No VLAN available

[Slim]

TLDR at the bottom.

Hello, everyone.

First post here. I am hoping someone can point me in the right direction or give some advice. I've tried searching to no avail so please, if this has been covered, can someone share a link?

I have a customer with several locations. Currently, I have 5 of their locations. Each one has a MiVo 250. They are networked together via their network. It's a government account. The smallest system has around 30 phones. 1 of them has around 150 and 1 of them around 120 phones. Each location is a mix of 5330's and 5304's. The majority are 5304's. Unfortunately, I have nothing at all to do with their network, just the phone systems. The plan is to add 10 more locations, each of which will be closer to 100+ phones. I am dealing with the customer's IT group on a county level, but they have most of their network handled at the state government level. They will not provide me a VLAN. They made that very clear about 3 years ago on the first install and have stuck to that ever since. I'm not sure why they have such a large level and refuse to implement VLANs, but they do. At least, they won't provide one for the phones. They will not allow me to bring in switches to separate the phones completely. Everything must be on their network with the switches they have in place.

The issue I have (small issue, but annoying) is having to static each phone individually with so many phones being installed. Some phones are converged, most are on their own network cable, but they all go to the same switches. The county has told me going forward with each location, they are having a separate cable ran for each phone so they are separate. (Whatever that means. They go to the same switch and they refuse to provide a VLAN, so I have NO idea what their definition of separate really is.)

Is there any good way to go about my installs going forward without individually inputting the controller IP to the phones?  Maybe I'm thinking of this the wrong way! These are just basic MiVo 250's with no other equipment or servers that I can use. The oldest system is on 6.2.5.80.


TLDR:     Customer has 15 locations that will eventually all use MiVo 250's. Currently 5 locations are installed and networked together. Customer refuses to provide VLANs for phones. The only equipment I have on site are the controllers themselves. No DHCP servers, etc. that I can access myself. Oldest system is 6.2.5.80. Hoping I can do something other than static each phone individually for the next 10 locations. Most future locations will be approximately 75 phones (5330's & 5304's) some will be 100+.

If I haven't provided enough information, please let me know! THANKS!!!

[Tech Electronics]

Slim,

I am not sure why I would need to say this, but why don't you just have them add an option to the DHCP Server that is issuing out the IP Addresses?

Option 43 is the generic version and works well with the 53xx series phones.

Option 125 is Mitel's Vendor option and it can be broken down in to 128-132 if need be; you really only need 128-130 though.

Thanks,

TE

[Slim]

TE,

Thanks for the quick reply! I will definitely address this with them again. I did request DHCP options once before. I believe it was on the second install and I wasn't able to get anywhere with them. Enough time has passed now maybe they will reconsider. Thank you!

[Tech Electronics]

Slim,

The other option is to embrace the extra work along with a hefty charge; call it a stupid tax.

Thanks,

TE

[Slim]

lol thanks for the advice, TE. I’d say that’s the way things will be going with this customer until further notice. Unfortunately, it makes no difference to me in terms of pay. That all goes to the company I work for. The idea is more of a convenience thing for me and a more speedy install to get the job off my company’s books.

I’m going to try to go the DHCP option route again, but I’m not holding my breath. To add some perspective, last week I went to one of their remote sites for the third time to prove to IT that they do NOT have a static IP from their ISP at that location. The same question is asked each time: “how do you know it’s not static? That’s what we’re paying for.”  My answer: “I don’t know, I guess since it’s a new IP address every day?”

I don’t mean to be harsh at all, because I’m not the sharpest by any means on the network side of things. I know what I know simply by what I encounter with the phone system installs. But this isn’t the end user I’m talking about - it’s the IT department for them. They’ve reminded me on each new system, they can’t do VLANs because they’ve never had to. I feel like in their line of work, that should be a common necessity. Not to go back to the VLAN thing - just giving some perspective. Anyway, thanks for your time and advice! I’m sure I’ll have more questions now that I’m on here.


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[Dogbreath]

If you can't even convince them to configure DHCP options, what about putting the handset in TW mode? That would be about 90% less painful than configuring everything statically. You still have to touch every handset but it's one parameter and done.

[acejavelin]

If you can't even convince them to configure DHCP options, what about putting the handset in TW mode? That would be about 90% less painful than configuring everything statically. You still have to touch every handset but it's one parameter and done.

This is typically what we do with "troublesome" customers who refuse to VLAN or implement any DHCP options.

That said, since they obviously won't do anything with the network at all to try to make things easier for the install, I would expect an installation of this size with 100+ phones is going to have problems... Hopefully just as simple as a few audio glitches here and there, but in all honestly I would expect this is going to bring a ton of QoS issues and potentially other network conflicts and things like DHCP pools being empty. It is 2021, NOBODY statically assigns everything anymore. I was at a Mitel class once where an instructor literally threw a phone across the room to get that point across to the class (it was years ago in Arizona... bonus points if anyone can guess the instructor.)

To @Slim you should REALLY get your sales person or a manager involved in this on your side, this is just a BAD way to do an install. Government or not, there are ways to get these things done... we do it all the time. Do it right up front or it will be a pain later, for both you and the customer.

[Slim]

Hey guys thanks for all the replies. And thanks for the tip about the TW method! That’s definitely an avenue I hadn’t considered in this situation. I’m in the middle of a very small project with the IT department now. They have a small off network location that needs TW phones and I’m having a terrible time getting them to forward the appropriate ports for me. They’ve gone back to their own table to “discuss options” since it has yet to work. I know the issue isn’t on the Mitel level as I’ve been setting these teleworkers up like crazy lately for all the work @ home users. In fact the Mitel was the second option for them to use teleworkers for this location. (One site still has a different brand). They were unable to get that to work so decided to try using some TW’s from the Mitel. It’s completely unrelated to the situation so I apologize for the added mess. Just trying to lay out what I’m dealing with here. Am I just venting at this point?

@AceJavelin, YES. This has definitely already become a big issue and it is causing a lot of finger pointing in front of the end user. I try not to engage in that. Calls dropping, lost audio one way, both ways at times. The IT department always goes in and moves the port my phone is in to a new switch. Unfortunately, my networking knowledge is very limited. But, it’s very clear there are issues that I don’t get out of systems that are of the same size with different IT groups.


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