Hotdesking Error

[cL4c0mb3]

Hey Guys/Gals

We currently use hot desking in a couple places in our organization. What we are running into now is that the phones are disconnecting from the network. The computer that is running through the PC jack is still on the network so that VLAN is still working. But the phone will go into a disabled mode. Where it will show the last number for the redial but the last 2 or 3 digits will be black boxes with the last one blinking. The only way to get it to work again is to remove the power/network cable and do a boot of the device. We are currently using 5330 desktop phones. This is only happening to the users that have hot desk enabled on the phone.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Billz66]

versions ?
Are the phones set as resilient?
Are the phones connected locally to the same switch as the MCD
Sounds like network problems between the handset and the MCD

If I never did anything I'd never done before , I'd never do anything.....

 

[cL4c0mb3]

The system is a 3300 on 4.0 SP3 the phones themselves are 5330 devices. I'm not sure what resilient means? But they are setup to have a Logged Out number which would allow the phones to ring even if someone is not logged into them. All but one of the phones is connected to a different switch then the Mitel system. There are about 8 other 5330 in the same building connected that are not setup as hotdeskable and they are working fine no disconnect problems. Just appears to be the phones that can hotdesk.

We are trying to plan for a system upgrade to 6.0 but still waiting to work out the fine details with our mitel rep.

 

[kwbMitel]

The Black Cursor blinking in the Top right of the display is an indication that the phone has lost connection with its primary controller

If the phone is resilient, it will be setup with a secondary controller.
[ul]
[li]At your software version, this might be done via a program called OPSman that runs on a windows server That likely would have Enterprise Manager installed.[/li]
[li]OPSman can be standalone but has not been such for quite some time.[/li]
[li]Your software version might be setup to share directly with other controllers but I find this less likely as 4.0 was the first version to allow this and most techs did not trust it.[/li]
[/ul]

If the phone is not resilient it will simply cease to function and the cursor will flash until communication has been restored to the Primary controller
[ul]
[li]The Controllers do health checks at 5 minutes intervals (Ping)[/li]
[li]In the event of a failure, there must be 3 successive health checks before the phone will revert to the primary\[/li]
[li]This works for the most part but sometimes the phone requires manual intervention in the way of a reboot to reconnect.[/li]
[/ul]

**********************************************
What's most important is that you realise ... There is no spoon.

 

[cL4c0mb3]

Any idea what could be causing the phones to lose connection? It almost seems about once a day they need to be hard booted again to get them back up. Nothing out of the ordinary seems to be happening on the switches that they are connected to. They are defiantly not setup to be resilient as they look for their own controller in that building. Anywhere I can at least start with to trouble shoot this?

Thanks for the response already guys.

 

[Lundah]

The maintenance logs of the 3300/MCD should show you when the sets lose connectivity and then re-attach, see if you can match the timestamps from those events up with the logs on the LAN equipment. My guess is either something is happening on the data network or the 3300 is rebooting.

 

[kwbMitel]

Yes - Maintenance logs

Also look for ICP Comms Errors

If you are comfortable doing so, you could attach the logs and we could look at them.

I can't think of anything that might be in the logs that could be used inappropriately.

**********************************************
What's most important is that you realise ... There is no spoon.

 

[Billz66]

Do you have any PC's connected to the network via the Phone's Switch port?

You may find that the others are losing connectivity but you dont notice because they are fixed users ( not hotdesk) and as such do not get logged out when the network drops.


We had a problem recently with a customer that rolled out some Dell PC's.
When the dell went into sleep mode it would send a large burst of IPv6 information which overwhelmed the switchport in the phone causing the phone to lose its connection to the network.

I think as with most faults you need to start isolating devices and making some changes to see whats causing the problem.
With the dell issue it was a packet capture running on the switch that caught the burst that coincided with teh port dropping and resetting the phone.

If I never did anything I'd never done before , I'd never do anything.....

 

[LoopyLou]

It may be that all phones are having the issue and that is why others are asking you to check the logs. The reason that hot desk sets are more noticable is that the hotdesk user get logged out. But since the phone has lost connection it is having trouble dropping back to a "just plane set". Interesting about the new Dell's

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Anyone else and you need to throw it harder.

 

[cL4c0mb3]

Hmmm I would have never thought to think about the PC that is connected to the phone. We just recently upgraded to new HP desktops in that office. I will have to change the sleep settings on them and see if that makes a change. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Billz66]

The customer with the dells changed the IPv6 settings on them ( i think) or loaded a firmwre update. This made ther problem go away.

We chased logs in the MCD and were running IP analyser and constant MCD packet captures for 2-3 weeks with Mitel before the customer discovered it was the PC's that were causing it.



If I never did anything I'd never done before , I'd never do anything.....

 

[LoopyLou]

I had a site once where we had no end of issues with phones. Ended up being something similar in that it was only phones with a certain model of thinkpad that had issues. It turned out these laptops had a certain NIC chipset that causes issues. Needed a patch to fix.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Anyone else and you need to throw it harder.