Solved Switch Phone Provisioning from Direct SIP to SBC Delay

[loyer]

Hi Everyone,

I initially provisioned my phones for a remote location to as Direct SIP / STUN (about 10 of them). I wanted to get them fully ready to go for my users so they could just plug them in and start making calls. Then when the phones were plugged in and online, I switched the provisioning to SBC (which I already had setup and running) and then rebooted the phones via the web management site.

I am having some problem. In a separate thread, eddv123 was helping me and said:

Also you have the issue that if provisioned for STUN the MAC address is "hard coded" for 14 days by 3CX. One thing I can tell you (as I tested it the other week for a customer) is that if you provision a 3CX Phone via STUN and want to move to SBC, if you remove the STUN extension from 3CX, reset the phone and connect via SBC you can provision it over via SBC without having to contact 3CX about removing the MAC.

This 14 day hardcoded thing would definitely explain my problem. Anyone else have this issue or know about the 14 day hardcoding?

I wanted to post this thread so that others can specifically find it.

Also, how to other people provision their phones for remote locations without having to switch between Direct SIP / STUN and SBC???

Thank you

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

Hello @loyer

Please note that when a phone is provisioned to be used as Stun a request is sent to the RPS server which keeps the mac for 14 days. When a phone is factory reset, upon startup it will try to communicate with the rps server to see if there is an entry for it.
The rps server then "tells" the phone to get the provisioning link from the server. That is how rps provisioning works. After 14 days the request will be cancelled and the phone will be able to be provisioned to a different server.

In yous scenario the phones were provisioned using RPS and the provisioning link was added in the web interface of the phone. If you now switch the provisioning method to SBC the link in the phone will not change, however the SBC link is the same so all you need to do is re-provision the phones as the server will supply the phone a new configuration file with the SBC settings.

However it is recommended that the phones are provisioned via PnP when using an SBC so i would recommend resetting the phones to factory and re-provision them via PnP.

 

[StefanW]

Hello @loyer

However it is recommended that the phones are provisioned via PnP when using an SBC so i would recommend resetting the phones to factory and re-provision them via PnP.

To make this part a bit more clear, to have a full functioning SBC phone it MUST be set up via PnP provisioning to allow the PBX to learn some additional data reg. the SBC and the phones relation!

 

[loyer]

Great to know... this wasn't obvious to me. Few questions....

1) With the Yealink T48S, to make PnP work, do I need to set DHCP option 66?

2) In the future if I want to provision the phones in advance and configure them before I bring them to the the remote location, can I setup a SBC in my test lab which is configured to the live PBX, provision/configure the phones, then move them to the remote location (which also has a SBC setup)?

Thank you

 

[cobaltit]

PnP does not require anything. Phones that support PnP make an annoucement via multicast. Provided your switch isn't filtering multicast it will just show up in the 3CX console via the SBC.

 

[cobaltit]

To make this part a bit more clear, to have a full functioning SBC phone it MUST be set up via PnP provisioning to allow the PBX to learn some additional data reg. the SBC and the phones relation!

@StefanW Could you elaborate on this? I'm not sure I understand the logic behind this. What more does the endpoint learn that isn't already in the configuration file provisioned from 3CX?

 

[contoured]

Is it correct to say that you cannot use a custom template with PnP via SBC?

 

[StefanW]

@StefanW Could you elaborate on this? I'm not sure I understand the logic behind this. What more does the endpoint learn that isn't already in the configuration file provisioned from 3CX?

the SBC add while frwd. the PnP request to the PBX some additional SBC information to the PBX which can not be done buy just adding the device manual. You can test it and try pressing in the 3CX MCC on a phone and reboot, a phone from PnP reboots, the other will do nada...

 

[StefanW]

Is it correct to say that you cannot use a custom template with PnP via SBC?

I think correct to say would be, avoid them wherever you can. What do you change in the template what is to you disliking?

 

[loyer]

RECAP for anyone reading this in the future.....

As of Version 15.5 ---- DO NOT TRY AND PROVISION WITH Direct SIP / STUN --- if you plan on switching to SBC. It caused so many issues ---- it looks like it works when you change the provisioning in the web management site, but it doesn't. I had to 1) remove the phones from each extension, 2) connect to each phone via the phone's web interface 3) factory reset the phone 4) wait until it showed in the phones list after it reboot (because it was behind SBC) 5) assign to the same extension again 6) the phone would reboot one more time.

Then I could see all the traffic start to flow over the SBC and not directly to the PBX via port 5060.

The funny thing was the web management site WAS showing the phones as if they were connecting via the SBC on the Phones page.... but they actually weren't. I only discovered this when we started to have call quality issues and I noticed all this 5060 port traffic from each of the phones.... which should have been going over 5090 (from the SBC).

I think this is a bug in the 3CX web management..... the Phones page show HOW THE PHONES ARE CURRENTLY PROVISIONED AT THE PBX ---- NOT ACTUALLY how they are working. Or whatever... I don't know but something was wrong and this fixed it.

 

[loyer]

And frankly, I can't believe this isn't a bigger issue because I feel like a lot of people would start with Direct SIP / STUN and then when they add another phone or two, run into problems, decide to install the SBC and then change the phones to be provisioned via SBC. So you would think that more people have had this issue before --- but I could find anything about this. Not sure if this is a new bug/issue or just a known thing. I would love some feedback. Thanks for everyone helping.

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

This is not a new thing nor it is a bug. The provisioning procedures for each phone are well documented. If you need to change provisioning methods follow the procedure to avoid issues.

Since the issue was resolved when the supported procedures were followed i am locking the topic an marking as resolved.