5610SW IP phones - random blank screens

[michaelneal]

Hi guys,

Hope I can eventually shed some light on this problem as it has our IT Dept. completely stumped.

We have been running our IP Office setup for about 2/3 months now. Overall the system is excellent apart from in essentially the most important department, Customer Service.

Basically what happens is at random times throughout the day a customer service operator will contact us saying there phone has completely locked up. These guys all use headsets and when we arrive at the phone the only thing lit is the headset button, the screen is completely blank. However, the phone will still ring. Is this a known issue with the 5610SW?

We are running;
IP Office 412 (manager version 5.0)
50 5610SW phones throughout the company

 

[mytelecoms]

Assuming the IP Phones are on the LAN and not over a WAN, change your compression to G711 (ALAW for UK or ULAW for US/Jap) which will give you toll quality voice on your LAN, with little header overhead.

Make sure nothing is ticked on the VoIP options for each extn, such as Direct Media path or anything else really - you won't need them on the LAN. I also try to avoid using auto create extn, and put static IPs on my phones - but that's just preference. Make sure you have the gatekeeper on, as this will provide diff-serv management, and helps streamline VoIP.

IP412 has support for 60 VoIP channels. You should be OK with 50 users unless you are using VoIP channels for anything else such as remote sites.

Version 3 also has a problem with VCM30 cards locking up. You can now download the full suite of software based on the 3.0(59) admin build. The new firmware is supposed to fix the VCM issue. I strongly recommend you roll this out. It also includes firmware for the IP Phones, so get them updated as well.

Make sure the LAN is setup correctly. VLANs should be considered so that you can seperate your voice and data traffic into two broadcast domains. Thing is, using the same subnet for voice and data without VLANs means you'll get broadcasts on the switch which can lock up the phones. Make sure each IP phone has 802.1Q turned on.

Are you prioritising your voice over your data?

You can connect your PCs to the IP Phones for QoS or use your layer 3 switch to add class of service tags to voice and data. I would strongly suggest you do this. Connecting your PC to the phone will not slow things down, it will jsut make sure your voice gets the most bandwidth it can.

Hope this helps.