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Patrick Born
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Update: December 2nd 2010-- As of firmware release 7.4.7 this parameter is by factory-default, configured to a value of 255

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Questions:

When using my Cisco SPA5xx IP phone and the other party hangs up, my phone waits a while then beeps several times before hanging up. Why is this? No other phones behave this way.

Can I make my Cisco phone disconnect as soon as the remote party hangs up?

Answers:

Q: When using my Cisco SPA5xx IP phone and the other party hangs up, my phone waits a while then beeps several times before hanging up. Why is this? No other phones behave this way.

A: This is a feature on the Cisco SPA phones and ATAs and is designed to make our SPA phone more familiar to analog phone users.

For example, imagine the following scenario:

Bump your analog phone so that it is off hook. After a period of time, it will play a reorder tone to alert you that the phone is off hook.

You say, “oops” and replace the handset to silence the phone.

A Cisco SPA phone is no different, the remote end hangs up, but the SPA phone user does not hang up.

The phone is now accidentally off hook, so it plays a reorder tone, just like an analog phone would.

Q: Can I make my Cisco phone disconnect as soon as the remote party hangs up?

A: Yes. Modify the Reorder Delay parameter as follows:

      Using the phone's web-user interface http://IP_address_of_phone/admin/advanced :

Regional tab > Control Timer Values (sec) > Reorder Delay: 255  [default is 5]

Or :

      Using the phone configuration file:

<Reorder_Delay ua="na">255</Reorder_Delay>

Your Cisco SPA phone will now disconnect as soon as the remote party hangs up.

Here's how the Reorder Delay parameter works:

0 -- immediate reorder, play reorder for 10 seconds then on-hook

1 -- 1 second of dead air, play reorder for 10 seconds then on-hook

2 -- 2 seconds of dead air, play reorder for 10 seconds then on-hook

254 -- 254 seconds of dead air, play reorder for 10 seconds then on-hook

255 -- no reorder, immediate on-hook

<end>

Comments
jim
Community Member

That is not the purpose of a reorder tone. A reorder tone is used to advise a caller that there is a problem with routing their call. When people hear a reorder tone, they do not think "oh, I left my phone off hook", they think, "there is something wrong".

It is true that the carrier will put a tone on an analog line when it is left off hook. It sounds like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO_YErq1M-M&feature=related

That's a good idea for your ATAs.

It's a terrible idea for your SIP phones. Here's why.

In the case of the far end hanging up, there is no longer any call in progress. What people expect in a PBX (because EVERY OTHER PBX IN THE WORLD DOES THIS) is that the phone will simply disconnect the call when the far end hangs up. I've been in the PBX business for over 20 years, and I've done a few other nifty things as well (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510480/), and please believe me, you do not want to be blasting a reorder tone at users of a SIP telephone whenever the far end party hangs up. This will serve only one purpose: to upset them for no good reason.

This is not correct behavior, and will cause all manner of service problems. I would recommend setting the default to 255 so that service providers using these telephones will not have to deal with a ton of pointless service calls.

jim
Community Member

Oh, and one more thing worth thinking about: the "Call Disconnected" message is still VERY USEFUL, so just because I don't want to blast a reorder tone at my users, doesn't mean I don't want to let them know that the far end hung up.

These are good phones, and you folks are getting there, but this whole reorder tone thing is an example of something that probably wants a bit of a re-think. Get out to a few traditional PBX installations and see how they handle far end disconnect. That's what you want to be doing with your Small Business Phones.

Patrick Born
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Jim,

Thank you for the constructive criticism and suggestions. I'll get your comments to the Product Team.

I have opened Cisco Defect & Enhancement Tracking System (CDETS) #CSCtj15774 and #CSCtj15785 against the SPA3xx/50xG and SPA525G phones respectively.

Regards,

Patrick

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jim
Community Member

Patrick,

Thanks for replying to my rant. That's the kind of thing that makes for loyal customers.

Tell the engineering folks to keep up the great work. There's some real brilliance in those SPA525G sets.

Jim

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