IP Phone on third party switches

[sharadmenawat]

Hi!

I've Enterasys switches on my LAN. Can I use Cisco IP Phone and CallManager with them? Also I would use Cisco 3600 router as my gateway. Is it possible use IP Phones on my network?

[j.armas]

Of course you can, but with cisco switches you can provide inlinepower and auxiliary vlan features that may increase the realiability and performance of the solution.

[sharadmenawat]

Thanks Jose!

Inline power is OK, but How does Auxilary VLAN helps me for IP Telephony? Also, on Cisco web site or Document third party switch support for IP Telephony is not mentioned. Can you help me in getting the same?

Sharad

[TIMOTHY DAVIDSON]

As an option to Inline power, you can get powered patch panels, which accomplish the same thing, or you can just plug the phone itself into the wall until you can afford the Cisco powered switches.

Axilary VLANs allow you to place the phones into their own VLAN so you can prioritize their traffic. This is necessary on larger LANs, but you can usually do without it on smaller subnets.

-Tim

[j.armas]

As mentioned, separated vlans can help you to provide more quality to voice packets, the ip phone change the value of the CoS field (three bits in the 802.1p field). If your switches can handle that information you can provide QoS on the LAN. In small networks you might not want to configure this features. You can read some about this on the following URL:

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/voice/ip_tele/network/dgcampus.htm#xtocid364019

Best Regards!

Jose Armas

Intersys México S.A. de C.V.

[vkartik]

Auxillary VLAN can be useful if you are plugging the PC at the back of your phone i.e. using the same switch port for both IP Phone and the PC. If not you can just make another VLAN for the phones...