Linksys Problems - anyone better??

[newpool]

Hi,

I've just finished putting in a 7 handset system using Linksys (Cisco) SPA942's. It was not easy! The provisioning did only a very small amount of the required config, and I have had problems with some phones being quiet, some failing to work at all and so on.

Can anyone recommend their favorite 3CX supported handset, ranked in order of ease to auto provision, reliability and ease of use ? My favorite is the Cisco 7960/7940 but they are just too damn costly to buy new.

All views appreciated.

Thanks
Pete

 

[sipero123]

Hi,

I don't think CISCO 7940/7960 are expensive but they aren't easy to get working with any SIP system and from my experience even harder with 3CX.

My favourite range of phones are Polycom and Snom. They may look a bit ugly but call quality and features are great.

With the Linksys phones I found I had better sucess when I tweaked the provisioning template so a few other things were setup that aren't covered in the default templates.


Jonathan Hamon

 

[mbaltus]

We use about 25 Linksys SPA-942 phones. All are configured using Auto Provisioning. I've adapted the default template from 3CX quite extensively and added many options, including time server, time display, daylight saving, web management password, BLF buttons, phone language, etc.

You can get all available template options by retrieveing the settings XML file from: http://<phone ip>/admin/spacfg.xml
If you preset the required options trhough the web interface first, the options are prefilled. There is one additional thing you need to do. You need to add the ua="na" XML flag to all of the options you want to set.

So:
<option_name>Option_value</option_name>

needs to become'
<option_name ua="na">Option_value</option_name>

And then you're all set.

 

[N_G]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the info. Maybe you could post a sample config file that you have created?

In V8 we will add the capability to modify the config files from the interface, however phone configuration options itself of course remains dependent on the phone and must be done from the vendor config file and using the vendor documentation...

 

[mbaltus]

I'm currently not in the office, but I will post the template that I use tonight.

 

[N_G]

Great - thanks!

 

[newpool]

Many thanks for all the replies, looking forward to seeing what is in the templates, should be a great time saver.

One other thing though, I have had 100% success with Cisco handsets, my own 3CX system (used daily) has 7960's 7940's 7911's & 7912G handsets, I also use a Cisco 2600 router with voice interfaces for my FXO & FXS gateway - all working correctly. I am an Ex Cisco Callmanager consultant so I know I should know what I'm doing, but 3rd party PBX systems are very much frowned upon by Cisco.

Happy to share info if anyone wants it.

Pete

 

[sipero123]

Hi,

I've sent you a PM and would really appreciate it if you could share the information relating to using the Cisco 7940, 7960, and 7911 phones with 3CX

I had no issues with changing the firmware from SCCP to SIP but most of the time cannot get the phones to register, or having registered have calling and/or audio problems.



Jonathan Hamon

 

[N_G]

Hi newpool,

We would definitely be interested to post a how to guide for Cisco gateways on our wiki if you had one! But i guess its a complicated process....

 

[mbaltus]

Phone provisioning
Based on the 3CX default provided phone template for the SPA942, some extentions have been made to provision additional options. An anonymized example file is attached to this post.

The approach was to manually configure a phone through the web interface with all required options. After that, the XML configuration file of that phone was downloaded by going to the following phone-admin page: http://<phone_ip>/admin/spacfg.xml

All the options that have been set, can be found in this config file and then added to the 3CX template. One additional thing is required. To make sure that the option works, it is necessary to add the ua=”na” statement to each of the XML options. This means that

<Admin_Passwd>password</Admin_Passwd>

Needs to become

<Admin_Passwd ua="na">password</Admin_Passwd>

Phone Language
By default, the phone’s language is English. From the Linksys for Service Providers site (which requires registration), several language files can be downloaded. By storing these language files on a web server that is accessible for the phone, the XML files with alternate languages can be downloaded by the phone.

For the Dutch version, I’ve downloaded the Dictionary File: “nl_u_5_2_s1.xml”. By making another website available on the 3CX server where the file is stored, it can be referenced by the phones.

For the configuration of the phone, the following two statements were added to the configuration template:

<Dictionary_Server_Script ua="na"> serv=http://3CX_IP/directory/;d0=English;x0=enS_v101.xml;d1=Nederlands;x1=nl_u_5_2_s1.xml </Dictionary_Server_Script>

<Language_Selection ua="na">Nederlands</Language_Selection>

After a reboot, the phone loaded the config and rebooted to start back in Dutch.

 

[newpool]

Thanks for all that info - Just what I need.

 

[oleman]

I am working on the Thomson 2030 (used to be speedtouch) , very feature rich and from initial design built for large deployments.

Once you figure out how the multiple file fw works, its actually quite flexibel, and phones very affordable.

I am re-working the template that Nick Galea posted to work with Thomson fw 2.67.

Have run into a snag though, I need to change a serial number in a config file each time it is stored, (this is because Thomson 2030 phone wil only load the config if this value is changed, this is to protect against futile updating etc.. )

So, in a 3cx template, how can i generate any big number, or a time stamp in the format YYYYMMDDHHMM would be fine. Does not have to consequtive to the last, or higher.

Output of xml should be something like this: config_sn=200907230001

Any variables supported that could do this?

Cheers,
oleman