Need Help with a Cisco 7960 IP Phone

[guydestefano]

I don't know if this is the correct forum, if not please direct me to the correct one. I have a WinXP IBM computer with a PIX 501 firewall. Today I purchased a 7960 IP phone. Questions: Do I need to have some special software for a single phone. Can I use this phone as a standalone phone on a POTS system. When it came up, it could not get past the Config IP Statement ( I have a static IP address ), it came up with a 169.xxx.xxx.xxx. If can be used as a standalone, when do I plug in the standard wall jack, tried the RS232, and it doesn't work. Also tried the 10/100 using the cable that came with the phone directly plugged into an open PIX port. Please help, as I am totally lost. Thanks in advance

[christopher.l.lawson]

Return the phone and get your money back. You need Call Manager, Call Manager Express, a sip server, or something else with this phone. You cannot plug an analog line into this phone (you may have damaged the RS232 port by trying this, btw). If all you want is a single VOIP phone, there are much cheaper options such as an ATA-186 and your choice of analog phone. You still need something as a gateway to your POTS system though. Something like Asterix would work.

You need to research voip and your options a bit more before running out and buying hardware you can't use.

-Chris

[guydestefano]

Chris;

Please elaborate ( you may have damaged the RS232 Port by trying this ). Yes I did use a plain telephone line and plugged it into the RS232 post and into a wall phone slot. Is there a chance this new phone is damaged, please tell me how I am able to know if it is or not. I really don't have a clue.

I won't be able to return it if I damaged it. Thanks for the reply.

[christopher.l.lawson]

It's a question of whether the typical phone line voltage of 50 volts DC (up to 140 ringing!) will damage the serial chip. I have a phone apart on the bench so I verified that the center pair on the plug are connected internally and have about a 5kohm input resistance across them. The phone uses a MAX3232 serial chip which is spec'd for +/- 25 volts on the input, but I suspect it will handle much higher as it's supposed to handle ESD rather well. The ethernet ports can handle much higher voltages, so they aren't a concern.

The serial port is normally used to connect the sidecar with extra line appearance buttons and 99.9% of users don't use it. You're probably fine returning the phone.

-Chris

[guydestefano]

Chris

Thank you very much for the reply. I really do appreciate it.