[asterisk-gui] polycom 501 provisioning

[Trevor Benson]

> On Behalf Of Eric J. Swanson
> Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 6:03 AM
>
> Hi,
> 
> I would like to provision some polycom 501 phones.  I understand that
> you can use tftp from asterisk now, but what directories do I put the
> default configuration files so that the phones will pick them up?
> Also, what user id and password do I need to setup in the polycom
> phones to log into tftp?
> 

I cant comment on the tftp because its been so long since I bothered to do it, but I am sure someone will comment on it.  I will however give you the basics of ftp provisioning, as it allows more flexibility for deployments.

I usually setup an ftp server (any will do, but I use vsftpd).  I create a user polycom on the system, make sure they have ftp rights, and set a password.  Now here is the nice part about the polycoms.  

Next I go to the DHCP server and setup option 66 (option tftp-server-name "ftp://polycom:password@172.16.1.3";)  This really is a txt string providing a url, doesn't have to be tftp (as I use ftp, or http is also viable).  You could obviously stick in the tftp server instead, but I don't.  This provides the polycom with the user, the password, and the server ip to get files from (if you don't provide a server directory then the stock /home/polycom will be logged into over ftp).

This way you never need to even configure the phone manually, just plug it in, and have its mac.cfg and phone.cfg ready to go in the /home/polycom directory.  This also allows the polycom to see when you have updated the mac.cfg or phone.cfg via timestamp over ftp and reboot by themselves.  Obviously if you don't have a DHCP server with options to configure, then just manually provision the polycom Network Server menu for FTP, IP, user and pass.

Also the asterisk command 'sip notify polycom-check-config peer|ip' (peer extension or ip address) will reboot the phone if the configs are changed, but I am pretty sure this requires FTP not TFTP.  Just retested with my SoundPoint 330 and current firmware, no reboot as the file hasn't changed.  SO pretty sure this option under TFTP doesn't work as the phone has no way to check the timestamp of the files, meaning manual reboots, or login into the web interface to reboot each phone.

Of course this seems like a lot of work to just provision a single phone (if that's your intention).  But in my opinion TFTP is overkill for a single phone you could manually provision. To my recollection TFTP is supposed to be 'simpler' than other methods, but biased as I am I think FTP is the simplest most feature rich method.

Trevor
A1 Networks