crystalfred
Technical User
We are turning up telephone service with Covad using their virtual PBX service. After trying the the Swiss Voice and Polycom phones the best phone for us is the Cisco 7690.
Which of course everyone wants a premium price for and Covad refuses to support anything but a new phone when they are readily available on evil bay for much cheaper.
Ok the technical reasons behind it and the solution to get used phones to work correctly.
First off the turn up service and procedures for the Cisco 7690 assumes that the phone has an unsigned image on it, more and likely a manufacturing image. Since Covad uses the MGCP for their VOIP service they use the “OS79XX.TXT” protocol change mechanism via TFTP to get the correct firmware and VOIP protocol into the phone.
So what does this mean for using used phones?
If the phone has been loaded with the MGCP then the normal firmware update (post OS79XX.TXT) mechanism will work to load the revision of firmware that Covad expects the phone to have via their TFTP server.
If the phone has an unsigned image that is before version 5.0 on any protocol (SCCP, SIP or MGCP) it will work, no worries.
If it requires a signed image because it has version 5.0 and newer software on it then things are broken on Covad's server. It looks like they have a fix in place for phones that have the 8.3 filename problem in the OS79XX.TXT file (pre version 3.0?) so that the phone is unable to locate a signed (sbn) file when looking for the shortened file name.
Solution 1 which may disappear once feedback gets back to them. Is to simply setup your own TFTP server, download a back revision of the signed image file (P0M3-05-2-00.sbn) via a TFTP client from Covad’s server, create a OS79XX.TXT that specifies the signed image and point the phone to your TFTP server and reboot it. It will then change it’s firmware to the “MGCP” protocol, now point the phone to Covad’s TFTP server and reboot it again to load the version of firmware that Covad expects.
Solution 2 is to get a service contract from Cisco, CDW or Insite which takes some time, part number is:
CON-SNT-CP7960
After you have an agreement in place you can download the software from Cisco’s support web site, once you have a version of MGCP you can precede with solution 1.
Which of course everyone wants a premium price for and Covad refuses to support anything but a new phone when they are readily available on evil bay for much cheaper.
Ok the technical reasons behind it and the solution to get used phones to work correctly.
First off the turn up service and procedures for the Cisco 7690 assumes that the phone has an unsigned image on it, more and likely a manufacturing image. Since Covad uses the MGCP for their VOIP service they use the “OS79XX.TXT” protocol change mechanism via TFTP to get the correct firmware and VOIP protocol into the phone.
So what does this mean for using used phones?
If the phone has been loaded with the MGCP then the normal firmware update (post OS79XX.TXT) mechanism will work to load the revision of firmware that Covad expects the phone to have via their TFTP server.
If the phone has an unsigned image that is before version 5.0 on any protocol (SCCP, SIP or MGCP) it will work, no worries.
If it requires a signed image because it has version 5.0 and newer software on it then things are broken on Covad's server. It looks like they have a fix in place for phones that have the 8.3 filename problem in the OS79XX.TXT file (pre version 3.0?) so that the phone is unable to locate a signed (sbn) file when looking for the shortened file name.
Solution 1 which may disappear once feedback gets back to them. Is to simply setup your own TFTP server, download a back revision of the signed image file (P0M3-05-2-00.sbn) via a TFTP client from Covad’s server, create a OS79XX.TXT that specifies the signed image and point the phone to your TFTP server and reboot it. It will then change it’s firmware to the “MGCP” protocol, now point the phone to Covad’s TFTP server and reboot it again to load the version of firmware that Covad expects.
Solution 2 is to get a service contract from Cisco, CDW or Insite which takes some time, part number is:
CON-SNT-CP7960
After you have an agreement in place you can download the software from Cisco’s support web site, once you have a version of MGCP you can precede with solution 1.
