spa phone add mac address into syslog message

[seawolffeng]

Hi there,

I am wondering if there is any way we can add mac address of SPA Phone into its syslog sent to server? Thanks.

[Dan Lukes · Accepted solution]

No.

But IP address is recorded by syslog server (or should be). So you can identify the device by IP.

I assume that your network is well maintaned, so you know what devices are connected to the network and what IP they are using.

It doesn't work if unauthorized devices can steal IP address with no network administrator approval.

[seawolffeng]

Yeah, we can do with IP.

However, when there are many IP phones under one network, then the syslog of them would mess up together. It becomes hard to debug then. 

Thanks for advise though.

[Dan Lukes]

If you will maintain DNS reverse records for the IP addresses used by phone, then syslog will write the IP name instead of numeric IP. You can embed MAC into the DNS name. But it's not so good solution as MAC is not so intuitive description of the phone. We use DNS names like DEV-1234 (where 1234 is the primary line number of the phone in question).

[Dan Lukes]

May be I missed the point ...

there are many IP phones under one network

Are you speaking about the NAT between the phone's network and the syslog server ?

[seawolffeng]

Yeah. 

Most common situation for us is that there is NAT issue. All phones are in same IP when we received at our server side. We can not distinguish them. 

[Dan Lukes]

But you have access from outside to such network for the purpose of phone administration and maintenance, isn't it ? I assume a kind of tunnel or so. So pass syslog thru such tunnel directly to the syslog server. You will have access to original IP then.

Or run syslog server inside the phone's network.