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Our office has 25-30 Cisco SPA504G IP Phones. Two of the phones,

 

Customer Question

Our office has 25-30 Cisco SPA504G IP Phones. Two of the phones, in the same office, will not work at the same time. One of the phones will not work when end user is logged onto their computer. Once they log off of their computer, the phone becomes available. Once that phone becomes available the other phone in the same office becomes unavailable. When they become unavailable the screens say Checking DNS. What could be the issue here?

Submitted: 329 days and 19 hours ago.
Category: Phone Systems
Value: $38
Status: CLOSED
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Expert:  romr2009 replied 329 days and 13 hours ago.

Hello Terrin and thanks for choosing the JustAnswer.com Phone Systems subcategory of the Electronics category.

  • Check the IP address of the phones and computer.
  • If the devices have the same IP address, only one device can be active at a time.
  • On the phone, press the setup button and dial 9 for the network info.

http://sims.8x8.com/Documents/710622_1_Cisco_SPA504G_IP_Phone_User_Guide.pdf

  • Think of the IP address as a physical location that can only be occupied by a single device.
  • The usual way to wire the system is to provide a port (and a separate ethernet cable) from the router to each station.
  • If you have 30 devices, your routers need 30 separate ports.

-----

 

  • There are 2 ways to assign IP addresses.
  • The easiest is to let the router automatically assign all the connected devices a unique IP address by using DHCP and rebooting the router.
  • For large installations, the IT department maps and controls the IP addresses manually to prevent unauthorized devices from plugging in to the network.
41074.8587724537

Customer replied 329 days and 13 hours ago.

This was done already. We thought we were possibly out of IP addresses and the devices were sharing the same address. We expanded our range of addresses and gave those devices static IP addresses. This did not work.

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Expert:  romr2009 replied 329 days and 13 hours ago.

So you have both DHCP automatic addresses and static addresses on your network?

Customer replied 329 days and 13 hours ago.

I am not sure of our network configurations. This is what I was told was told was tried after the diagnosis was limited IP addresses causing devices to share same address. After that didn't work I took it upon myself to seek help elsewhere. We tested everything individually. Everything works fine on its own. It's when we try to run them together we have the problem. We checked the ethernet cables, the ports and each phone and computer. It is only happening in this office so we assume its not the network.

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Expert:  romr2009 replied 329 days and 13 hours ago.


  • Think of the IP address as a physical location that can only be occupied by a single device.
  • The usual way to wire the system is to provide a port (and a separate ethernet cable) from the router to each station.
  • If you have 30 devices, your routers need 30 separate ports.

-----

 

  • Did you add more ports/routers?
  • Did you add more ethernet cables from the new ports/routers to support the extra stations?

-----

 

  • It is not enough to assign more IP addresses.
  • If your office is wired for only one port, all devices connected to that port will be time-shared devices.

 

41074.8794628125

Customer replied 329 days and 13 hours ago.

Let me check with the engineers (they work remotely and not very fast) and find out what was done and how it was done so that I can give you correct information.

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Expert:  romr2009 replied 329 days and 13 hours ago.

OK

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Expert:  romr2009 replied 327 days and 12 hours ago.

Our chat has ended, but you can still continue to ask me questions here until you are satisfied with your answer. Come back to this page to view our conversation and any other new information.

What happens now?

If you haven’t already done so, please rate your answer above. Or, you can reply to me using the box below.

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Expert:  romr2009 replied 327 days and 11 hours ago.

  • Did you find out anything?

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  • Basically, you are stuck with the time-share situation, until they add more routers and install more cabling - both of which cost money.

Customer replied 324 days and 16 hours ago.

I will be going over the setup with one of the engineers today. In the meantime, I switched one of the computers to wi-fi connection and that seems to be working. As far as the phone and computer working together. It's a slow connection for the user so it will not work as a long term solution.

 

 

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Expert:  romr2009 replied 324 days and 13 hours ago.

OK

Customer replied 324 days and 12 hours ago.

So, it looks like we figured it out. Kind of. I rearranged the cables on the switch, plugging them into different ports, and that worked. For one of the computers. The phone and computer are working at the same time. For the other computer and phone I am checking the configurations now. They still can not be on at the same time. I did a factory reset on the phone last week so now I am making sure that I configured it correctly.

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Expert:  romr2009 replied 324 days and 12 hours ago.

Did this setup work properly before?

Customer replied 324 days and 11 hours ago.

I'm new here. As far as I know this setup has never worked. The only thing that has worked thus far was changing ports on the switch. I guess I am now making sure that I can get this phone to work with the computer without changing ports on the switch again.

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Expert:  romr2009 replied 324 days and 11 hours ago.

OK.

But, know that switching ports may take some stations away from another office.

Customer replied 324 days and 11 hours ago.

really? what does that mean? You mean another office's wall jack?

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Expert:  romr2009 replied 324 days and 11 hours ago.

Yes.

The number of ports on the switch/router is the total available for the building.
If you have more switches/routers you can get more ports.

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Expert:  romr2009 replied 322 days and 11 hours ago.

Our chat has ended, but you can still continue to ask me questions here until you are satisfied with your answer. Come back to this page to view our conversation and any other new information.

What happens now?

If you haven’t already done so, please rate your answer above. Or, you can reply to me using the box below.

Customer replied 322 days and 11 hours ago.

You were extremely helpful but didn't get me info I needed. At least not before my lagging engineers did. I don't want to discredit you, I know you know your stuff. I guess I wasn't giving you the right information to begin with.

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Expert:  romr2009 replied 322 days and 10 hours ago.



Did you need any more information?
How can I help you to give me a better rating so I can be paid (3 or better)?

Customer replied 321 days and 10 hours ago.

The other phone in the office still does not work with it's computer. Connected to same wall jack. How come?

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Expert:  romr2009 replied 320 days and 18 hours ago.


  • Does the wall jack have one jack labeled for computer and another for phone?

Customer replied 320 days and 15 hours ago.

No labels. Same configuration in other offices works fine. Just in this office there is a problem.

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Expert:  romr2009 replied 320 days and 12 hours ago.

  • Are there 2 separate jacks without labels or are you daisy-chaining from a single jack to the 2 devices (phone and computer)?

 
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