[Asterisk-Users] Cisco DHCP and Polycom boot server

[Rich Adamson]

> I've been trying to set up my Polycom phones to get the boot server info
> (tftp-server-address) from DHCP on a Cisco router.  I've previously just
> specified it manually on the phone, and that works well enough, but I need
> to change now (because of the number and geographic locations of the
> phones).  
> 
> I can actually get it to work just fine (using option 66 on the Cisco
> router), if I change the DHCP menu on the Polycom phone to show "BootSrv
> Type: String".  That's great, but that's not a default setting, and I don't
> want to have to change any settings on the phone.  I want the phones to be
> able to provision fully, out-of-the-box, with nothing but the info from
> DHCP.  
> 
> If I leave the default setting (BootSrv Type: IP Address), and tell the
> Cisco router to send the boot serverinfo as an IP rather than as a string,
> nothing happens.  The phone just says "Could not contact boot server, using
> existing configuration", but according to the FTP logs and ethereal, the
> phone doesn't actually try to contact the boot server at all.  I've tried
> various version of the bootrom, but nothing has worked so far.
> 
> Has anybody gotten this to work? (Cisco router DHCP and Polycom boot server)

If you want this to be anywhere near reliable, then consider switching 
from tftp to ftp per the Polycom warnings. The phones "want" to check the
timestamps of various files to determine whether to read/implement that
file, and tftp does not support that. You might get it to work the first
time, but subsequent changes to those files will not be read by the phone.