Some days ago I wrote a blog entry about reseting (power-cycle) your 7940/7960. Today I would like to show you how to reset your Cisco IP Phone to its factory defaults settings. I think most of you already know how to reset these settings on SCCP firmware based IP Phones.
You need to press the "Settings" button, then press "3" or "Network Configuration", jump to submenu "33 - Erase Configuration" by pressing "33" or schooling down to that submenu. Now what we need to do is to unlock the configuration. By default it's locked and you can't change any settings. The unlocking procedure is quite easy: just press the asterisk, asterisk and pound key " * * # ". Now the configuration is unlocked and you can change settings. So you just press the "Yes" softkey in the 33rd submenu to Reset your configuration, press the "Save" softkey and it's done. Your IP Phone (7940/7960) will load with its default settings.

The Cisco IP Communications Express Quick Configuration Tool (QCT) is a management application that greatly simplifies the configuration and installation of Cisco CallManager Express and Cisco Unity Express. The QCT application, as an HTML-based Java Script program, runs on the user's workstation using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (IMPORTANT: doesn't work yet with IE7).
Using the QCT application, you can dramatically reduce the time required to configure an IP telephony solution based on Cisco CallManager Express and Cisco Unity Express, as compared to manually performing the configuration of Cisco IOS Software, Cisco CallManager Express, and Cisco Unity Express subsystems using their respective command-line interfaces (CLIs).

Yesterday the company called VoIP Integration released his own remote IP Phone control application for free (free as in beer).

It's a software application written under .net 2.0 and it allows you to connect and take control of your remote IP Phone.
It is supporting the most of 79xx series of Cisco IP Phones. You will need to have a created user profile on Cisco Call Manager and the IP Phone must be assigned to your user profile.
Note: If it doesn't work for you, try to upgrade the firmware of your IP Phone. I've had problems with connecting to my IP Phone because the old version of firmware I've been using had no support for some application stuff used by this application. With the P00308000400 it works without problems :)

I have seen so many case studies on the topic of IP Telephony. Some of them were quite good, but today I found a very good one :)
This case study is directly from Cisco and at 132 pages shows a process of implementation of IP Telephony in Cisco's international network from the beginnings to its actual state.
Download

Sometimes you may wonder which version of IOS contains which version of Cisco Unified Call Manager Express and which version of CCME is compatible with which version of CCME GUI interfaces. Well I think I've just used the word "which" 4 times and it's quite much so here is the answer which shows you the answers: www.cisco.com/...

The best packet generator is Microsoft Windows XP: (especially when it's somehow broken :))

Sometimes you need to reset your Cisco 7940/60 IP Phone just because you need to reload its configuration or for any other resaons. You can do this by a "hard" reset by removing and plugging back the power cord. But in most situations it's better just to use just the "soft" reset. If you have Cisco IP Phone with SCCP firmware, and your phone is registered to CCM and CCME then you can reset your phone directly from call manager's interface.
If you want to reset your IP Phone directly from an IP Phone then you can use some "special" combination of keys to do a "soft" reset. If you are running a SCCP firmware in you phone, then if you press the " **#** " keys, your phone will reset itself. On the other hand, if you are running a SIP firmware in your phone, then you can reset it by pressing and holding at the same time the " * + 6 + Settings " keys.

A small guideline for securing your Cisco Call Manager Express can be found at cisco.com.

What else would you recommend for creating a secured VoIP Network? (SPIT, SRTP, IPSEC, PKI, ...)
Please do comment.

Maybe it's not a news for some of you, but I have just found a fabulous website about SIP and VoIP technologies around SIP. If you are interested in VoIP, then you definitely should have a look at tech-invite.com.

From now you can see where are we from :) We've implemented user locations map that shows the location of our members.
If you are a member and want to be visible on the map, then please login to the portal, and in your account settings ("my account") or at the bottom of the User locations map page is a link to set and edit your location.

Heya! I have heard that the USB port on new Cisco routers is for future use but no one could clearly tell me what will be that "future use". So today I tried to plug my 128MB USB key into that USB port and to my surprise it was detected as a new storage device named "usbflash1:".


cme2811#
Dec 27 21:37:24.615: %USB_HOST_STACK-6-USB_DEVICE_CONNECTED: A Full speed USB device has been inserted in port 1.
Dec 27 21:37:25.307: %USBFLASH-5-CHANGE: usbflash1 has been inserted!
cme2811#
Dec 27 21:37:25.319: %SYS-6-LOGGINGHOST_STARTSTOP: Logging to host 192.168.1.4 Port 514 started - CLI initiated