Cisco Wireless IP Phone (7921 / 7925) 1.3(4) Firmware Released

 

I've been a sleep at the wheel this week, busy with work, study and more work. Some interesting highlights in this release. WPA2 now supported with CCKM and Hardware Diagnostics!

Early reports from the forums I troll is that battery life appears to be less with this level of code. Also reports of better roaming are mentioned. Anyone out there testing this !? Would love to hear your feedback.

Hardware Diagnostics

Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phones are frequently returned and a replacement is requested when the phone is operational. In firmware 1.3(4), a self-diagnostic tool is available to determine if a valid hardware issue exists.

You can access the Diagnostics menu from the Phone Settings menu, where the Keypad, Speaker, Microphone and WLAN Radio and Antenna can be validated.

The WLAN diagnostics menu is the standard site survey utility, which will use the current network profile information to scan for the configured network.

Full CCKM Support

Cisco Centralized Key Management (CCKM) reduces the amount of delay time by centralizing the key management, which reduces the number of key exchanges. To optimize secure roaming, CCKM can be enabled while in WPA or WPA2 mode.

Prior to this firmware release, CCKM was not supported when WPA2/AES was selected; this required a full re-authentication when roaming between access points, and could result in loss of audio during the roam. Now that CCKM is supported when WPA2/AES is selected, the full re-authentication is no longer required and roaming to a new access point should not result in any perceptible loss of audio.

Firmware 1.3(4) provides full CCKM support of all WPA versions. 

Table 3 Open Caveats for the Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7925G and 7921G 

Identifier	Headline
CSCte96010	Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone encrypted audio stream may stop if RTCP is enabled
CSCtf28069	WEP key style selected on the web page is transferred incorrectly to the Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone

Table 4 Resolved Caveats for the Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7925G and 7921G 

Identifier	Headline
CSCta24387	Support restriction bit in `CallInfo'
CSCta28990	Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone is stuck, intermittently, with empty prompt message after power cycle
CSCta35313	Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7921G misinterprets idle URL with & (ampersand) character
CSCta46131	Cisco Unified IP Wireless IP Phone cannot handle multiple entries in the DNS response
CSCta47991	Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7921G beacon reception enhancement
CSCta85098	Date and time may be reset if the Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7925G battery is drained
CSCtb04590	Wireless IP Phone ignores Unified CM restart command during active calls
CSCtb12622	Automatic login for Personal Address Book does not work
CSCtb37829	No Connection Admission Control (CAC) response can result in choppy audio
CSCtb45669	Wireless IP Phone does not reprovision after receiving wavelink package
CSCtb49823	Support for virtual host web server on Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone
CSCtb55584	Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7925G MWI light is not properly displayed in `deviceinformationx'
CSCtb63016	Cisco Unified IP Wireless Phone 7921G has high battery consumption when the phone is idle on an active WLAN
CSCtc43993	The WLAN should not become active with `ClearPrompt' SCCP message
CSCtc44631	In the Japanese locale, the Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7925G cannot select menu or help when there are more than 36 bytes in the title or status message
CSCtc54410	Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7925G has voice gaps for inbound and outbound PSTN calls when connected to Unified CM Express
CSCtc73949	Received audio frame with mismatched codec may cause Digital Signal Processing (DSP) memory corruption
CSCtc79855	No Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP) after adjusting volume while Wireless IP Phone receives RTP stream
CSCtc92119	Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7921G data rate does not upshift after roaming from an 802.11b access point
CSCtd32102	Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7921G backlight does not switch off at specified time when in cradle
CSCtd90133	High power consumption on call causes low battery life
CSCte99257	PEAP server validation is not saved to flash
CSCtf02245	A blank IP address is exported to the Wireless IP Phone when configured via the webpage

Comments

[Marcus]

I have always understood that CCKM is limited to TKIP, but this does not seem to be true based on your article and this firmware update. Was the CCKM/TKIP restriction limited to Cisco VoIP phones in the past, or was this a pervasive problem?

[George]

Marcus, prior to this version of code, CCKM was ONLY supported with WPA/TKIP on the Cisco 7921 and 7925 handsets. This latest release, WPA2/AES is supported with CCKM. This was a specific limitation to the phones as you could always config this setting on the WLC.

[pda data collection software]

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[George]

Thanks ... I always welcome comments!