We have 16 IP670 phones, and 1 IP560 phone, connected to a NetGear GS748TP 48 port Gigabit POE switch, which then connects to a 16 port Gigabit switch. We have various servers connected to the 16 port switch, and a TrixBox CE server connected to the 48 port switch. Our network clients all connect to the 48 port switch, and every polycom phone is powered via POE and all have a workstation connected to the computer port of the phone. The problem we are having is that when all of the phones are online, we have intermittent connectivity to a specific business application's database. The client is either losing connection to the database itself (SQL Server 2005) which resides on one server, or to the licensing service, which resides on another server and uses port 8393. If we bypass at least half of the polycom phones then this problem stops. I'm wondering if there would be recommendations to alleviate this problem.
Polycoms with POE on NetGear GS748TP
You have all managed switches, put another NIC in the trixbox and place the phones in their own VLAN.
This is the best practice for all Voip networks.
Scott
aka "Skyking"
I agree with SkykingOH, however if you have 17 phones they should not take up enough resources to shut down a connection to another server, SQL HTTP or whatever. This should be true even if all the phones are in a call while accessing FTP and using the microbrowser.
I would guess if you eliminate half of the phones you might be eliminating the computers that are attached to them. I would suspect the uplink settings on the uplink ports. I think taking a trace at the SQL server and moving back down the path to find the root cause. I would also try to move the SQL server to the same switch as the phones to eliminate the other switch and segment.
I have added a second nic to the Trixbox, and I have placed the phones on a vlan (vlan ID of 11). I had to quickly educate myself about how to set this up so I'm still struggling but I've verified that the Polycoms are joining vlan11 tagged (and not joining the default data vlan) and the workstations connected to the Polycoms are only on the default vlan (ID 1). Right now the 1st Trixbox nic is an untagged member of vlan11 and vlan1, while the second nic is only a member of vlan1. I also made our internet gateway an untagged member of vlan11 (and vlan1) with the plan of removing the 1st Trixbox nic from vlan1. What I think I'm missing at this point is properly setting up routing on the Trixbox itself. If I remove the 1st Trixbox nic from vlan1 then Trixbox and the Polycoms still communicate with each other but a) I can no longer log in to Trixbox via nic2 and b) we can no longer call outside of the building through our gateway (via an IAX2 provider).
To set this up I bypassed DCHP (since I have it off the voice vlan) and manually set an IP address, the TFTP server (Trixbox) and the vlan ID in each Polycom. My thought is that if I can get this working as is then I'll make the Trixbox a DHCP server and run Trixbox and the Polycoms on their own subnet.
If you've got any advice, pointers, recommendations or could at least point me in the right direction that would be awesome, hopefully I'm somewhere in the ballpark at this point but as you may have guessed I'm learning some of this as I go. We were almost ready to deploy and I had just put all of the phones on our network (as opposed to just a couple) when we started having the network problems so right now I'm back in learing mode.
Sean
Im not sure i follow what you are doing but let me ask you a questions, Why does the trixbox need to be on both VLANS? with 2 nics?
My Last Customers Setup
Adtran 1334 Netvanta W/VLAN and POE
VLAN1 (Default) for desktops
VLAN20 (VOIP)
Trixbox, single nic, VLAN20
20 Polycom 330 and 501 mix up (VLAN20) Tunked on adtran ports
3mb Ethernet Handoff to Default Network VLan1
No issues with this set up, no need for 2 nics, due to the fact that VLAN1 and VLAN20 are both in the routing table, you can access all resources from both. Make sure the set VLAN20 with Voip QOS priority or your quality could be poor.
If you mimic this set up with your Netgear you should be ok, (Is that netgear a Layer3 switch?)
_______________________________________________________________
Jeff Bish
New Computers and Expert Services
Voice and Data Done Right!
Member Since:
2008-12-30