Tanjay handset and layer 2 discovery protocols

The Microsoft Tanjay handset does not support layer two discovery protocols such as CDP and LLDP for VLAN allocation.

CDP is Cisco Discovery Protocol and LLDP is Link Layer Discovery Protocol. LLDP is a standard ratified as IEEE standard 802.1AB-2005, and LLDP-MED, Media Endpoint Discovery, is the specific method used by some handsets.

Mitel did much of the work in getting LLDP standardised.

CDP and LLDP are used by IPT vendors such as Cisco and Mitel to automatically assign a VLAN to a phone based upon which physical switch, and therefore portion of the network, it is connected to.

The Tanjay handset uses DHCP option settings to allocate the VLAN as shown below. This is taken from the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Phone Edition Release Notes.

IT administrators can configure VLAN by following below instructions:

1. At startup, Communicator Phone Edition sends a DHCP request to the native VLAN

o Communicator Phone Edition sends Vendor ID option "60" with value "CPE-OCPhone"

o Communicator Phone Edition requests Vendor Specific Option parameter "43"

2. The DHCP server responds with a native VLAN address and standard options. It must also respond with the Vendor Specific parameters:

o Vendor Specific Option "10" should be set to the VLAN ID.

· Communicator Phone Edition will store the VLAN ID and immediately release the address lease.

 

Hopefully Microsoft will support LLDP in the future but nothing announced to date.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Tanjay, Communicator Phone Expierience, CDP, LLDP, LLDP-MED, Office Communications Server

· Communicator Phone Edition will make a new DHCP request, with the packet's VLAN ID set to the ID specified in step 2.