Option 66 On Cisco SPA Not Updating

[matthewt]

Hi All,

Strange issue in that we have provisioned Cisco SPA phones over the years without issue. We came to do some upgrades and needed to change the IP address for the provisioning URL.

I could not get the phones to pull down the new Option 66 parameter at all. I tired rebooting, re-provisioning etc. Nothing! And its happening on all SPA phones.

The only way I could get it to pull down the updated parameter was to factory reset the phones. Which seems extreme. I’ve tried upgrading to the latest firmware, but that didn’t help either.

Has anyone had any experiences in this? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

 

[eddv123]

Cisco's are pretty sensitive to firmware with 3CX and it must be accurate, I have never experienced these specific issues and normally have followed this guide in the past: https://www.3cx.com/sip-phones/dhcp-option-66/

I would agree, I bet it would work after a reset, the other option is manually creating and pasting the link.
https://www.3cx.com/sip-phones/cisco-spa501g/

Development for these phones with the system have slowed over the years, so perhaps it is time to think of doing a handset refresh - to Yealinks for example.

 

[JohnS_3CX]

So you changed the option 66 parameter on the DHCP server to point somewhere valid?

The phones may still be looking for the old server address unless you do indeed reset them.

I would also check if there are any other DHCP options set up on the network that have been forgotten over the years like option 150,160 which also need to be updated

 

[matthewt]

eddv123 - I did get around this remotly by pasting the new URL on phones GUI directly. But when theres 100s to do its not ideal. I think its more of a DHCP issue rather than specfically 3CX iteself from I could see, but not 100% as 3CX provisions the phone, not sure if it tweaks anything that would impact this. Ideally we would love to rollout Yealink phones, but they cost money ;-)

John - Yes its a valid parameter - as mentioned above if i paste it directly into relevent field on the GUI for the SPA it works fine. We did check that too, but only option 66 is in use.

Its just like the SPAs aren't polling DHCP for changes to the option 66

 

[JohnS_3CX]

I think this depends on how the manufacturer built the firmware. I believe once the provisioning server field is populated in the phone it have priority and will now ignore option 66 until you reset it. Other manufacturers may give priority to option 66 and then fallback on whatever is already saved in the phone.

We would recommend a factory reset by default as that is the initial state you would expect to find the phone to provision it with a new server. Given that the change of provisioning server is not something that happens everyday, it might not be so bad to manually reset each phone this time.