is a 3300 3com manageable

[ianuk1974]

hi all

I have several 3300 3com switches and 1 x 3300xm 3com switch. I need to know if they are all manageable and support 802.1q or 802.1pq. Our company are getting a Mitel 3300ICP telephone system installed soon and our vendor has advised that we have a seperate VLAN for voice setup as wee want to keep our current IP addressing scheme.

Any adviced would be greatly appreciated.

Ian

 

[ADB100]

A couple of points.

The 3Com SuperStack2 Switch 3300's are manageable and support 802.1q and 802.1p. They can only be managed from VLAN 1 as this is where the management interface is, so you must be able to reach VLAN 1 from your management workstation. You need to configure an IP address (plus subnet mask & gateway) via the console port on the rear. If they are stacked with the Matrix ports (and a Matrix module if there are more than 2) then they can all be managed as a single entity, if not each one must be given an IP address and managed separately. Once this is done they support Telnet, a HTTP Interface and SNMP for management.

If you wish to implemenent a separate Voice VLAN - that is 2 VLAN's per access port, the Data VLAN (untagged) and a Voice VLAN (802.1q tagged). Then you must introduce another IP subnet since each VLAN will be it's own broadcast domain and be required to have spearate IP subnets/networks. To route between these 2 subnets you will also need a router or layer-3 switch since the 3300's only support Layer-2 and cannot route - this is needed if you wish to have IP connectivity between the Voice & Data VLAN's.

The 802.1p prioritisation support on the 3300's is not configurable and is also undocumented. I have asked the question before and was told the switches do prioritise packets based on 802.1p CoS values but there is no way of configuring this, but it is done by default. There is also no way of seeing any statistics of this queueing so unless you test things with something like a Smartbits tester you are unlikely to actually see if it works.

I appreciate this is only a relatively simple network but I would consider getting someone to put together a design. I would also consider replacing these switches with something that can give you features such as 802.3af Power Over Ethernet (PoE) to power your Mitel IP Phones, priority queuing that can be configured and monitored as well as Layer-3 QoS (DSCP) trusting & manipulation support.

I have worked with the Mitel equipment on Cisco switches previously and I would not recommend simply using 802.1p CoS to prioritise traffic.

Good luck

Andy

 

[ianuk1974]

Hi Andy,

Thanks very much for your input very useful.

I have also setup Mitel 3300 onto a cisco switched network and works very well.

Is it possible you could give me some programming tips for the 3 coms or a useful website to get a manual.

Also what cable is required and what terminal config is required to console onto the 3 coms?

Ian

 

[ADB100]

Have a look om 3Com's website - the 3300's are end of life but all the documentation is there. I would recommend updating the firmware to 2.60 or later.

http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/result.jsp?selected=2&sort=effdt&order=desc&sku=3C16981A-US

From a configuration point of view you would need to create a Voice VLAN (keep VLAN 1 as the data VLAN or else you will have a problem managing the switch). On each access port leave the untagged VLAN as VLAN 1 and add a single tagged VLAN for the Voice VLAN. You obviously need to add the Mitel-specific Vendor stuff to the Data VLAN's DHCP Scope so the phones can get the Voice VLAN ID.

Other than that there is not a lot else you can do - there are no configuration pages for QoS as this is apparently enabled by default based on 802.1p CoS priorities (although I don't believe this).

You can also tweak with the general network settings such as STP and fast-start ports etc but this may not be required depending on your network setup?

Andy

 

[ianuk1974]

Hi Andy

thanks for all your help

Ian

 

[Rookcr]

Andy,

Would it be possible for you to discuss what you did on the Cisco equipment.

We have just purchased the Mitel 3300 VoIp solution and I have replaced all of my routers with Cisco 2801ISR's and Cisco 2950 switches. I am unable to find any documentation anywhere.

Thanks,
Rook

 

[ADB100]

Rookcr

Mitel produced a document a while ago (a couple of years maybe?) detailing the configuration requirements on various Cisco switching hardware. This was technically correct but left a lot to be desired in my opinion. I would suggest the Cisco Press book 'End-to-End QoS Network Design: Quality of Service in LANs, WANs and VPNs'. This is really geared towards the Cisco AVVID solution but if you strip away the Cisco specific stuff you can apply the logic (and configurations) to any IP Telephony/VoIP solution.

The Mitel IP Phones will boot initially without any VLAN Tagging but expect to receive this info via DHCP. You therefore need to create 2 DHCP scopes - 1 for the Access VLAN (for the PC's and for the IP Phones initially), plus 1 for the Voice VLAN. You need to add the following options to each Scope (or globally depending on how you want to do it).

128 - The Ip address of the controller
129 - The IP address of teh controller - again.
130 - String MITEL IP PHONE
132 - VLAN ID in Hex
133 - VLAN Priority (Mitel want it set to 6) in Hex

The phone will initially talk on the Access VLAN, once it has received the VLAN ID via DHCP it will send out another DHCP request using the VLAN ID (it naks the original DHCP offer so doesn't eat up IP addresses). Cisco recommendations are to use CoS (VLAN Priority) 5 for Voice Media and CoS 3 for Voice Signalling. Mitel don't do this, they use the same value for all traffic. I got around this by writing ACL's to identify the specific traffic types, and then created a policy to classify the traffic as per the book I mentioned above.

There are some limitations with the 2950 and service-policies (all masks have to be the same is a big one so your data and voice vlans need to have the same subnet masks), plus only the Enhanced Image capable switches can do classification and have the ability to read the DSCP values. The better option would have been the Catalyst 2970 or better still the 3560 or 3750 as these have 802.3af PoE and richer QoS features.

I actually get paid for this type of work so I think I'll stop here or I will do myself out of a job......

Seriously though this is something that needs designing properly and isn't something I would tackle on-the-fly.

Good luck

Andy

 

[Rookcr]

Andy,

Thanks for the starter and quick response. I will take a look at the books and go from there.

Bryan