Algo 8180 loudspeaker on remote site as a teleworker?

[thylacine]

Hi all,

We have a fleet of Mitel 6920 IP phones at our campus, but some of the facilities throughout the campus needed the phones set up as teleworkers, as there were no spare fibre runs to connect a voice-network switch.

As such, the phones are connected to the data-network (and the adjacent computers connect to the back of the phones), and these all work well.

A need has arisen for a loud ringer at one of the remote sites, a maintenance yard where the guys can't hear the phone ringing in the office.

Our comms provider recommended and provided an Algo 8180, which was preconfigured at their site and worked fine as a teleworker.

When I install it at our site though, it can't connect to the teleworker IP... 'no reply from server' in the Algo's web interface.

If I connect the Algo to our voice-network directly (back in our main building) and set its SIP server IP as the main voice network's call server's IP, it works fine... but out at the remote site with the only change being the SIP server IP (pointing to the teleworker server), 'no reply from server'.

Port 5060 is obviously open as the phones are working as teleworkers. Our comms vendor has connected in, deleted and recreated the extension given to the Algo, reset the PIN on the MCD and MBG... no luck.

I've also done a factory reset, before plugging all the details back in... same thing - works fine on the voice network with the relevant IP for the server, but not as a teleworker.

Any ideas? Do these Algo devices differ in some way to the phones? I'd have thought they were basically the same thing in essence.

I asked Ralph about his experiences in http://mitelforums.com/forum/index.php?topic=2073 but no luck unfortunately - it was obviously a long time ago but I'd hoped maybe he'd done a similar setup again more recently.

The device is set to DHCP and gets an IP in the correct range, gateway is all fine, same as the PCs and phones. In the remote site the device was running off a small PoE switch, but I tried it off the wall port on its own, and also directly off a larger switch in one of our other teleworker locations (everything is also working fine there), still nothing - 'no reply from server'.

EDIT: I've just discovered that it appears to have a number of firmware upgrades available, so trying those now.

[Dogbreath]

It sounds to me that you're describing a networking issue rather than a config issue.
If you can't get any useful diagnostics out of the loudspeaker, you could try troubleshooting with a softphone in its place, see if that gives you something else to look at.

[acejavelin]

When you say "teleworker" do you mean these devices are going through a Mitel Border Gateway or you put the phones in "teleworker mode" just to point them to an IP over a VPN?

The key here is "Our comms provider recommended and provided an Algo 8180, which was preconfigured at their site and worked fine as a teleworker." which if correct says the device was working as a remote teleworker device, thus eliminating everything, so we look at the what is unique when it failed, the site you installed it. The fact the 6900 series phones work does not eliminate the network, as those are MiNET device, and your Algo horn is a SIP device. Just from the limited information you have given here, I would summize that SIP is being blocked or some SIP ALG is active/inactive (active and it shouldn't be, or inactive and it should be) somewhere at the local site, which would likely be the router.

[thylacine]

Thanks so much all... I'm also leaning (heavily) towards something on the network, but don't know enough about the devices to know how they differ, so thanks for the info given thus far, gives me some direction to head in.

As for the 'teleworker' setup, the phones connect directly into our data network, and are pointed to the MBG's 'WAN' address as shown in the MBG section of MiCollab, whereas the phones directly connecting to the voice network work off the MBG 'LAN' IP address.

All the firmware updates have applied, no difference made (not that it would, if it's a config issue).

The fact the comms vendor also seem to be stumped makes it difficult, hence why I posted here, so I'll look into the ALG options you mentioned Ace; difficult when I don't have direct access to these kinds of settings on the LAN and have to relay the details to the network admins. I'm assuming it's some port that's blocked on the LAN that the Algo uses but the phones in this teleworker setup don't, but I'm not sure which one(s) would be relevant from the lists of ports these devices use, and trying to get the admins to open anything is like getting blood from a stone, not that security-consciousness is a bad thing.

Unfortunately the syslog only shows 'connection failed' Dog, not any clear info as to why.

[johnp]

I think the Algo device will also respond to a voice vlan if set on the switch. This may result in no internet access as it may not be accessible for teleworker