IP Phones

[nebraska76]

I'm working with a BCM 400 and hooking up ip phones. the first one, I got an ip conflict and so I went back my reading until I found that I needed to set the phone manually to partial and tell it where the BCM was and I also set the BCM as a relay agent. finally, it worked so I tried another and it got the ip conflict and I can't seem to figure out what or why! It should be getting a seperate address from DHCP like the other did. It looks like it tells you the mac add of the conflicting pc but that mac was not on my dhcp server. Any tips? Thoughts? Your help is very appreciated!

 

[redcomet]

any other DHCP server on that LAN?

 

[nebraska76]

Just the DHCP server for the entire network.

 

[redcomet]

there are some possibilities to find the conflicting mac-address.

1. on most of manageable switches you can view the allocated mac-addresses.

2. get a ping scan tool (e.g. download.com) and ping your whole network-segment. watch your arp-table after pinging (use arp -a) and find the mac-address there.

3. try to find out the vendor-id of the first part of the mac-address and try to find the conflicting machine by looking for components of that vendor on your network

 

[nebraska76]

I have chased the Mac address around quite abit this morning and it doesn't even seem to be in the DHCP pool listing on the server at all. some close but not it. I will try a tool but do you have any idea in my configuration could be wrong if it can't even get a seperate address from DHCP when i set the other phone up identicaly and it works fine. something with the relay agent? Thank you

 

[redcomet]

i think that there is anything on the network with a static ip-address that conflicts with the dhcp range.
this is why the one phone works and the other doesn't

 

[nebraska76]

The range given as per dhcp and that the other phone lists for the subnet mask is 512 addresses. the static adresses were jsut pulled randomly. the mask i mentioned is where all addreses are pulled from so i don't think it could be giving it a static. yesterday i wondered if it wasn't maybe trying to give consecutive addresses after the bcm. the bcm was .110 then the first phone finally got.111 and then the second phone could not get on. coincidentally .112 was leased by another computer on the lan. i don't get it. this is goofy don't you think. i unhooked the first phone last night and this morning it had .39 address. does the relay agent request a certain address to cause this or just take what it is given? Thanks for your help, any other thoughts?

 

[3Sixty]

You could disable the DHCP relay agent on the BCM.That way the phone should get the IP address from the DHCP server direct.I am guessing you have set the DHCP to be partial on the phone.

 

[nebraska76]

That is correct! when i set it up in full it never located the server. do you know which way i should go. i will try to disable the relay agent and see what happens. Thanks.

 

[3Sixty]

The only other option is to use a fixed IP address for your IP phones.

 

[nebraska76]

i was trying to avoid that but i may have to. i can't believe one could get an address and the other set up identically can not. i'll have to do some more reading. Thanks for all the help everyone and i will continue to check if you come up something else that might help. thank you again.

 

[3Sixty]

Have you a DHCP server (windows server) or is it a router or something like that.What sort of switch have you got?

Marshall

 

[nebraska76]

i am running 2003 server with DHCP. i have been doing some testing and have set a static address on the server but not on the phone and the phone found it and is working. i still must find out why the first phone took an address fine and the next would not. this phone also started a new config at the end of the phone configuration when you boot the phone, wait till the nortel comes up and then hit the four buttons under the screen left to right. at the very end of that config it now says cfg XAS. i did a find through all of my pdf manuals and did not find anything. i am heading out for the day so if you have any resonse to this i will answer in the morning. thank you and take care.

 

[3Sixty]

It is to do with connections to a NET6 service provider

 

[nebraska76]

Thank you. I am not sure I know what net6 service provider is and whether it pertains to 2003 server, dhcp, or the cfg XAS message. could you possibly clarify please. thank you