[asterisk-users] Polycom DHCP Option 66 FTP provisioning

[Karl Fife]

>> I know for a fact that you can provision a Polycom via ftp.
>> I've included
>> much of my dhcpd.conf file below.  Pick out what you need.
>> Let me know if
>
> I can confirm that using option 66 will work with FTP (and HTTP, for
> that matter) with newer BootROM versions.  I don't know the exact
> version it changed, unfortunately, as I just noticed it in passing when
> I was running some tests one day.
>
> As for why we ended up choosing option 129 originally rather than 160?
> I wish I had a clever technical explation, but it's just a random
> unassigned option number.  That's it. :)
>
> - Brad
>

Thanks.
This has been very helpful.

It appears that without specifying the protocol in the option 66 host 
string, Polycom endpoints default to TFTP even if you specify FTP in the 
Polycom bootloader.  This appears to be the case EVEN IF you tell the 
bootloader to expect an IP address (instead of a string which can naturally 
stipulate the protocol).

For us (and apparently others), this idiosyncracy turned into a problem in 
that OUR DHCP server (pfSense 1.2.3--a gui around dhcpd) can only pass an IP 
address, not a host string (with protocol, credentials, etc). in DHCP option 
66.

A workaround for this could be achieved (in pfSense 1.2.3) by uploading a 
special configuration file for dhcpd, (For option 66 or ANY other DHCP 
option for that matter) but this special config can be easily overwritten by 
the pfSense gui, so it should be considered maintenece gotcha/problem ala 
"Oops, nobody's phone works after this unrelated change"

It appears that pfSense 2.0 (currently in beta) will offer custom DHCP 
options within the GUI.

FWIW, we have decided to pre-configure new endpoints with the local DNS name 
of the provisioning server, as well as the provisioning protocol, username 
(the default) and secret.  This means that phones would not need to be 
revisited in order to point the endpoints to another provisioning server.

-Karl