How to set time zone / offset for remote phones on vpn?

[rplakas]

Hi,

We have a site-to-site vpn from hq(NY) to a remote office(Arkansas) with 3 phones.

The phones are setup statically and point to a local time server.

When the phones boot up, the pickup the right time but then few seconds later they change to the time zone of the phone switch at HQ.

They are running a small firewall there that doesn't have any fancy DHCP options for FTP and Time Offset which is why we did the phones static.

Is there anyway to set the phones to a different time offset or not have it be overridden from HQ?

Thanks,

Rich

[phoneguy]

Here is what I would try. Setup DHCP on your local time server and have the phones get their address from there. Set up an IP phone address map back to your headquarters site.

[Contractor]

<self deleted>

[Jlorenz]

1: Do oyu have a site configured for these Phones?

Based on that answer

No

Since you not utilizing a site (I assume) then the Phones will pull its Time off the HQ Home server. Statically assign the 3 IP phones, create a IP Phone map check Teleworker (Enables G729) since your not in need of any dhcp on that site. Now assign the SNTP on each phone to your outside local IP for your local Stratum 0 or 1 server


Yes and I am using DHCP (Or you can do Static as well)
You Site time will be set correctly, based on the site, You can create a site in a COLO established setup since you phones are VPN. With a IP Phone map assigned to that site, then the phones will boot be assigned to the site and get the appropriate Time off the Site they are assigned to.

[rplakas]

Thanks for everyone's help so far.

We are not using a separate site for these 3 phones, should we? Does that require a dedicated switch for them?

The phones are NOT using DHCP, they are statically assigned.

We just enabled the Teleworker option as per your suggestion. Nothing seemed to change with this though...does it require a reboot on the Shoretel end?

No matter what Stratum 1 time server I assign in SNTP in the phone, when the phones boot, they are 1 hour behind the HQ time and then a few seconds later change to NY(HQ) time.

I even tried putting in a California Stratum 1 time server, but when the phone reboots it doesn't show its 3 hours behind NY time. It shows 1 hour behind and then changes back to NY time.

Is there no way to set the time zone for a phone individually without it being in a site?

Rich

1: Do oyu have a site configured for these Phones?

Based on that answer

No

Since you not utilizing a site (I assume) then the Phones will pull its Time off the HQ Home server. Statically assign the 3 IP phones, create a IP Phone map check Teleworker (Enables G729) since your not in need of any dhcp on that site. Now assign the SNTP on each phone to your outside local IP for your local Stratum 0 or 1 server


Yes and I am using DHCP (Or you can do Static as well)
You Site time will be set correctly, based on the site, You can create a site in a COLO established setup since you phones are VPN. With a IP Phone map assigned to that site, then the phones will boot be assigned to the site and get the appropriate Time off the Site they are assigned to.

[AndrewCink]

here's the deal

The phones get their time offset from the shoretel switch that they are homed on. So here's how it works.

The Site is set with a time zone in the shoreware director.

When a switch is assigned to a site and it connects to the server, it learns what time zone it is in, and adopts that time offset for itself.

When a phone boots, it checks in with the server, it finds out which 2 switches are in charge of assigning out phone resources. It then talks to one of those switches, which responds telling it the IP address of the switch it will be connecting to for IP phone resources. The switch determines which site/switch it will be connecting to via the IP phone address map.

When the phone connects to that switch, it learns its time offset from the switch it connects to. So if the switch is in California, it learns the time offset of its switch is GMT-8. Therefore any phone hosted on that switch, including teleworkers, will also have the time offset of GMT-8.

The only way to change the time offset is to host the phone (teleworker or not) on a switch that is in the right time zone. Meaning if you have someone in a GMT-7 time zone, and you only have ShoreTel switches in sites with GMT -8 and GMT-5, those users in GMT-7 will have a choice of GMT-8 or GMT-5 displayed on their phone, depending on where you choose to host those teleworkers via your IP phone address map. But GMT-7 will not be an option, unless you were to add a switch at a site in the GMT-7 time zone. The phones will work just fine, but they will always show the wrong time.

Andrew

[rplakas]

Workaround

Ok thanks. Now I understand how it works.

Since it doesn't make sense to dedicate a Shoretel switch for just 3 phones to have the right time I have come up with a workaround.

I will setup a linux or windows box virtually(so I can have several on one physical machine) that will act as a time server.

I will manually set the time for this server back one hour(or more depending on the timezone I need it for) to trick the phones into having the right time after they get the timezone override from the Site.

I tested this yesterday with a virtual Windows 2000 server running on my iMac and it worked fine. We will probably use Linux virtual machines for this in production since they have less of a footprint and we will eventually have to support a few time zones.

The phones will be statically set and will point to appropiate (virtual)time server.

Thanks to everyone who helped me on this.

Rich