Manual VLAN Configuration for Lync Phone Edition
January 11, 2011 by Jeff Schertz · 10 Comments
In environments with managed switches and VLANs which do not support the Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) it may be necessary to pass the VLAN identifier to Lync Phone Edition devices using DHCP as briefly discussed in the Lync Server 2010 documentation. But exactly how to configure this is not actually covered in the documentation, so this article covers the process in detail.
What is confusing about the current TechNet documentation is that it states that the VLAN ID is part of Option 43, but as I discussed in a previous article Option 43 is really not a single option but instead is a categorization for customized, vendor-specific settings to be passed to DHCP clients. Furthermore the documentation does not explain how to actually configure this either.
Previously this could be setup for Communicator Phone Edition but the only directions explaining the actual process were included in the original 2007 version release notes. (They were strangely omitted in the 2007 R2 version.) What is worse is that those directions are very basic and if followed verbatim will not work due to improper use of character case in the class ID value.
Behavior
The Phone Edition device boots up and sends a DHCP request out on the network. In this request the device client asks for Option 60 with a value of CPE-OCPHONE from the DHCP Server. If this value is not currently defined on the server then the default VLAN is used (or none if there is no VLAN configured or an unmanaged network is used).
If the DHCP Server is configured to pass a VLAN ID then it responds to the request for vendor-specific settings by passing Option 10 which contains the defined VLAN ID. The device client immediately gives up the initial IP address presented on the default VLAN and and then sends a new request over the now-known VLAN.
At this point the remainder of the connection process continues and the device contacts a Time Server and then the Lync registrar.
Configure DHCP
In order to provide the desired VLAN ID to Lync Phone Edition clients perform the following steps on the a Windows DHCP server to manually define a new vendor class and configure the desired DHCP option.
Define New Vendor Class
- In DHCP Manager right-click IPv4 and select Define Vendor Classes…
- Add a new class and configure the class settings with the information listed below.
Display Name MSCPEClient Description UC Vendor Class Id ACSII Data CPE-OCPHONE
The name and description can be anything unique so these are just examples. The class data is what is important and must be set exactly as shown. If the DHCPutil tool was already run on this server then there should already be an existing MSUCClient class which is for storing the Aries-specific PIN authentication settings. This same class cannot be used for the VLAN ID and a new class must be created as the data strings are unique and much match specifically to what the client is programmed to accept. This is due to the fact that both the Tanjay and Aries phones leverage the CPE-OCPHONE class ID for VLAN information, while the Aries phone also request information from the MS-UC-Client class ID.
The resulting configuration should look like the following example.
Also be aware that this data is case-sensitive. The erroneous example below (which was taken directly from the CPE 2007 release notes) shows that if the incorrect case is used the binary data will actually be different as uppercase and lowercase ACSII letters have different values. Notice that the last 4 digit groupings below are not the same as the correct setting shown above.
Once saved, the new vendor class should be listed as shown below.
Set Predefined Options
- In DHCP Manager right-click IPv4 and select Set Predefined Options…
- In the Option Class field select the newly created class (e.g. MSCPEClient).
- Click Add and enter the following information in the Option Type window.
Name VLANID Data Type Word Code 10 Description VLAN Identifier
Again, the name and description fields can be customized but the data type and code must be entered exactly as shown. Also make sure that the Array option is not enabled.
- Save the changes and leave the default value at null (0×0). Alternatively if a single VLAN will be used for all device then that value could be set here, but this is simply a default value which only pre-populates the scope/server option when later configured.
Define DHCP Option
- Configure either the Server Options or Scope Options and click on the Advanced tab. Normally the setting would be added to the server level but if different scopes will use different VLAN IDs then set this at the scope level.
- In the Vendor Class field select the newly created class (e.g. MSCPEClient).
- Enable option 010 VLANID and set the Data to the desired value in decimal (e.g. 800).
Once saved the value will automatically be converted to hexadecimal (e.g. 0×320).
Reset Phones
A simple reboot of the phone may not trigger an immediate update so go ahead and perform a factory reset (press and hold * and # while powering on the device). After the reset is completed the devices should pick up and adhere to the defined VLAN ID.
