Citel/MCK Extenders with Avaya IP Office

[bassbill]

Folks, I am having a hard time proving difficulty connecting a Citel/MCK Extender pbx gatewayI to an IP Office. My fellow technician seems to think this is an IP issue and that the IP Office need to "see" a complete connection all the way from the remote phone through the gateway to the PBX.
My contention is that this isn't the issue at all. Please correct me if this is wrong...
The gateways are specifically manufactured for either Avaya or Nortel, which means they talk to the respective switches in a particular manner. When you connect the port of the extender to a TDL port on a Magix, the gateway looks for a (4400)phone profile. The Magix TDL module ONLY provides a 44XX profile. This is where the failure occurs. The IP Office is ALSO looking for a phone profile when a digital phone is plugged in since it can "see" a number of digital phones. When connected the IP Office sees the extender port as an "unknown digital phone". Is this logical to anyone else? If so, is there any way to force a particular profile and map it to a port on the IP Office because the Citel has no programmable option. Thanks in advance

 

[bassbill]

One more thing - you're probably asking WHY I would even use the extenders with this switch when it has its own IP phone ability. That's a question for the other technicians trying to get the 9600's to work over the VPN - not my department. I was called in to reuse the gateways that worked great on their Magix...

 

[amriddle01]

I don't think they are compatible with IP Office, there is plenty of Avaya hardware that isn't compatible either, so just as it worked on one Avaya doesn't it works on all

 

[Shortcode]

The MCK is not technically supported on the IP Office. I have, however, managed to get a few working. They have all come from a Definity environment, previous to the IP Office install, and we used existing 6408/6416 sets. If you are trying 44xx series phones they probably will not ever work. They are recognized as Magix sets by the MCK and are looking for a Magix to register them to on the far end. The Magix registration and the IP Office registration differ greatly and the MCK and IP Office are sending different info to each other than expected on the digital port. For some reason when we used the 6400 series sets it allowed the registration through in a way that the IP Office recognized the phones and the MCK believed it was talking to a Definity.

If you have a spare 6408/6416 laying around you may give it a try if you can. See if it will register.

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you have done anything at all.

 

[phonesaz]

I don't know if you have opened a ticket with Multitech but they are generally pretty helpful. I have a couple of their VoIP boxes working between two Magix as tie lines - it took us weeks to figure out how to make it work - and their support, both via email and phone, was really good. I would ask them.

 

[bassbill]

I've already been on the phone with MCK(not Multitech). This whole thread started because one of the techs saw an announcement on the Citel website that the extenders were compatible with the IP Office - it still says that now...
Talking with Randy, their tech support person, I found out that yes they will be compatible - but not yet! I guess someone at Citel got too "excited"(Tim Tebow)and prematurely put up the announcement.
The facts are that Citel is about 1-2 weeks away from testing(at the time of this post)and she wasn't sure what the fix is - something from Avaya or them. I'll post when I find out. Thank you everyone for your input...