TMS - Polycom HDX not receiving Phonebook SIP addresses

[Richard Greig]

Hi All,

I'm having an issue with TMS, where our Polycom endpoints (HDX) are unable to receive SIP phone book entries (only IP or H323).

Is anyone able to confirm that they have had this working before?

Please note that the endpoints are SIP enabled, and managed by the TMS.

Have also tried turning "Route phone book entries" to no - as I believe this should make TMS send all entries?

Cheers,

Rich

[Wayne DeNardi]

Yes, the directory sent to a Polycom HDX can include SIP entries if SIP is enabled on the endpoint.

We have some Polycom HDX devices in our environment and have SIP as well as H.323 entries in their directories.

The Polycom devices are a bit dumb with phonebook updates though, and we've found that you will often need to reboot the Polycom device for it to download any updates to a TMS Phonebook, they don't update nicely like the Cisco endpoints do.

We have "Route Phone Book Entries" set to "Yes".

You also need to make sure that your Polycom can talk to your TMS server on port 3601.

Wayne
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[Richard Greig]

Hi Wayne,

Thanks for the reply - glad to know it has been done before!

Any chance you can expand on a few other details (HDX firmware version, TMS version, type of addresses book being used)?

Does TMS also show the Polycom endpoints as having SIP capability (ours only shows H323 despite it being enabled and registered to the VCS)?

Our Polycom HDX endpoints are mainly on 3.1.5, TMS version is 15.1. Have been trying phonebooks with different sources (file based, manual, all systems etc).

I believe the connectivity to TMS is ok - a Wireshark capture from the TMS server shows the connection on port 3601.

Below is an example on what is being sent from TMS:

GET 1 
A2\<endpoint name>\online::localhost:9090(602)\\\\\\384\617101801\617101801\\
eob:*\<endpoint name>

Suspecting SIP details should be included between one of the '/' pairs, as what we have seen so far is E164 or IP addresses.

When "Route Phone Book Entries" is set to 'No', we then get a line for a SIP only system, however no dial information is provided between the /'s - just 'Auto' for call speed.

GET 1 
A2\<endpoint name>\online::localhost:9090(196)\\Auto\\\\Auto\\\\
eob:*\<endpoint name>

We have also tried rebooting the systems, however no luck there :(.

Cheers,

Rich

[Wayne DeNardi]

Hi Rich,

We're currently running TMS 15.1.0.

We have HDXs running a variety of software releases as we didn't have access to the Polycom HDX upgrades until very recently, so haven't got around to upgrading them all yet (mainly 3.0.6 and 3.1.10).

We're using Manual List phonebooks for those particular devices, and the list contains both H.323 and SIP entries

TMS does not show any SIP details on the Summary page when looking at the endpoint details, only the H.323 settings (E.164 Alias and H.323 ID) - no SIP URI is shown as the Cisco endpoints do.

Wayne
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[Richard Greig]

Hi Wayne,

Thanks again for the info - so far it sounds like we are working with the same environments (except ours isn't working quite right for some reason).

Will keep searching, however please let me know if anything comes to mind that you think we should try.

Cheers,

Rich

[Wayne DeNardi]

When looking at the addresses on the Polycom endpoint, they don't show as SIP addresses, but as IP Address type entries (see screengrab of web Polycom Web Interface Directory screen.

Wayne
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[Richard Greig]

We see similar to the previously attached when we have an H323 contact method in TMS, and H323 is enabled on the endpoint (the value appears in the IP address field).

However on the same TMS contact entry, we have a SIP contact method and it doesn't seem to even get sent to our HDX (Wireshark on the TMS server).

Apologies, however are you able to confirm how the endpoint currently registers, as well as that the address appearing in the attachment is a SIP contact method within TMS (with no matching H323 contact method)?

[Wayne DeNardi]

Yes, the entry in the phone book is only there as SIP in TMS (see attached screenshot).  All our endpoints are dual registered, SIP and H.323.

Wayne

[Richard Greig]

Made some slight progress, however still not working as intended.

Our endpoints are currently dual registered as well, however H323 to a CMA & SIP to the VCS (we are currently transitioning).

I dual registered to the VCS, and found that the SIP entries came across from the TMS (Route Phone Book entries set to Yes). Problem is that it ended up in the IP address field like you mentioned above, so is being dialled as H323.

Thought this was due to the TMS trying to work out what protocol the endpoint can dial, so turned off "Route Phone Book Entries" - back to just the name of the entry coming across, no addresses.

Any chance your systems are using SIP for SIP entries in the address book?

Cheers,

Rich

[Wayne DeNardi]

I guess there's a possibility that they're dialling (what is sent to them by the phonebook as a "SIP" entry) as a H.323 address, but as the VCS can Interwork the call, the call still goes through OK.

If I get a chance in the next couple of days I'll see if I can try some calls on those devices and have a better look at what is happening behind the scenes.

Wayne

[Richard Greig]

Thanks again Wayne - really appreciate your help on this one.

I'm glad we now at least have addresses coming across in some format.

What we might have to do is dual register as much as we can to avoid interworking, and manually import address book entries that we definitely want as SIP / won't take much maintenance. E.g. VMRs, IVR for our WebEx site.

I think the only scenario where we will get unintentional interworking, will be for our HDX's calling SX10s through the address book - not too bad really.

Cheers,

Rich

[Wayne DeNardi]

The SX10 scenario may be much easier for you in the near future - stay tuned for an upcoming software release.

Wayne