New to Allworx, Questions

[jmmille]

Hi guys!

I recently inherited a remote Allworx 6x system with about 50 phones (9204) at one of our branches.

Currently, it's configured where PC clients and phones share the same subnet. I'd like to separate the clients and phones via vlans, but I have a few questions:

1) How do the phones know what vlan to be on?
I'm planning on replacing the current POE switches to newer switches that support voice-vlans, but I haven't found any information that says the phones will actually use that vlan. Do I need to use DHCP options to direct it to the Allworx 6x?

2) I need a decent Polycom conference phone to work with the system. Will a SoundStation IP 6000 work? I saw a few threads that people had luck doing it.

Thanks!

[ryano]

1. I'm not a network expert, but I believe for VLAN you need managed layer 3 switches throughout your network, likely of the same brand. I believe the way it works is you create a VLAN on the managed switches, then select which ports are on that VLAN. Next you plug the Ethernet lines to those particular ports where you will connect both the phones and the Allworx switches. You can configure all the managed switches to work with this same VLAN, so all the phones on the various managed switches which are on this VLAN will be located on this separate voice network with no interference from the computers. Obviously this makes cabling a bit more complex.

2. Not really an answer but, maybe useful:
http://allworxforum.com/viewtopic.php?f ... 8aeb9d8be9

[boutym]

What I did with pretty good success is just put all the phones on their own switch with a connection between the switches. The Allworx is connected to the switch the phones are on. I considered a VLAN or even a separate LAN and doing the necessary routing to allow the TAPI drivers to work, but using the KISS principle I decided to give the phones their own switch before getting more complex. It did improve things.

[boutym]

BTW, to keep the phones on the correct LAN or VLAN as it were you would either have to statically assign the IP for each phone or put a DHCP server on the same VLAN.

[boutym]

To tell you the truth, the best thing you could do is talk the powers that be into letting you toss that Allworx out the freaking window and get a real phone system. I have and always will believe Allworx is more suited to a deli than a business that needs a reliable phone system.