Finding Phones

[Xolanie]

Hi All,

 

I've been tasked with finding all our VoIP phone MAC addresses and physical locations,

 

The only way I can think of doing this right now is to cross reference a list of MAC addresses from our PBX with the MAC address table from each switch,

 

Problem with this is that we have over 4000 switches, so even if I completed 10 a day it would take over a year to complete!!

 

So really the question is: Is there a quicker solution that anyone knows about?

 

Thanks in advance.

[featured_spectre]

Physical locations will harder to identify the physical location, but the mac addresses should be tied to the IP range they have no? Just pull up the IP addresses, and the mac address of the device attached to it?

 

ARP/RARP tables from your switches should be able to provide you this information (providing they're managed or have a control interface)

[localzuk]

Email all users asking them to fill in a google form with the MAC address from the bottom of the phone and their room/office number? I've yet to come across a VOIP phone that doesn't have it printed on the bottom.

 

That said, you could script it - if you can ssh into a switch, you can write a script to do it. You can get your list from the PBX and get your script to match with what's on the switches.

[featured_spectre]

Email all users asking them to fill in a google form with the MAC address from the bottom of the phone and their room/office number? I've yet to come across a VOIP phone that doesn't have it printed on the bottom.

 

quite a good method, but no guarantees you'll get everyone to reply sadly.

[localzuk]

quite a good method, but no guarantees you'll get everyone to reply sadly.

True, but it'd put a BIG dent in the task.

[howartp]

We did a VERY mini version of this exercise yesterday.

 

WakeMeOnLAN (or other choice of app) lists IPs against MAC addresses and whether they're Up or Not.

 

Reboot each buildings' POE switch (we have 100 switches but only 10 POE switches, ~one per building/area) one by one and see which phones go off, using the geographical VLAN as a guide.

 

De-power the POE ports one by one/few by few.

[Xolanie]

Thanks all, given me new ways to think about this.

[howartp]

Email all users asking them

 

quite a good method, but no guarantees you'll get everyone to reply sadly.

 

De-power the POE ports one by one/few by few.

 

Just de-power each port and leave it off; they'll soon get in touch to tell you their phone doesn't work!

[Xolanie]

- as much as I like the idea...