Catalyst Express 500 + CCM

[mtevich]

I was attempting to configure the VLAN for my CCM server on a CE-500 and it seems that you can only assign the 'Cisco-Voice' VLAN to a port with the 'Desktop+Phone' personality assigned to it. Any ideas on how you set up your CCM and CU server exclusively in the voice VLAN on a C-500?

Thanks,

Mike

[thisisshanky]

If voice vlan is 500, data vlan is 200,

put the callmanager server port as an access port on vlan 500.

HTH

Sankar.

[mtevich]

I may not have been clear in my original post. The Catalyst Express 500 only allows a device defined as a 'desktop+phone' in the voice vlan. Therefore I cannot assign a server to the voice vlan. If I were to define the server port as 'desktop+phone' to get in to the voice vlan, it would still want to place me an a data vlan of some sort.

There is no CLI interface on the CE-500 only a limited GUI.

Thanks for the input, but I don't think your suggestion will work on this switch.

[rhugo]

I had this SAME problem with this CAT 500 unit several months ago with its INABILITY to do VLAN tagging like traditional Cat switches. This is because that Cat 500 actually comes from the Linksys architecture and is pretty LAME. I had duplex issues on the trunk ports of this device and eventually tried configuring ALL the ports to "Other" This didn't seem to help a BIT and we finally swapped them out at the customer site for replacement 3560s. Call TAC and see if there is any good news in term of updates, but, my guess is this switch should be pulled until this malarky can be FIXED!!

[jgretta]

Unfortunately you are at the mercy of the 500 and will be forced to use the IP Phone + Desktop role. I deployed 26 to a client (not my design) and the smartports were a very limiting factor. Another item of note is that IP ARP inspection is turned on by default and can cause major processor hits, to the point that you can't access the management interface. Cisco has an HTML patch for this that will turn off ARP inspection, but you have to redo the patch if you reboot the box.

[Aaron Harrison]

Hi All

I was told about this 'can't assing a port to the voice vlan' issue by one of our engineers a while back... I found it hard to believe...

I just got my hands on a CE500, and yep - it won't allow any port via the 'customise smartports' screen to be set to vlan Cisco-Voice except for the IPPHone+Desktop template... which makes it pretty useless for all our Mitel/Avaya/CiscoCCM.. in fact useless for anything except CME with a dot1q trunked interface I guess.

Not to be beaten I tried running Cisco Network Assistant - this allows you to set ports to the voice VLAN, but only if it is a IPPhone+Desktop smartport, or a server smartport... which is just fine.

I then updated the CE500 to the new (12.2(25)SEG) - and then it allows it through the built-in GUI as well... so you can set a server port to be in the VVLAN, it was just a bug....

One that mysteriously didn't make it into the released notes as a 'resolved caveat'...

Note to Cisco: must try harder.

Hope this helps

Aaron

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[arrowdawn]

Hi,

Just to confirm, I have encountered exactly the same problem at a client site.

Using Network Assistant does indeed get around the problem, and an upgrade to the SEG version allows Server ports in trusted mode to be configured on the Voice Vlan.

Thanks for your post Aaron.

[Aaron Harrison]

No problem...

Aaron

[tahequivoice]

Where can I find this "patch" We have a few of these that have the same issues when two or more are trunked together. In fact there is JACK about the html issues on Cisco's site, I have not found a single document regarding slow gui responses or high CPU utilizations, and man do they have high CPU utes, 99% at times, and you cannot access the GUI.

[tahequivoice]

HI, There is another post regarding accessing the CLI through the web browser and I was able to remove the ip arp inspection commands and write it to startup so that when it reboots it no longer loads ip arp inspection. This has resolved three of my biggest issues with these switches and I am now no longer concerned with deploying more than one switch to a customer prem. SEG load solved the voice vlan issue, and this thread has resolved the CPU issues, and the other thread solved the CLI issues.

[mtevich]

I have uncovered another limitation with this switch. With other catalyst switches and ISR routers I have configured a gigabit link between the two devices on the voice VLAN. What this allows me to do is apply QoS across that link.

On a trunked connection between the ISR and a catalyst switch (3560) I have not been sucessful in applying QoS.

So now that I am limited to a server or a phone+desktop, I cannot do this. The cat500 screams spanning tree loop.

I assume that the next best thing is to connect the voice VLAN to my ISR as a subinterface on the g0/0.

Let me know what you all have done in the past in this case.

tia - Mike