Soft Phone Ringing Problems

[IPOUK]

We have a site with 5610s throughout. There is a voice vlan on 192.168.200.x and data on 192.168.100.x

IP Office is on 192.168.200.6 and vmpro on 200.7 - all on latest 3.1 software

The cisco switches have all been setup correctly - DHCP works fine - any IP phone goes on the 200.x network and any PC attached to the phone goes on the 100.x network.

The only problem we have so far is SoftPhones. The client has complained that when making calls, he can't hear the ringing before the other end picks up - so without any warning, the other end picks up. From experience, this is usually down to Enable Fast Start not being ticked. This has been tested with and without, all IP settings checked and unchecked and still, the ringing doesn't happen. On the 64K codec, a really horrible sound like screeching happends as the call is connected then all is fine!

Plugging ourselves directly into the IP Office didn't help (we got a 100.x address of course) - so 1 final test I thought of was to statically give myself a 200.x address - this seemed to fix the issue! Ringing occured, but I didn't notice the screeching as the call connected (maybe that was fixed also!)

Basically just wanted to know if anyone else has experienced this and has any good ideas?

Many thanks!

ps. Don't get me started on keeping your hard phone exn when logging in with a SoftPhone - bloody salesmen! Twinning seems to be the best way forward, but there still seem to be draw backs.

 

[didymus100]

use ethereal either side of the network i.e test when its working then test on the 200 leg of you network find out what your router is not forwarding then forward it using ip forward protocol.

 

[IPGuru]

Q) how do you tell when a salesman is lying?

A) His Lips move

 

[intrigrant]

Pretty tough to solve that.

Here's a handout for your salesmen:

The transition to VoIP can be hard enough for non-technical users as it is; don't complicate matters by cutting corners and deploying soft phones.
Soft phones may enable cost savings in the short term but sticking with traditional looking handsets makes the change less stressful. In addition, because PCs are necessarily on the data network, using a softphone conflicts with the need to separate voice and data networks.

read it all :

http://www.bcs.org/upload/amaxus_pdf/amaxus_conWebDoc_3068.pdf

Maybe using the Voip Qos service on the PCs may help together with using Diffserve on the switches.

 

[JeSTeROCK]

The problem has to be the router inbuilt into the switch. Sounds like a trunking problem on the port that the IP Office is plugged into.

 

[IPOUK]

Thanks for your replies guys.

I am sitting down with our Cisco expert later, who is going to look at some traces while we make some test calls.

We are going to look at the trunk port that the IP Office is plugged into. I'll let you all know the outcome as it's an interesting one!