Specifications

Table Of Contents

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Cisco Unified IP Phone Administration Guide for Cisco Unified Communications Manager 8.5

OL-23092-01

Chapter 2 Preparing to Install the Cisco Unified IP Phone on Your Network

Understanding Interactions with Other Cisco Unified IP Communications Products

Understanding How the Cisco Unified IP Phone Interacts with the VLAN

The Cisco Unified IP Phones 7975G, 7971G-GE, 7970G, 7965G, and 7945G have an internal Ethernet

switch, enabling forwarding of packets to the phone, and to the access port and the network port on the

back of the phone.

If a computer is connected to the access port, the computer and the phone share the same physical link

to the switch and share the same port on the switch. This shared physical link has the following

implications for the VLAN configuration on the network:

• The current VLANs might be configured on an IP subnet basis. However, additional IP address

might not be available to assign the phone to the same subnet as other devices connect to the same

port

• Data traffic present on the data/native VLAN may reduce the quality of Voice-over-IP traffic

• Network security may indicate a need to isolate the VLAN voice traffic from the VLAN data traffic

You can resolve these issues by isolating the voice traffic onto a separate VLAN. The switch port that

the phone is connected to would be configured to have separate VLANs for carrying:

• Voice traffic to and from the IP phone (auxiliary VLAN, on the Cisco Catalyst 6000 series, for

example)

• Data traffic to and from the PC connected to the switch through the access port of the IP phone

(native VLAN)

Isolating the phones on a separate, auxiliary VLAN improves the quality of the voice traffic and allows

a large number of phones to be added to an existing network where there are not enough IP addresses

for each phone.

For more information, refer to the documentation included with a Cisco switch. You can also access