IP Phone with Dell 5224 Switch???

[tmoffett]

A customer has a few sites with Dell PowerConnect switches.

I know, I know... That's bad but I still have to support this config for now until they can afford to upgrade to Cisco.

The question is, will an IP phone work with a switch that supports 802.1q trunking (separate VLANs for voice/data)? To my knowledge, the switch must be able to understand what an auxliliary VLAN is so I say no.

I have been unsuccessful in configuring this so far...

Sorry for a Dell related question, but I need a real answer before taking this back to the customer...

Thanks,

Tim M.

[Aaron Harrison]

Hi

In theory the phone should work with a switch provided it can do dot1q trunking - however you'd have to have a way to tell the phone that it needs to be in a particular VLAN... On Cisco switches a CDP exchange does this (controlled by the aux vlan/voice vlan commands). I'd bet Dell won't do that...

I've seen reference to configuring a file on the TFTP server that tells the phone what VLAN ID it needs elsewhere on this forum:

http://forum.cisco.com/eforum/servlet/NetProf?page=netprof&CommCmd=MB%3Fcmd%3Dpass_through%26location%3Doutline%40%5E1%40%40.1dd74927

And here's doc that I think outlines the procedure, although I've not done this myself :-) It's for the 7902/5/12 phones, not sure if it's possible on other types...

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/phones/ps379/products_administration_guide_chapter09186a0080174a58.html#wp1012858

There's also the option (as you say it's a temporary setup) of not trunking to the phones... Although you'd have to put some measures in place for QoS (if you aren't trunking CoS won't be marked on the packets).

Aaron

[JOSE TORRES]

You can do this, just create a trunk allowing the voice and data vlan on the port.

For this example,

Voice VLAN = 10

Data VLAN = 20

Set the data vlan that the PC's traffic needs to be on to be the native vlan on the trunk port on the switch.

switchport trunk native vlan 20

On the phone you can go in and change the Admin Vlan

ID, change that to the voice vlan.

**#, Settings -> Network Configuration -> Admin Vlan

This will tell the phone that this is it's Voice VLAN.

It will then tag it with this VLAN and send it to the switch.

If the switch is configured as a trunk allowing that vlan it should work.

I got this to work on an Enterasys switch so it should work.

Jose,