IP Phones Rebooting when deployed remotely on an KX-NS700 System 3

[bfordmn]

This system (NS700) was installed within a local network and all phones (KX-NT553, approx. 12) have worked flawlessly for years on the internal network.

When the COVID-19 lock down happened, seven of the phones were deployed remotely and connected directly to the internet at each person's residence with several different ISPs. The IP addresses were updated and the phones generally work well. All required POEs and the POEs are of varying manufacturers. All deployed phones pass through the same firewall (Watchguard).

However, two of the seven deployed phones are regularly rebooting and the other five never reboot. More interestingly, the two that reboot always do so at or near the top of the hour (between X:55 and X:05). These two phones probably reboot 18-22 times a day always at or near the top of the hour. This is not random and the reboots will happen both during active calls or when the phone is idle.


Any thoughts?

 

[obtsystems]

What firewall rules have you done, are the phones told on the ip card they are remote

Do you have Alg and sip helpers disabled.

 

[MVickerson]

I'm not sure if it helps but I was having a similar issue with NT680 IP phones losing the connection. I did a firmware update to the phones and it seems to have addressed the issue. Keep in mind you will need to open specific ports to push firmware out to the IP phones if they are installed remotely.

 

[phones001]

Try replacing the Watchguard with another firewall if possible. We just had to replace a NS700 with similar problems with remote phones. Was a nightmare to troubleshoot and Watchguard was little help and charged for every thing they did.

 

[THESTAV]

Yes, we are having the same issues. handsets reboot at 4 different Residential locations. Has anyone found a solution, please?
thanks

 

[omonat]

May be the keepalives aren't being ACKed, so are being re-transmitted most likely due to network related conditions.

Is your WAN QoS enabled?

Wanet Telecoms Limited

 

[daddybadger]

Have you checked the trace in utilities and open with wireshark to try and diagnose?

 

[R32PAT]

I am having the exact same problem.
our NSX1000 sits on one VLAN and the phones another VLAN on the same local network.
Even with the most open firewall rule on the Watchguard allowing it to cross vlans with no restrictions on any protocol and I get the rebooting behavior described here and again not with every handset.

I have a KX-NT560 that reboots 20-30 times per day and 3 IP Softphones KX-NCS8100's that drop calls.
Everything worked perfectly when we had a heap of old Netgear Layer 2 switches but is falling apart after putting the watchguard in the middle and ubiquiti switches.

I have tried.
1. POE Injector on the phone
2. Plugging handset into a different switch.
3. Different IP subnet
4. Wireshark traces (which dont really show anything other than the traffic stop and then start again).
5. Turned off STP RSTP on the network.
6. 2 Different PBX' 1 TDE-200 and 1 NSX1000

As indicated by OP I suspect the Watchguard is the problem but no idea where to even look when you have a broadly open routing rule between the 2 VLAN's.

Did you ever manage to solve this ?

 

[kizo]

Which SW version of NSX do you have?

 

[R32PAT]

NSX1000 is 5.00057 and has the IP Softphones drop out
TDE200 is V8 and this has the KX-NT560 rebooting.

For 2 phone systems on the same network to exhibit the same problem I suspect the problem isnt the pbx's at all and instead the Watchguard.
But am at a loss as to what the Watchguard could even be doing when the firewall rule between subnets is open to any protocol completely.

 

[kizo]

Check Windows firewall and change ping settings

 

[R32PAT]

Thanks for the info Kizo, will look into that.
Any advice for the KX-NT560 desk phone and the TDE200 ?

 

[R32PAT]

Hey all,

Update on this all for you.
The tips Kizo provided unfortunately didn't correct the issues I was having with the POE desk phones or the Softphone app.
However I have resolved the issue and thought I would share incase it helps someone else along the way.

The Watchguard seems to be the red herring here and not actually the cause of the issue itself.
When we upgraded from our XTM505 to our M570 Watchguard we also replaced a heap of old Netgear switches with Ubiquiti Unifi switches.

It seems the switches are the problem here, they have a setting at port level called LLDP-MED.
This seems to be used to identify devices like phones on the network and if you have the appropriate stuff setup will automatically VLAN them and ensure the correct DHCP server sets them up.
However if you don't have this setup the Panasonic handsets seem to reboot constantly which seems to be a by product of LLDP-MED trying to do its thing!
Ubiquiti has this setting ON for all ports as a default.
Switching this off on ports phones are connected to or by creating a port profile with this function disabled and applying it to all our switch ports has resolved the issue and the phones all behave properly now.

Unsure how the softphones where affected by this same issue but those phones also have been functioning as normal since this change.

TLDR: If possible turn off LLDP-MED on your switches and see how you go!

Pat