[voip] Pass-through phones

[chrisgreenwood]

Hi,

 

Has anyone used the ip phones as a pass-through for PCs (so network cable to phone then network cable from phone to pc)?

 

Just wondering if anyone has any issues with it

 

We're looking at the Gamma Phone system, the only real problem i see is that they are 100mb and not 1gb on the phones but should be fine anyway

[Primus]

Hi,

 

Has anyone used the ip phones as a pass-through for PCs (so network cable to phone then network cable from phone to pc)?

 

Just wondering if anyone has any issues with it

 

We're looking at the Gamma Phone system, the only real problem i see is that they are 100mb and not 1gb on the phones but should be fine anyway

 

We have a fair few - mainly primaries with limited ports in the classrooms. I really wouldn't be putting in or using 100mb passthrough phones now - anything we've put in has been gigabit passthrough.

 

We've had no issues - we have a few older handsets in one school that are only 100mb but I'm looking to replace those.

[Sephiroth]

We're using loads of Yealink T20 and T43 phones doing passthrough. The older T20s are 100Mb passthrough and only 2 people have noticed. The only thing I will say is that if there is any issue with the phone (including people "tidying up" unplugging them and swapping the cables) then the PC will disconnect.

[TechMonkey]

No issues bar them running at 100MB. You do have to make sure you get the settings right if running different VLANs for the phone and device. Users really noticed the difference once we got them out of the line.

 

I would not be installing any 100MB phones now, in fact we are looking at not replacing any phones except for shared spaces, and moving staff over to a mixture of headsets and using mobile phones with the app on.

[Guest Guest]

We use the pass through on our Yealink phones and have had no issues.

 

We use the T31Gs in the classrooms as they’re cheap, paid an extra £3 per handset i think to upgrade to gigabit enabled handsets.

 

We didn’t go via Gamma but might be worth asking

[bknaggs]

We use it with 1Gb phones. I wouldn’t want to use it with 100Mb.

 

No problems generally unless you need to reboot the phone which doesn’t happen very often.

[chrisgreenwood]

No issues bar them running at 100MB. You do have to make sure you get the settings right if running different VLANs for the phone and device. Users really noticed the difference once we got them out of the line.

 

I would not be installing any 100MB phones now, in fact we are looking at not replacing any phones except for shared spaces, and moving staff over to a mixture of headsets and using mobile phones with the app on.

 

On the Gamma one, we can use ipads and phones etc as well as the normal phone, unsure regarding vlans but we got told that they hardly use bandwidth anyway, if we had 100 people ringing at once, it'll be about 10mb worth of bandwidth but i wasn't involved in the initial planning regarding what phones are what

 

We use the pass through on our Yealink phones and have had no issues.

 

We use the T31Gs in the classrooms as they’re cheap, paid an extra £3 per handset i think to upgrade to gigabit enabled handsets.

 

We didn’t go via Gamma but might be worth asking

 

We got the vvx150 for general classrooms, the office ones will be a different handset which is 1gb

 

We're using loads of Yealink T20 and T43 phones doing passthrough. The older T20s are 100Mb passthrough and only 2 people have noticed. The only thing I will say is that if there is any issue with the phone (including people "tidying up" unplugging them and swapping the cables) then the PC will disconnect.

 

Will teach them a lesson not to mess around with cables

[mavhc]

There are plenty of phones that pass through gigabit

[MatthewL]

We have probably 750+ handsets out there in this same setup and have no issues. As most of our sites are remote the link to each site back to data centre is no more than this and most stuff is over the internet it hasn't cause any issues. Unless you are copying large amounts of data no one would notice. The amount of switch capacity it saves us is unreal, does help we are moving areas over to softphones but there are still need for handsets out there.

 

What we have done where ports are limited and desktop needs that connection is to piggy back the printer or other device off the phone instead.

[jmak]

The only thing I will say is that if there is any issue with the phone (including people "tidying up" unplugging them and swapping the cables) then the PC will disconnect.

 

People tidying up the loose cable from a phone with a pass through port is how I found out a network we'd recently taken over didn't have any loopback protection switched on

 

You'll want to check that if you go ahead.

[Olliedawg]

Yea a mix of Yealink T42S / T46S - gigabit passthrough, officially EOL now though

[chrisgreenwood]

There are plenty of phones that pass through gigabit

 

I'll try and have a word with the supplier, i hope nothing has been set in stone regarding orders

[pete]

Using Fanvill phones with gigabit passthrough without any issues.

 

Very occasionally it may play up if you're going ethernet > phone > ethernet > USB-C dock > laptop, but that's more often than not due to a power blip and the dock not handling it well.

[Sonic007]

Use plenty here in a primary school.

Only issue is if someone unplugs the phone and then they wonder why the PC is'nt working.

[Cw2k]

We use the pass through on our Yealink phones and have had no issues.

 

We use the T31Gs in the classrooms as they’re cheap, paid an extra £3 per handset i think to upgrade to gigabit enabled handsets.

 

We didn’t go via Gamma but might be worth asking

 

Yealink have a nice free cloud provisioning service (RPS) which lets you set a url to a config file (that doesn’t need to be an externally accessible url). Saves messing with dhcp. Just plug in or factory reset the phone and it will reach out to RPS grab the url then the phone will download the config file. They have a app to build the config file with global and per device such as address book links, button config etc

 

Also works in front of Teams SIP Gateway provisioning server which doesn’t let you add customs config, using RPS lets you set thing like password, volume etc. before it redirects back to the sip gateway provisioning service and configure the phone. Some settings such as custom line buttons don’t survive when the phone does a regular checkin to the sip gateway as they get overwritten by some Microsoft annoying defaults but the important setting like password etc survive.

[chrisgreenwood]

my Manager asked the company today if they do 1gb versions of the phones instead of 100mb

 

or something equivalent

[Norphy]

There's no reason why they shouldn't. I was involved with a new build for a Sixth Form College about 10 years ago now, and even back then we had Mitel IP phones which had gigabit passthroughs. The Avaya devices they used in the last MAT I worked for had gigabit passthroughs as well, and those were old devices seven years ago when I started. There's no excuse in this day and age for Fast Ethernet on any new device. Edited February 15, 2024 by Norphy

[DrCheese]

We use the Yealink T4x series phones with 1GBe passthrough. Wasn't something we specifically looked for when we bought them originally but they've been invaluable since, wouldn't buy any phone without it nowadays as it gives you options you didn't have before.

[chrisgreenwood]

We use the Yealink T4x series phones with 1GBe passthrough. Wasn't something we specifically looked for when we bought them originally but they've been invaluable since, wouldn't buy any phone without it nowadays as it gives you options you didn't have before.

 

Ye we would have needed way more network drops adding in school, once i found out you passthrough them took some pressure from me (all the classes have double network points but the thought of checking every one to see if it even still functions

There's no reason why they shouldn't. I was involved with a new build for a Sixth Form College about 10 years ago now, and even back then we had Mitel IP phones which had gigabit passthroughs. The Avaya devices they used in the last MAT I worked for had gigabit passthroughs as well, and those were old devices seven years ago when I started. There's no excuse in this day and age for Fast Ethernet on any new device.

I will catch up with her tomorrow to see if she heard back (she even said if the overall cost was about £5 per phone, it wouldn't be that bad when it could potentially be £75 per extra network drop as it'll be slightly cheaper