IP Phones out of service

[LonnieBear]

What would cause IP phones to go out of service every 6 to 7 days or so? We have had this problem from day 1 with our Shoretel installation. The phones themselves appear to be working at first glance - the screens work. But there is no dialtone when you pick up the receiver. You can press the dial buttons and they make a sound in the receiver, but nothing happens, and no other buttons on the phones work, including the [MUTE]-R-E-S-E-T code. Luckily I can reboot the switches remotely when no one is watching, but today the boss came in early and he asked me why the phones weren't working! All phones don't go out of service all at once, but begin to drop off one by one until after a day or so they are all listed as 'Out of Service (Operational)' in the Switch Maintenance / IP Phones page. Could this be a phone firmware issue, or where else can I look? Anyone else have this problem?

[eazeaz]

Out Of Service

I have never seen anything like that. However, it seems odd that it is 6 or 7 days.

That is about the default time frame for most DHCP Servers to allow a lease on an IP Address.

I adjusted our DHCP lease time to 90 days when we installed our system....

Can you ping the phone that is "dead"? It almost sounds like it is not being allowed to renew its ip address or something.......

[luckycharms]

What version and build are you running? What type of POE switches? Do you have Spanning Tree or ICMP redirects enabled on the POE or local router?

Sounds like to phones are dropping part of its connection to the ShoreTel switches and server. You can probably ping the phone, but the phone is not negotiating properly to the MGC switch.

Have you called ShoreTel TAC...if so...what did they say???

[LonnieBear]

We are on ShoreTel 7, ShoreWare Director Small Business Edition, Build 12.5.8107.0. The IP110 phones are firmware S0.2.2.5P, and the IP230 phones are SEV.2.2.5P. The switches are D-Link DES-1228P with firmware 1.20.09. The DHCP server is Windows Small Business Server 2003. I had not considered the lease time, let me check & I'll post back! Our installer has not been able to diagnose the problem. They upgraded the switch firmware and said that should have fixed the problem, but it hasn't. Thanks!

[LonnieBear]

OMG! Lease duration was set to 1 minute! I changed it to 90 days! That will probably fix the problem, eh?

[Forum]

That might help

[eazeaz]

Bear owes me a beer

[LonnieBear]

That did fix the problem, by the way. 3 Weeks without a reboot! Yay!