I might sound like a broken record, but I was browsing OzBargain when I came across this listing selling used Cisco 7945 IP Phones for $1 each plus postage. Looking at the posting, the phone is immediately recognisable as one of the workhorses of larger corporations. While everyone knows that the landline has practically died off, it seems desk phones may be the next victim given the move towards BYOD and various apps on smartphones such as Microsoft Teams.
This particular model of Cisco IP Phone will see its last date of support on 30th June 2023, which probably explains the fire-sale. But it seems such phones are almost universally unloved – from people complaining of PTSD from hearing the default Chirp1 and Chirp2 ringtones (uncompressed WAV recorded magnetically from my unit), to those complaining of difficulties with setup, buggy or picky SIP firmware and the “ugly” corporate look. Some concluded that they just couldn’t give them away … and had to pay others to take them away.
But I saw this as a bit of a fun bargain, so I splurged on it, spending AU$22.39 to get three units posted to me.
But First … a Story!
If you thought there was more to the story, well you’d be right. In my first year of university, I was a co-op scholar and had my industrial training placement with the NSW Department of Commerce. As I did my jobs well for the first eight weeks with the Government Architects Office (GAO) in the city, I was rewarded with two weeks with the Government Chief Information Office (GCIO) over doing a job at Parramatta.
At the time, it was the beginning of 2008 and the new Parramatta Justice Precinct was being set-up. I followed a number of networking gurus around the building, with one of my major roles being the deployment of Cisco VoIP desk phones. I can’t recall the exact model, but more than likely, they were 7940 or 7942s as they had the monochrome screen. If you worked in the building and had one, there was about a 1-in-3 chance that I was responsible for sticking the localisation sticker (that says messages, directories, services, help, settings, volume, headset, mute and speaker) onto the unit, plugging them in, watching them pull their firmware and settings and placing test calls.
It was when deploying these phones (all those boring hours) that I struck up a conversation with the engineers. I asked if they used SIP and they said that it didn’t, instead they were skinny phones. They told me of a gloriously expensive but amazing piece of software called CallManager, but I never had a chance to see it for myself. At the time, when I told them that I was exploring SIP myself at hope, I only got looks of derision, as if I was some underclass peasant. “Skinny was the future,” said the engineers. Funny how things change …
But because I had deployed so many of them, I had an appreciation for them. I was told that the phones were about AU$1000 a piece. I had no idea how one could make a desk phone that expensive, but I did know they were weighty, had solid stands, had receivers that flashed and hung-up in a very snug classy fashion. With a nice display, it was practically a computer of its own. It wasn’t like the creaky, cheap, flimsy “dumb” phones I was used to using at home.
Ever since this experience, I had wanted to have one … in my eyes, I liked the styling and it seemed to be the mark of a “professional” to have one on your desk.
An Iconic Cisco IP Phone
I don’t know what it is, but the sight of a Cisco desk phone is calming to me. Maybe it’s the grey and silver, the slight curves or the fact it’s not presently functioning. Not everyone has the same reaction, but it’s hard to say that the design isn’t iconic in some way. The 79xx series have lots of visual similarities.
This unit is the 7945 which has Gigabit Ethernet, 5″ colour LCD, two lines, support for G.711a/u, G.729a/b, iLBC and G.722 wideband codecs. It operates off 802.3af power-over-ethernet (PoE) or from a local 48V power supply. Compared to the older 7940/7941/7942, it has a colour screen, Gigabit Ethernet and a four-way directional pad. Follow-on models even had resistive-touch screens.
The unit stands out on a solid “flap” stand which can be adjusted to several angles with the side push button. The design is quite nice, as it hides the cables that run in and out from behind.
Of course, the flap does double-duty as a place to put the Cisco logo. I’m sure corporations were happy to show off the fact they have invested in the best. After all, nobody got fired for buying Cisco!
