WLC 5508 7.4 and Spectralink Phones

[ROBBY HARRELL]

I have just deployed a WLC 5508 version 7.4  with 3602 APs at a Hospital.   The hospital is in process of migrating from a Nortel PBX and Cisco Callmanager.   Currently, they have about 100 spectralink wireless phones, and about 20 Cisco 7925 wireless phones.   They anticipate retiring the Nortel/Spectralink wireless phones in about a year.   They are having some Voice Quality issues with the Nortel/Spectralink phones.   Would enabling the SVP QoS cause any issues for the Cisco 7925 phones.   Currently WMM is enabled, and the Wireless SSID for the Wireless phones have Platinum QoS enabled.   

Most of the Cisco APs are connected to Nortel Switches.   WLC connected to NEXUS 7000 Core.

[EvaldasOu]

I think this is more a question of your WLAN design. Was a site survey performed? Is your WiFi spectrum not overcrowded too muc? Maybe there are some sources of interference? You should check that...

[ROBBY HARRELL]

I found out that the Spectralink phones were set to use 802.11a channels 36, 40, 44, and 48 only.   I had set the APs to DCA for all 802.11a channels.   The Spectralink phones were used on a few floors of a tower at the Hospital, so we manually assigned those 4 channels to the APs on those floors for the 802.11a band.  

The issue was not actual QoS, but the phones dropping connection to APs.  With the DCA, many of the APs were using channels that the Spectralink phones were not able to use. 

Eventually, the Spectralink phones will be replaced with Cisco 7925s as the hospital completes its migration from a Nortel PBX to Cisco Communications manager we have installed there. 

[EvaldasOu]

That's a great news Robby!

So Spectralink phones cant automatically choose the best channel? Just static configuration possible?

[ROBBY HARRELL]

The Customer thinks that the newer Spectralink Phones they (updated firmware) can use the other channels.   But, They have about 100 of these phones set to use the lower 4 channels.   It would require taking each phone to a docking station connected to a mgt pc to change the settings on them.   It was just quicker to set the channels manually on the APs via the WLC 5508 in the areas the Phones are working.

[Derrick Robba]

Robby - Check the link below and take a look at the 5ghz requirments. I dont know what your density or design looks like but ultimately you should run a physical survey. The two phones have different requirements and lets just say your better of going the cisco route here..

http://support.spectralink.com/sites/default/files/resource_files/1725-86192-000_AA.pdf

[Leo Laohoo]

Robby,

Just to add, make sure your 792XG phones are running firmware 1.4.3 and LATER. Significant improvements, in regards to roaming, were incorporated starting from this version.

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