Cisco Systems 6901 Overview of Configuring and Installing Cisco Unified IP Phones

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Cisco Unified IP Phone 6901 and 6911 Administration Guide for Cisco Unified Communications Manager 8.5 (SCCP and SIP)

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Chapter 1 An Overview of the Cisco Unified IP Phone

Overview of Configuring and Installing Cisco Unified IP Phones

• Enable 802.1X Authentication—If you want to use the 802.1X standard to authenticate Cisco

Unified IP Phones, be sure that you have properly configured the other components before enabling

it on the phone.

• Configure PC Port—The 802.1X standard does not take into account the use of VLANs and thus

recommends that only a single device should be authenticated to a specific switch port. However,

some switches (including Cisco Catalyst switches) support multi-domain authentication. The switch

configuration determines whether you can connect a PC to the phone’s PC port.

Note Only Cisco Unified IP Phone 6911 has PC ports.

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Enabled—If you are using a switch that supports multi-domain authentication, you can enable

the PC port and connect a PC to it. In this case, Cisco Unified IP Phones support proxy

EAPOL-Logoff to monitor the authentication exchanges between the switch and the attached

PC. For more information about IEEE 802.1X support on the Cisco Catalyst switches, refer to

the Cisco Catalyst switch configuration guides at:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps708/tsd_products_support_series_home.

html

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Disabled—If the switch does not support multiple 802.1X-compliant devices on the same port,

you should disable the PC Port when 802.1X authentication is enabled. If you do not disable

this port and subsequently attempt to attach a PC to it, the switch will deny network access to

both the phone and the PC.

• Configure Voice VLAN—Because the 802.1X standard does not account for VLANs, you should

configure this setting based on the switch support.

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Enabled—If you are using a switch that supports multi-domain authentication, you can continue

to use the voice VLAN.

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Disabled—If the switch does not support multi-domain authentication, disable the Voice VLAN

and consider assigning the port to the native VLAN.

Overview of Configuring and Installing Cisco Unified IP Phones

When deploying a new IP telephony system, system administrators and network administrators must

complete several initial configuration tasks to prepare the network for IP telephony service. For

information and a checklist for setting up and configuring a Cisco IP telephony network, go to the

System Configuration Overview chapter in Cisco Unified Communications Manager System Guide.

After you have set up the IP telephony system and configured system-wide features in Cisco Unified

Communications Manager, you can add IP phones to the system.

The following topics provide an overview of procedures for adding Cisco Unified IP Phones to your

network:

• Configuring Cisco Unified IP Phones in Cisco Unified Communications Manager, page 1-20

• Installing Cisco Unified IP Phones, page 1-23