Page 118 - Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony

ToHost :
Addr->IP : 192.168.1.250 Port 5061
Defaddr->IP : 0.0.0.0 Port 5060
Def. Username: 1000
SIP Options : (none)
Codecs : 0x8000e (gsm|ulaw|alaw|h263)
Codec Order : (none)
Auto-Framing: No
Status : Unmonitored
Useragent : X-Lite release 1105d
Reg. Contact : sip:1000@192.168.1.250:5061

Polycom’s IP 430
A lot of folks say configuring Polycom phones is difficult. From what we can tell, they
base this on one of two reasons: 1) The Polycom web-based interface is horrible, or 2)
the automatic provisioning process is painful and confusing.
With respect to item 1, we agree. The web interface on the Polycom phones has got to
be one of the most annoying web interfaces ever developed for an IP telephone. We
don’t use it, and we don’t recommend it. §
So that leaves us with some sort of server-based configuration. Fortunately, in this
regard, the Polycom IP phones are superb—so much so that we can pretty much forgive
the web interface. Set configurations are stored in files on a server, and each set navigates
to the server, downloads the configuration files that are relevant to it, and applies them
to itself.

DHCP server
If you cannot control your DHCP server, you may have to manually specify the FTP
server information on the phone. This is done by rebooting the set, pressing the setup
button before the set begins the load process, and specifying the address of the FTP
server in the small boot menu that these phones offer.

Protocol to use for downloading
The Polycom phones are able to download their configuration by one of three proto-
cols: TFTP, HTTP, and FTP.
Right off the bat we are going to tell you to avoid TFTP. It is not secure, and the set
cannot use date information to determine which versions of various files are the most
current. It works, but there are better ways, and we are not going to discuss it further.
Polycom phones can pull their config data using HTTP as well, but it has not proven
to be popular, and so we are going to move on.

§ Actually, it does serve one useful purpose, which is to allow you to log on to a set via a browser and query
its configuration.

90 | Chapter 4: Initial Configuration of Asterisk