SRP527W Compatibility with SF300-24 Switch

[lumberworx]

Hi,

I am using a Cisco SRP527W router for our small business. As this device only has 4 LAN ports I want to add another switch so as our business grows I can add more PCs and VoIP phones. I would like to use a Cisco SF300-24 switch and before I purchase am interested to know if anyone has used a SRP527W router with this range of Cisco switches. Are there any compatibility issues or will these two devices work well together?

Thanks.

[David Hornstein]

Hi Scott,

The attached white paper on the SRP shows integration with the ESW switch range of product. So alot of thought and engineering work has gone into marrying the ESW with the SRP.

SRP comes with two pre-configured VLANs, VLAN 1 and VLAN 100.  It just happens  that the ESW switch comes pre-configured with VLAN1 and VLAN 100 and CDP configured in as well.  ESW comes with  a default QOS configuration for the VOIP network built into the ESW switch.

So, as you probably already appreciate, the ESW switch family is currently the recommended switch to add to the SRP.

So integration of a ESW switch is too simple, just plug a CAT5e cable from the ESW to the SRP and you are set to go.

So can a SRP527W and the new 300 series switches work,  yes absolutely,  but today you will have to manually configure the 300 series switch via it's GUI. 

I guess on the 300 series you need to add VLAN  100  as tagged interfaces to the switch ports, not a difficult task.

May have to manually add each phone to tagged VLAN 100 for voice connectivity today, not a difficult task.

ESW or  300 series and SRP  are all supported by the Small Business Support Center.

This means you have a single point of contact for any configuration queries or support queries.  I have included a link to the 300 series product comparison pages below. 

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10898/prod_models_comparison.html

I would be interested to get comments from the SBSC or other input to get their thoughts, but i see the 300 series as a good fit in lowering the price of the solution.  But yes it will lower the price of the solution, but  increase the initial  work the VAR has to do initially setup the overall solution.

I look forward to other folks input.

regards Dave

[lumberworx]

Hi David,

I asked this question of you some time ago. I actually went ahead and purchased an ESW-520-24 switch to use with my SRP527W router. Everything had been working well but lately we have been experiencing problems with one way audio on our Cisco SPA303 VOIP phones. This problem seems to have surfaced as we have connected more phones to our system (use to only have 2 now we have 6)

I'm not convinced the QoS is set correctly in the SRP527W. CDP is enabled on the IP phones and ESW-520 and the phones are all in VLAN100. I haven't changed any of the QoS settings in the ESW-520 and I believe they are still the default settings. I'm not sure how to set the QoS settings in the SRP527W to complement the settings in the ESW-520.

In the white paper you sent me we have the configuration as shown in figure 3 with a hosted VOIP system. Are there any papers on the recommended QoS settings for all devices (router, switch and phone) when used in this configuration?

Regards

Scott.

[David Hornstein]

Hi scott,

As you mentioned,  ESW came pre-configured for QOS for a voice and data network.  I'll run the question past Andy Hickman , my go to guru on SRP.

But I will attach the  smart design , design guide and implementation guide for your reference. The designs show 200 or 300 series attached to SRP, but no reason why ESW shouldn't work fine.  i guess you have updated the firmware of the ESW and SRP to currently available code.  Please check at cisco.com that you are up to date with firmware on these devices.

By the way the attached material is available at "smart designs"

http://www.cisco.com/go/smartdesigns

regards Dave

[Andrew Hickman]

Hi Scott,

I assume that you have configured the QoS queuing and shaping feature on the SRP?  These will shape upstream bandwidth to match that provided by your service provider and prioritise voice traffic over other traffic types using your WAN connection.  QoS on the SRP really only applies to traffic sent over the WAN interface.

If you are classifying voice traffic based on Class of Service (CoS), then you might find that the SRP is resetting this before it hits the SRP QoS engine.  Make sure that your SRP LAN ports are set to "trust" if you need to use this.

You can check that QoS is working on the SRP using the QoS status screen - when you make a call, you should see the traffic count in the priority queue increase.

Regards,

Andy

[lumberworx]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your response.

I have set up the QoS queuing and shaping feature on the SRP. I have set up policies for VLAN1 (data_lan) and VLAN100 (voice_lan). However I have noticed that if VLAN100 traffic is assigned to the strict high priority queue in the SRP I see packet drops on the QoS status page. This also occurs if I assign a single phone via MAC address to the strict high priority queue. If I assign VLAN100 to the high priority queue I don't experience the same amount of packet drops.

VLAN1 traffic is on the normal prioroty queue. I seem to be well within my bandwidth limits and I have even tried removing all traffic (phones and PCs) and just having one phone connected and assigned to the strict high priority queue...and I still get packet drops.

I have also tried with two phones connected...one assigned to strict high priority queue and the other to the high priority queue and observed the QoS status when two VOIP calls are happening at the same time. Packet drops always occur on the strict high priority queue but seldomly on the high prioirty queue.

So should the strict high priority queue not be used for voice traffic or has there been a bug with this feature?

I am going to upgrade to the latest firmware for the SRP to see if this makes any difference.

Thanks

Scott.

[Andrew Hickman]

Hi Scott,

What firmware have you been using and what bandwidth have you had configured for the strict queue?

The SRP doesn't police traffic, so I'm a little surprised to see traffic being dropped like this.

Andy