Cisco SPA525G2 phones and network reliablity

[FGCUHank]

To preface the issue, we have polycom, yealink and grandstream phones in the office. None of which have the following issue.

I have 2 SGA525G2's that I'm testing. Started out with 1 ran into the following issues and had the vendor send me a second one. Both behave the same. But I don't think this is a 3cx issue.

Both phones have been upgraded to firmware 7.5.1.a and do auto provision.

I use the old bigbrother monitoring software bb4.net which has a ping test. All the grandstream, polycom and yealink phones ping fine. Pinging the Cisco phones results in at least a 50% failure rate. At times it takes 3-7 attempts before I get a ping response.

The web interface on both phones fails at times and I have to reload the page or reboot the phone. Other times I have seen the Cisco phones behave where they ring once on an incoming call and the call goes to voicemail. About 10 min later, the phone gets a missed call notification. At this point no outbound calls can be made although 3cx shows the phone registered. To resolve this a power cycle of the phone is required.

I now have one phone on its wireless nic and the other on the wired nic. Ping response and web interface response is much better over the wireless than it was over the wired. And the wireless phone web interface is faster than the wired phone interface.

It has been 2 weeks and the wireless phone has not had the 1 ring/missed call issue.

Yes, I have placed other phones on the same wire/port and they behave fine. No lost packets, work fine with 3cx.

I'm a little baffled here, any thoughts or tips on this would be appreciated.

Thanks
Hank

 

[craigreilly]

Quite interesting indeed. I only have experience with Yealink and Aastra and not experienced this.
I am guessing you have changed reg info on one of these Ciscos to one of the working devices (polycom, yealink and grandstream ).

Have you played with QOS, Voice-Lan, etc to see if any difference can be had? Maybe it is a duplexing issue?

 

[netswork]

I have 100's of spa525's deployed with no issues. LIke craigreilly said I would look at speed and duplex, make sure the phone is negotiating correclty. Are you using voice vlans or one flat network? I would hard set the phone's speed and duplex and if your switch is managed hard set speed and duplex there as well and see if that resolves your issue. Some switches/devices auto negotiation don't play well.

 

[FGCUHank]

Thanks for the replies, for some reason I did not get the board notifications.

Will test with the speed and duplex settings and post back.

These are in a very simple environment, no managed switches.

 

[FGCUHank]

Just a quick question, I see the speed and duplex settings in the static ip section of the configuration.

Confirming that I'm in the right spot and that the phone will respect the settings even if it is configured as dhcp?

Thanks

 

[netswork]

I believe so...I dont have one in front of me right now to verify but I will be at a location with one shortly and can check. Those settings should be independent of DHCP and if it allows you to change them it should hold.

Board notifications have not worked since the board upgrade. I get random mass updates every now and then but if I want to follow a post its keep the tab open and press f5.

 

[FGCUHank]

Interesting changing the duplex rate did not seem to make a difference.

After sitting a while, both phones experienced the condition I described with the phone not responding to 3cx. It is pingable but does not respond to a call and any inbound calls go to voicemail. 3CX shows it registered.

If I make an outboud call from the cisco phone, I can then call it from another extension and it will respond.

Seems to occur with no rhyme or reason. I'm a bit baffled.

 

[FGCUHank]

Just a random thought, what are the power requirements of these phones and how are you powering them?

I don't have POE in my test area and was using power supplies from our grandstream phones. 5vdc 1200ma

 

[FGCUHank]

And looking at the fine print on the back of the Cisco phone it says 5v 2000ma

 

[netswork]

There are cisco specific power adapters, all of my deployments are POE or using the cisco power adapter.

 

[FGCUHank]

I ordered in 2 2.5a Cisco power supplies for these phones and they still have the same odd behaviors with one exception.

Historically, when the phone would go exhibit the behavior where you would get one ring and then about 2 min later a missed call notification would appear, you would have to power cycle the phone to get it to respond.

Now, when the missed call indicator displays, the phone will make and receive calls.

During this whole time, 3cx showed the extension registered but I'm suspecting that the phone was not and or 3cx had not timed out yet.

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. I can't believe I'm having this kind of luck with the Cisco phones. The other brands I have are behaving perfectly. Figured the non preferred phones would be the problem children.

 

[FGCUHank]

This is an odd test but the other thing I notice is if I call the cisco phones from another phone. Answer with speaker and then from the calling phone I put the call on hold. The music plays on the cisco and about every 10 seconds I hear a beep. After about 30 seconds the phone goes into hell, no audio and thinks it is still on the call. The call has disconnected from the calling phone.

 

[FGCUHank]

Possibly Resolved: Cisco SPA525G2 phones and network reliabl

Possibly resolved.

I disabled Supports Re-Invite and Supports Replaces header on one extension and rebooted both phones.

My hold test has run for 25 minutes on the phone I changed. The hold test failed after 18 seconds on the phone in the default config.

I have now disabled Re-Invite and Replaces on both phones. One extension has been playing hold music for 21 minutes and the other has been playing for 16 minutes.

Both phones are responding to ping and the web interfaces are faster.

Can someone offer some thoughts on this?

I'm going to let the phones sit idle over the weekend and when I come in on Monday, make a test call and see if they are still responding.

 

[FGCUHank]

Spoke too soon, one extension is now not responding to a new call. Both 3cx and the web interface shows it registered.

 

[FGCUHank]

Wanted to post back on this.

The place where these phones were running was on V9.

I took them to my home/office and did a demo install of V11. No problems, and auto provisioning worked.

No problems with ping or response on my home/office network. Suspect multiple problems at the site.

Need to get them on V11 before upgrading their phones to the Cisco units.