Push-to-talk: multicast between phones

[Patrick Born]

The SPA5xx IP phones in SIP mode, provide a great feature called Group Paging.

This means that anyone using a SPA5xx IP phone can page all other SPA5xx IP phones on the LAN by simply dialing 800.

This works regardless of what you are using for call control. [Asterisk or other 3rd party call control].

Combine this with a speed dial and you can press only one button to page a group.

Configure a speed dial by pressing an unused line key on a SPA5xx IP phone for 3 seconds. Provide a name and number for the speed dial button and you are done.

Multicast paging is one-way. This means that the person who dials 800 can speak but others cannot reply.

Up to 5 groups can be configured but the phone only takes part in the first two defined paging groups.

Modify group paging behavior as follows:

1.       Enable paging: SPA5xx web-ui > Phone tab > Supplementary Services > Paging Serv: yes [factory default is yes]

2.       Accept pages: SPA5xx web-ui > User tab > Supplementary Services > Auto Answer Page: yes [factory default is yes]

3.       Configure page groups: SPA5xx web-ui > Phone tab > Multiple Paging Group Parameters > Group Paging Script:
factory default is: pggrp=224.168.168.168:34560;name=All;num=800;listen=yes;

[click image to view larger]

Here's how to add 801 called Sales in a zero-touch deployment. This allows you to dial 800 to page all phones, 801 for Sales:

<Group_Paging_Script ua="na">

pggrp=224.168.168.168:34560;name=All;num=800;listen=yes;

pggrp=224.168.168.168:34561;name=Sales;num=801;listen=yes;

</Group_Paging_Script>

Use the following if you want to edit using the web-ui:
pggrp=224.168.168.168:34560;name=All;num=800;listen=yes;pggrp=224.168.168.168:34561;name=Sales;num=801;listen=yes;

<end>

[scd2zaken]

Dear Patrick,

The method you have written up this page .. will it be a good way to start to get information 'out off the phone' to bring this over to a small 'see who is calling' application. I'am looking for a method to read the status of the phone, which number is calling, on which line .. this information I will bring in a small application to bring the realname of the caller together.

At this moment we collect the change status of the spacfg.xml file, with the beta-program cid4u (see www.uc500.info) ..

Regards,

Eric Oosterbaan

Engineer Netherlands

[Patrick Born]

Hi Eric,

This document describes configuring the phone to listen to a multicast paging group. I don't believe that you will be able to extract information from the phone via mulitcast paging groups.

Regards,

Patrick

---------- 

[Jeff Gilliland]

What IP is this and is that a port also?  224.168.168.168:34560   Thanks

[Dan Lukes]

Whatever port and IP you configured.

[Jeff Gilliland]

Thanks this works great

[jhartacs]

I have done everything I can think of and dialing 800 doesn't send any multicast traffic. I am using a tester on two laptops that send and receive multicast traffic and they work fine, so I believe my switch is setup correctly. If I dial 800 it appears to be paging on that phone; however no phone will pick up and my notebooks with multicast receivers don't see the traffic. Also if you send multicast traffic from a notebook the switch lights up with tons of activity, but not when you dial 800.

Any other setting on the phones? I have one SPA514 and one SPA525G. Both have the latest 7.6.1 firmware.

Thanks

John

[Jeff Gilliland]

What does your group paging parms look like on your phone?

[jhartacs]

Hi Jeff,

I started out using the 34560 port and now I am on 3141 on both phones.

I have:

group paging script: pggrp=224.168.168.168:3141;name=All;num=800;listen=yes;

Paging Serv: Yes

Auto Answer Page: Yes

I have been reading for days and have found several things talking about not using the 224.168.168.168 address, I have changed it and it still had same issue. Seems like I am missing something simple?

Thanks

John

[Jeff Gilliland]

How about your dial plan? are you allowing 800#

[Jeff Gilliland]

Your screen shots look good  This is mine

pggrp=224.168.168.168:34560;name=All;num=800;listen=yes;

[Jeff Gilliland]

Also make sure you have the same on phones you want to page. All phones need this that you want to page

[jhartacs]

I believe so, but I have attached it.

[jhartacs]

What phone and firmware are you running? I only have two test phones and I have upgraded both to 7.6.1, they were on 7.5.5a. I get the same issue. The phones do appear to be paging. They go off hook and will stay with an open page; however neither the clients on the notebook nor the other phone sees anything. The switch doesn't flicker like multicast either. 

[Dan Lukes]

Turn on syslog&debug (highest level) on phone and catch them. They may reveal important facts related to the issue. But I would like to recommend you to create new discussion thread for it.

Also note I see no 800 allowed in your Dial Plan:

Dial Plan: (*xx|[3469]11|0|00|[2-9]xxxxxx|1xxx[2-9]xxxxxxS0|xxxxxxxxxxxx.)

[Dan Lukes]

Further discussion related to jhartacs  issue continue in Can't get multicast to work on SPA phones thread.