Avaya + Avaya: Getting IP Office to work with ERS switches 3

[LoopyChew]

Sorry to start this thread here, but I couldn't find a forum for Avaya networking solutions, so I figured I'd try my hand here.

Our company has recently purchased two ERS3500-series switches to connect our VOIP subnet, and we have a few questions about configuration. You see, we purchased these switches to be dedicated VOIP switches, so the things connected to them are going to be one of the following:
1. IP Phones (either handset or DECT antennas).
2. Other VOIP switches.
3. The voicemail/other VOIP application server.
4. The IP Office.
5. The connection to the gateway interface.

This entire system is supposed to be under a dedicated VOIP subnet, including the switches itself. We're trying to avoid implementing multiple subnets, and multiple VLANs, in this switch if at all possible--but we also want to make sure that these things prioritize voice properly.

The script that Avaya provides is supposed to be an easy, set-and-forget way of plugging IP Office into port 1, your data gateway to port 2, and PCs/phones/both in ports 3 on. It creates a Voice Enabled VLAN and a Data VLAN over two separate subnets and configures each separately. I get that phones tend to use specific tags that allow the switch to recognize that it is in fact supposed to run on the voice VLAN, versus PCs which don't bother with this and thus go untagged (and thus the data VLAN), but it feels like a lot of cruft that can be cut out of our configuration.

So I went and ran the script and tried to pick out the settings I needed and apply only those. However, one thing I noticed was the existence of the "Voice-VLAN"(voice-enabled) flag, and that if I'm only using one VLAN, that VLAN can't be voice-enabled. So I guess I need to ask questions like:

1. What the heck does the Voice-VLAN flag do, and is it needed in a single-subnet environment?
2. What can I do to ensure that come hell or high water the signal between my phones and either the VM server or the IP Office module isn't degraded?
3. Can I manage to replicate the effects of the script over a single VLAN, or do I need to find some way of bifurcating the subnet over two separate VLANs, if that's possible (why no, I didn't go to network engineering class, why did you ask?)?

I get that this particular forum isn't necessarily the best place to ask these questions, as this is an IP Office forum, but as I said, I couldn't figure out a better place to put it. Your suggestions of where to relocate it (aside from various bodily orifices) is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

LC

 

[Bas1234]

Have a look here first.

http://support.televersal.com/entries/22913318-Avaya-ERS-3500-series-switches-quick-setup-guide

___________________________________________
It works! Now if only I could remember what I did...

Dain Bramaged (Avaya Search tool

http://tinyurl.com/bas1234

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[LoopyChew]

Yup, read and watched those, which is where I gleaned all the basic knowledge I exposited above. Thanks for the quick reply, though!

 

[intrigrant]

First of all : If you don't use the switch for Data then leave it as it is, it ir good enough for VoIP but the you could do with a less expensive PoE switch.

I used the ipoffice script once and never again, I just program that what I think is best.

1. What the heck does the Voice-VLAN flag do, and is it needed in a single-subnet environment?
It prioritize VoIP Packets

2. What can I do to ensure that come hell or high water the signal between my phones and either the VM server or the IP Office module isn't degraded?
Move your office to the 30st floor.

3. Can I manage to replicate the effects of the script over a single VLAN, or do I need to find some way of bifurcating the subnet over two separate VLANs, if that's possible (why no, I didn't go to network engineering class, why did you ask?)?
Yes, program it manually OR reset all the stuff you don't need.

Better hire a network specialist if you aren't one, save you a lot of headaches. It isn't that simple to build a solid network with multiple switches connected.

 

[gwebster]

@LoopyChew - the correct forum for the ERS5300 is "Communications Rack - Nortel networking solutions". Just one of many forums with titles not updated after Avaya acquired the assets of the Nortel Enterprise Business.

 

[nnaarrnn]

no VLANs = no QoS on your switch stack.

If you're using different subnets on the same physical network, you're going to have a bad time. Like intrigrant said, get a quality network engineer to help you out on this one.

 

[intrigrant]

I just programmed a 3500 switch for IP Office, ran the ipoffice script in verbose mode and after that I disabled routing between VLANs and turned off the DHCP relay.
Done.
IP Office LAN 1 on port 1, LAN 2 on port 2, defined port 24 as port 1 for connection to other nonVLAN aware switches.
The IP Phones pickup the LLDP settings for VoiceVLAN and reboot in the Voice VLAN, IP Office provides IP addres and other necessery data/files, off you go.

 

[LoopyChew]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! My takeaway thus far is:

1. The "Voice VLAN" designation basically means that if there is more than one VLAN on the switch, the Voice VLAN will always have priority;
2. The QoS settings in the script ensure that, on the Voice VLAN, traffic dealing with actual phone conversation will take priority over signaling traffic (e.g. ringing, dial tone, etc., right?);
3. For Best Super Happy Harmony Network, I should ideally make sure that my switch really only deals with one subnet. Any more and the configuration requires an actual network engineer in order to optimize it.

And as such, probably the best way to replicate effects of the script on these very nice switches which we already have and aren't planning on returning is:

1. Replicate the QoS prioritization on the default VLAN in our network (far as I can tell, this means modifying some of the med-network-policies to distinguish between voice and voice-signaling), to ensure that voice traffic gets priority.
2. Since these switches will be connecting nothing but VOIP devices (read phones), appliances, and the application server, all on the same subnet, I don't have to worry about things like IP routing, tagged versus untagged devices, and DHCP Relay (especially since we don't use DHCP--all our phones have manually assigned addresses).

Did I miss anything?

 

[nnaarrnn]

1. Sort of. It's just labeled Voice. The script does some QoS stuff to it too, as well as enabling quickboot on the phones.
2. Yes, one VLAN over another
3. Sounds like a horrible idea, and yes a proper Engineer should be installing this for you.



manually assigning addresses to phones?

not setting up proper QoS?

How is your tag/title IS/IT Management and you don't want to properly configure a switch?

The script does more than just create two VLANs and prioritize one of them.


Sounds to me like you need to hire a consultant for an hour to set this up properly.

 

[LoopyChew]

I do want to try to learn to configure the switch, which is why I'm posting here. Being completely new to this, what I did was:
1. Ran quick install on the switch and exported the configuration to ASCII.
2. Ran the setup script on the switch and exported the configuration to ASCII.
3. Used WinMerge to see what the difference was between the two.

A lot of the differences I saw were appeared to be caused by the existence of two VLANs instead of one (IP Routing, DHCP relay, configuration of Proxy ARP/DHCP snooping/IGMP for each VLAN). There was also:
* PoE prioritization (when a switch is going to literally be nothing but phones I figure as long as they're the same priority everything will be treated roughly equally)
* 802.1ab/lldp configuration (setting QoS policies as I mentioned in my last post, setting dot1q framing from auto to tagged
* Changing spanning tree port learning from normal to fast
* The creation of a QoS interface group called "qosTrustedIfcs"

I'm really only IS/IT Management by virtue of there being a handful of IS/IT employees. I'll change that title to something more appropriate in a sec.

 

[holdmusic34]

You can't change your title. You're stuck with it unless you want to have multiple accounts.

Jordan, I'm looking at you on google maps.

Dulce et decorum pro Avaya mori