Cisco 7960 phone on Standalone SIP platform

[RLSbutton]

I have acquired a Cisco 7960 phone that I would like to run at home on a SIP standalone platform with a SIP carrier. Can anyone help or tell me if this is even possible?

Who do I have to contact at Cisco in order to get a license to make this work?

I can't just call Cisco and buy the license as they say I have to be a preferred partner. I've called local Cisco vendors and they say I need to be a business in order to run a Cisco phone at home.

One vendor even told me to go out and buy an analog phone and use an ATA adapter for my SIP service, because I really don't need a complex Cisco phone at home. That is besides the point, I currently have Nortel BCM at home and everyone at Nortel/Avaya has been very helpful, I don't understand why Cisco isn't? Plus I have the phone and power brick and now it's just dead weight. Can anyone help?

I think I'll just sell the phone on ebay!


Joseph Sus Jr. Nortel Enthusiast

 

[Sympology]

Take a look at

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/phones/ps379/products_tech_note09186a0080094584.shtml

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[RLSbutton]

Thank you Sympology,

I forgot that one of my counterparts from college is a registered cco user and contacted him. He is actually been looking for a way to test SIP and he is glad I called him and we are attempting to install the sip firmware 8.4 on the phone. The problem is that when the phone reaches the second TFTP download, an "undefinable error" occurs and the phone restarts. We are thinking that since the phone is a later model from sometime around 2004, that the newer firmware is not agreeing with this phone. We are going to keep trying.


Joseph Sus Jr. Nortel Enthusiast

 

[satAway]

RLSbutton

Have you resolve the issue that you encountered?

I also have a Cisco 7960 and I am looking into setting
it up and test SIP. I need to get and load the SIP
firmware, I would appreciate if you can share good
info you have.

 

[RyanEOD]

I am running an asterisk system here with a Cisco 7960 off it (SIP) . . . on that note I am also running Nortel phones off it.

In looking in my TFTP folder it appears I am going with P003-8-12-00 as the firmware.

Let me know what help you need.

 

[RLSbutton]

Hello satAway,

I have resolved the issue with getting the 7960 to place and receive calls. My phone was already loaded with SIP firmware. If you are able to gain access to the Cisco site, you are able to load the SIP firmware directly off the site. I have a friend that is Cisco Certified and he was able to do it, but we ran into a problem in downloading the software....so I just used the SIP software already installed on the phone.

I signed up for voip service from voip.ms, which is relatively inexpensive. For my username I was originally entering my phone number instead of the voip.ms account number. That was causing the problems with me placing and receiving calls.

Then I got a hold of their tech. support on live chat and they had me enter my account number into the username on the phone and then the password and the phone instantly was able to make and receive calls.

I've had a bit of problems with calls on my system dropping to one way voice path after 30 minutes. Most of my family lives in area code 219 Indiana. I've only had this strange problem within their area code. I'll be on the phone with someone and then after 30 minutes, they magically can't hear me anymore, but I can hear them. Once I call them back, the problem is resolved, but still annoying!

I thought I needed to replace my router or my dsl modem, but then I took the Cisco phone on a weekend trip with me to Northern Michigan Friday. I plugged the 7960 phone into 3 different routers and attempted 4 calls over a half hour and all 3 of the calls voice paths were dropped after 30 minutes, so that proves the problem is not on my system Nortel BCM, Cisco SIP Phone or Nortel 1140E SIP phone.

FYI, My network configuration consists of 5 Unistim Nortel 1140E IP phones, 1 Cisco 7960 SIP phone, 1 Nortel 1140E SIP phone, 1 Nortel BES50 POE Stack, 1 Nortel BCM50 Phone Switch, 1 Nortel BSR222 Secure Router, 1 AT&T DSL Modem, I analog phone line, and SIP trunking. Yes, this is all set up in my loft apartment in Chicago, but I enjoy this stuff a lot.

Hope some of that helps, let me know if you have additional questions.



Joseph Sus Jr. Nortel Enthusiast

 

[RLSbutton]

Hello Ryan EOD,

Thank you for the offer of assistance. I have the Cisco and Nortel SIP 1140E running independently of my BCM50, then I have the Unistim Nortel phones running on the BCM50. I wish their was a way to inegrate the 2, but so far the limited features of the phones have helpmed me somewhat interface the phones together.

Which Firmware are you running on the Nortel phone? Is it an 1140E? I am running 2.2, but would love to get the 3.2.

Thank you,

Joe

Joseph Sus Jr. Nortel Enthusiast

 

[RLSbutton]

Oh and above, out of the 4 calls I placed, 3 didn't go through, but the 4th one was calling area code 616 and that did go through.

Joseph Sus Jr. Nortel Enthusiast

 

[RyanEOD]

RLSbutton,

I am running 1140's but my SIP side switch is an Asterisk box, which handles UNIStim. So, I am doing UNIStim on those.

 

[RLSbutton]

Interesting, What type of ring tones do you have? Are they Nortel tones or Asterisk tones? I have 8 on mine that mimic the CS1000 choices. Just curious.

Joseph Sus Jr. Nortel Enthusiast