Site Administrator
Thank you – I appreciate this technical documentation
best regards – bueschu
There is currently an issue with Lync Phone Edition understanding VLAN ID values of 512 or greater. Although using the process in this article to provide the ID via DHCP works for all values, if LLDP is instead used to pass the VLAN ID then the LPE client will only connect to VLAN IDs between 1 and 511. Microsoft support has been notified of the issue and a fix should be coming out in a future cumulative update. See this TechNet discussion for more details: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/…
Hi Jeff,
Regarding your Manual VLAN Configuration for Lync Phone Edition
article, I followed the instructions to the letter for creating DHCP Option10, but I'm not having any success?
Neither of the Polycom CX500/600/3000 phones seem to respect the DHCPOFFER message returned by the MSFT DHCP Server. I'm thinking that perhaps the latest cummulative update for Lync 2010 Phone Edition needs to be applied before this will work? Or, have I completely overlooked something in the DHCP configurations?
Btw, the LLDP-MED solution works perfectly once the Vlan ID is set to < 512 for all of the Polycom CX Series noted above.
Thanks for your continuing contribitions to the Lync 2010 environment!
Best regards!
Rob Lesyshyn
rob.lesyshyn@axcelis.com
Rob, the configuration works the same on RC, RTM, CU1, etc. My guess is that something is missing the the DHCP configuration; do the DHCP and client emulator tests pass successfully?
Hi Jeff,
We have Polycom phones CX 500, 600 working with Lync 2010. Everything is fine now after some work arround with VLAN settings.
Basic Information:
Data VLAN : 200
Voice VLAN: 100
when i apply the following configuration to the switch interface:
switch port access vlan 200
switch port voice vlan 100
Phones do not gets the configuration from the DHCP server which is windows 2008 based DHCP server.
where as if i put these configuration to the switch interface:
switch port access vlan 100
switch port voice vlan 100
Phones gets registered with the Lync server and it shows the correct VLAN ID on phones. and once it gets the correct vlan ID i.e. 100, now i can change the switch port configuration to allow both data and voice vlan on that interface: i.e.
switch port access vlan 200
switch port voice vlan 100
Now phones and data services are fine.
I dont know why phones are having this behavior. Is there anything i m missing in DHCP to configure?
My real nightmare will be when i will update the phone's firmware as i will have to reconfigure all the switch interface to have VLAN ID for the voice and data to be 200 in my case.
I also had noticed similar behavior when 2 weeks back we had long power outage for Lync server as well as network switches. That time many of the phones had lost the VLAN Id and hence were not able to communicate. But that was not the case with all the phones.
Appreciate your valuable feedback.
Thanks & regards,
Mukhtar Qazi
I'm using a CX600 phone connected to an HP ProCurve 5406 switch and a using Windows 2008 server for DHCP. I've went through the steps on Jeff's Blog to configure the VLAN's. When my phone boots up it gets assigned to the DATA VLAN (1) and gets an IP address. I have LLDP enable on the port the phone is connected to and that port is TAGGED for the Voice VLAN and Untagged for the data. What am i missing? I would like the CX600 to change it's VLAN tag to 200 and get an IP address from the server in a different subnet. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Did you ever get this working, I have the exact same setup and issue right now.
Hi,
I have a Juniper EX 2200 Switch that I have enabled LLDP-MED on for every port. Each port is part of the Data(default VLAN) and VOIP(VLAN 60)
If I am using LLDP-MED I shouldn't have to do these DHCP settings correct? I tried them anyway and it doesn't work. I configured an IP helper on the switch to point to our DHCP server and setup a scope on the VOIP subnet for the phones. No phones are getting an IP address and when I show IP helper Statistics on the switch nothing shows up.
I hate this networking crap because I am not a network engineer so I have struggled through this for over 60 hours with Juniper and they have been no help whatsoever.
Paul, either approach can be used but you should not use both at the same time. If you are configuring LLDP-MED then that should work for assigning the VLAN ID to the devices; you don't need to also configure the DHCP option for VLANs.
Hi,
Having same/similar issue
I haven't configured any VLANs at all. As we are working in a live environment with existing Voice VLANs used for other PBX's
the CX600 seems to receive some of the DHCP values from our Windows 2008 server DHCP server
From wireshark It receives the option 43 but does not receive option 120.
the DHCP server is configured corrently.
DHCP snooping is not confgured on any device in our network.
So why is it losing some ofthe DHCP attributes?
A