Updating 46xx IP Phone Firmware

[twix79]

What methods has everyone used when they decide to upgrade IP phone firmware? This past weekend I used the command "reset ip-stations ip-phones ipaddr XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX YYY.YYY.YYY.YYY" and found that not all of the phones in the address range actually reset. Has anyone else seen this? I used IP ranges so that approximately 150 phones were reset at a time and waited about 5 minutes in between running the command. Since I have over 3000 devices, I would rather not break it up any more than this, but I need to use something that will truly reset all of the phones. Otherwise I end up with phones at different releases.

The only other options that I am aware of are manually busying/releasing each station or having our Data guys reset the PoE from the Ethernet switch.

 

[CBB]

I do it by network region. It has worked pretty good for me. Before I do the reset I use the report export function built into ASA to run the command "li reg reg x" where x is the network region that you are about to reset. Then I reset that network regions. I wait about 30 minutes and run the report again. Then I put both reports side by side in a spreadsheet and see if there are any phones that didn't come back. There are usually a few that get hung. It all depends on if you want to be proactive or have people put in tickets if their phone doesn't work.

 

[BHodgins]

one thing .. I have noticed ... if the headset button is left on, the reset ip-stations command does not seem to reboot the phone

 

[twix79]

Unfortunately all of these phones are in one HQ building and therefore on the same network region. I did list all registered stations before and after. That really helps our technicians to locate the phones that are down rather than relying on trouble tickets.

Avaya has said the same thing about the headset button, so I tested the reset with my phone having the headset button lit, but no call, and it still reset. It does not seem to reset the phone if I'm on a call though.


From looking at my "list reg" after the update and seeing which phones had new firmware and which ones did not, I would see some IP address ranges where 90+% of the phones had new firmware, and other ranges where < 10% had the new firmware. That leads me to believe that it has something to do with the PBX. I think I might try resetting a whole network region and letting my TFTP server be the bottleneck as opposed to the PBX. I will update this post with my results.