What SIP-phones can I connect?

How can I connect a Grandstream phone?

 

Grandstream provides a wide range of IP-telephony phones that can be connected to Sonetel for making and receiving calls. Since Sonetel can “push out” the correct configuration to the Grandstream phones, it is generally easier to use Grandstream phones with Sonetel, than other desktop phones.

Make your Grandstream phone “Sonetel ready”

If you have purchased a “Sonetel ready” Grandstream phone (a phone pre-configured to be used specifically with Sonetel) then you can skip to the next section.

You can make any Grandstream phone Sonetel ready by following these steps:

  1. Find the IP-address of your phone. On some models it is shown in the display of the phone when you turn it on and connect it to the data network. On other models you can click on the Menu button (on the phone) and then select Status.
  2. In a web browser, type in the IP-address of your phone in the address bar and press the return key
  3. Sign into the Grandstream interface with the password admin.
  4. Click on Settings -> Advanced settings (in the video phones go to Settings -> Maintenance -> Upgrade).
  5. In the field “Config server path“, enter this address:
    phone.sonetel.net/phones/grandstream
  6. Scroll down and press the Update button.
  7. Now your phone is Sonetel ready.
  8. Follow the steps below for activating a Sonetel ready phone

Register your “Sonetel ready” phone at sonetel.com

 

  • Sign up and sign in at sonetel.com
  • Click on Add phone in the Desktop phones section.
  • The following dialogue box will appear.

  • Show advanced settings. Shows the Advanced settings (for experienced users only)
  • Phone name. Enter whatever you want. For example Lisa’s phone.
  • Type of phone. Select the type of phone that you want to connect from the list of all supported models.
    When you have selected type, the following additional fields will appear:

 

  • MAC-address. Enter the MAC-address printed on the back of the phone (and on the box that the phone came in). More info about MAC address
  • Connect to user. Select the user in your company that the phone should be connected to.
  • Press Save.

Advanced settings

Unless you really are interested in the advanced settings, we suggest that you jump directly to the section “Turning on your Grandstream phone” below.

When you select to see the Advanced setting for a Desktop phone, the following options are available (after selecting type of phone).

  1. Hide advanced settings. Changes the view back to Basic settings
  2. Phone name. Enter whatever you want. For example Lisa’s phone.
  3. Type of phone. Select the type of phone that you want to connect from the list of all supported models.
  4. MAC-address. Enter the MAC-address printed on the back of the phone (and on the box that the phone came in). More info about MAC address
  5. Connect to user. Select the user in your company that the phone should be connected to.
  6. Configuration. Read more in the Advanced configuration section below.
    1. Standard. Configures (provisions) the phone using our standard configuration template.
    2. Custom. Allows you to upload a different template to be used when configuring (provisioning) the phone
  7. Press Save.

 

To understand the advanced configuration options, you need to understand how the automatic configuration (provisioning) of the phone is done:

  • We have a Standard template (configuration text file) for each type of phone. It contains information about how the phone should get configured. See sample for Grandstream GXP2120.
  • Dynamic data, such as user name and password are represented by tags that we have added in the template. For example $password.
  • When a phone is rebooted, it connects to us – identifying itself with its MAC-address – and asks for configuration data.
  • If we recognize the MAC address, we take the template and update it with data from the database (user name, password etc.), encrypt the data and then send it to the phone which uses it to configure itself.
  • You can download the Standard template, by clicking on the Download button (see image above), and edit it in any text browser.
  • Change the template so that it configures the phone in the way you prefer. Replace all $tags with actual data.
  • Click on the Upload button (see image above) to upload the updated text file.
  • After saving, and rebooting the phone, the phone will be configured in accordance with your custom template.

 

The following tags in the templates need to be replaced with data before uploading the custom template:

  • $user_domain. The 2nd half of the user’s email address. For example ‘gmail.com’.
  • $outbound_proxy. Replace with ‘sonetel.net’
  • $user_nodomain. The 1st part of the user’s email address. If the user email is john.smith@gmail.com, this tag will be replaced with ‘john.smith’.
  • $password. Replace with the user’s Sonetel password.
  • $fname. First name of user
  • $lname. Last name of user

 

Turn on your Grandstream phone

  1. If you have followed the steps above, it is time to turn on your Grandstream phone.
  2. Unplug the power cable.
  3. Connect the data cable to your data network and to the LAN port on your phone
  4. Connect the power plug
  5. Wait until the phone has rebooted and registered.
  6. Your phone is now ready for use

 

Trouble shooting

  1. Verify that the information entered at sonetel.com is correct – and double check the MAC address entered.
  2. Double check that the cable from your data network to the LAN-port of the phone is securely connected.
  3. Unplug the power cable from the phone and connect it again, wait and try again.
  4. If this doesn’t help
    1. Are you sure your phone was Sonetel ready?.
    2. Have you added money to your Sonetel prepaid account – or connected the Sonetel Phone System to some other phone company?
  5. You can manually check that the Sonetel Phone System delivers a provisioning file to your phone, by entering the following in a Firefox web browser (Internet Explorer is not recommended)
    http://phone.sonetel.net/phones/grandstream/cfg[MAC ADDRESS]

    For example:

    http://phone.sonetel.net/phones/grandstream/cfg000B821340B9

    If the MAC address is known to the Sonetel Phone System, you will be presented with a file.

  6. Make a Factory reset of the phone, and then try again.
  7. If this still doesn’t help contact support@sonetel.com

Known issues

HT-502 with older firmware does not get provisioned by Sonetel. Solution: Update the firmware on the device to 1.0.3.10

 Worst case – configure the phone manually

If everything else fails, you can configure the Grandstream phone manually by following these steps.

  1. Find out the IP address of the phone
  2. Look up the web interface of the phone, by entering the phone’s IP address in a browser on the same network as the phone.
  3. Sign in with password “admin”
  4. Account1 settings:
    1. Account Active. Yes
    2. Account Name. Sonetel
    3. SIP Server. The domain part of the user’s email address (example: gmail.com if the sonetel email address is user1@gmail.com)
    4. Outbound Proxy. sip.sonetel.com
    5. SIP User ID. User’s email address without domain (example: user1 if the sonetel email address is user1@gmail.com)
    6. Authenticate ID. Username without domain (example: user1 if the sonetel email address is user1@gmail.com)
    7. Authenticate password. Your Sonetel password
    8. NAT traversal. Yes (and auto on a few phones where Yes is not an option)
    9. Symmetric RTP. Yes
    10. Support SIP Instance ID No
    11. Register Expiration. 5
    12. Unregister or reboot. No
    13. Remove OBP from Route. Yes
  5. Advanced settings
    1. STUN server stun.sonetel.com