN phones which tunnel through a Cisco ASA


Hey Guys,

I currently have a system which has 100 or so VPN phones that are having some misc issues that I cannot seem to track down.

1 - These phones will not upgrade their firmware. The phones boot and ultimately hang at the below screen for 15 minutes before timing out to the login screen. I have verified that the firmware described in the string does in fact exist and phones locally to the system have no issues at all upgrading.
-

http://10.21.5.10:80/S9608_11HALBR6...://10.21.5.10/S9608_11HALBR6_6_0_29_V474.tar>

2 - These VPN phones also have a reboot issue which is magnified due to the fact that the phone hangs on the upgrade screen every time it reboots. I have had issues with phones rebooting at the same time on consecutive days (for example extension 123 will reboot at 8:45 on consecutive days however not every day). These reboots happen on the majority of the phones, if not all of them and it does not matter if the phone is idle or mid conversation.

Can anyone please point me in the right direction here? This is killing me and I am out of ideas. IPOSS has also not be very helpful however I am working on escalating this.

Thanks!

 

[twitchy087]

To add - Cisco ASA5510, running version asa-8.4(7)26

 

[amriddle01]

For issue 1) I have seen this numerous times and it's usually because the handsets are set to receive some of the network settings via DHCP.
When you statically assign every field, address, mask, router, system and file server etc then they upgrade just fine.
When you only static the call server and file server as many people do then the handsets will actually ignore the file server field if it also receives that field in a DHCP response and so it keeps asking the router/server onsite for the files it doesn't have.
You can tell if this is the case by looking at the address it's requesting files from during the boot

 

[twitchy087]

Thanks for the input amriddle. The phone is definitely looking at the correct IP so this does not appear to be the case, fortunately as statically address all of those phones would be a NIGHTMARE.

http://10.21.5.10:80/S9608_11HALBR6_6_0_29_V474.tar<http://10.21.5.10/S9608_11HALBR6_6_0_29_V474.tar

- This is the string which the phone gets stuck on, with 10.21.5.10 being the SE.

 

[amriddle01]

Well if the files exists and it works locally then it can only be the network/router causing the issue, that's the only thing changing in the equation....as to what specifically it is....good luck, perhaps Wireshark will shed some light

 

[nnaarrnn]

we can't see files that you're linking to your own internal address.

 

[gwebster]

The software files are pretty big so the phones may be timing out trying to download them over VPN. If you look at your http server, do you see it starting to send the file?

 

[derfloh]

I don't think they will get the files because the phone has no VPN connection established at the time it tries to get the files.

There is an option called NVHTTPSRV or similar in 46xxsettings.txt. Perhaps that will help.

 

[twitchy087]

Good stuff guys. I will check the logs and alter the text file to enable that setting then check back.

Much appreciated.