While the base unit has mostly matte finishes, the receiver has a gloss front. The unit has the speakerphone speaker in the base underneath the receiver, while the receiver has a light-pipe that carries the illumination from the base to the back of the receiver to provide a visual ringer.
Unlike many cheaper phones, the clip below the hook switch is solid and can be removed and replaced in the reverse direction to determine if the base will “hang on” to the receiver (required for wall mount scenarios). Another key differentiator is the presence of subtle silicone inserts that makes hanging up the receiver a solid, satisfying experience.
The phone itself tips the scales at 1.2kg and being a corporate device, doesn’t really work on its own. But just to be sure people don’t run-off with your phones, there’s a Kensington lock slot on the rear. The information about the unit is labelled on the rear – it is Made in China (surprisingly).
If the rear flap is collapsed entirely, the unit can be wall-mounted. This exposes an Aux port that is apparently used for diagnostic console connection, a switch port (for connecting to a Gigabit PoE Ethernet port) and a PC port (so that a single Ethernet wall port can serve a phone and computer at the same time). Below this is a DC barrel jack for a local source of 48V in case a PoE switch is not available. The right side has a port for the receiver and a port for a headset accessory. Cable cut-outs that “capture” the cable are provided for the power brick, receiver and headset accessories, reducing strain on the ports. The plastic moulding suggests that this phone dates from January 2010, making it about 12 years old.
Where Did You Come From?
The obvious question on a lot of purchaser’s minds is “Where did these devices come from?”
I grabbed one of my units and plugged it into a PoE injector to find out … I didn’t connect it to a broader network just to ensure it doesn’t pull any details or change its onboard configuration. That being said – don’t factory reset these phones unless you’re ready to lose the firmware!
After some blinking and a few minutes, the unit was finally ready …
Can you tell where it came from? Well, it’s almost certainly a university by the fact that there’s “campus security”. Perhaps you recognise the logo?
The easy way is to peruse the menus of the phone to see what’s left. Going through the menus was a bit of nostalgia already – brings me back to remembering the key combinations to unlock settings (**#) or reboot phone (**#**). This phone appears to belong to x53291.
Aha! Looking through the network settings, this was a phone taken from the University of Melbourne. A cached Google crawl of a 2013 handbook suggests this phone had once belonged to Dr. Shiralee Poed, although the number seems to be rarely mentioned.
The CallManager information seemed missing – perhaps this phone hasn’t been plugged in for a while. It seems the server would have been on 172.20.11.10. The User Locale was set to English_United_States as per default …
… but the network locale is set to Australia so it would have “sounded” Australian in terms of the tones. It seems the set-up had enabled G.722 wideband audio for “HD voice” quality similar to what you get with AMR-WB on a mobile phone HD voice call nowadays.
It seems voice traffic went through a separate VLAN at the university. The peer firmware sharing setting is unusual – I rarely ever see the feature actually used, as CallManager’s TFTP server usually doles it out to any phone which asks.
Those who were betting that the phone was “skinny” aka SCCP have lost their bet – this one has SIP firmware right off the bat. This one seems to have been loaded by a factory reset (term45.default) and has firmware SIP45.9-4-2ES26 which seems to be based around the present release (SIP45.9-4-2-SR4) but is an “engineering special” and may be older than SR4.
In terms of applications, none were installed on this phone. It’s amazing to think that back then, having Java running on your devices was considered a good thing … these phones were somewhat extensible (although had limited memory) but I rarely ever saw this used in practice.
Conclusion
For a measly $1 plus postage, I now have what was (at the beginning of my university career) an unfathomably expensive and professional IP desk phone that was supposed to be the death of SIP-based VoIP telephony in the business. All it took was 14 years or so …
This one came out of the University of Melbourne, has been a little beat-up in transport, but is otherwise seemingly functional. Even though they’re known to be fussy, problematic and generally unloved – I still think they’re iconic and likeable in an odd way. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never had one on my desk despite deploying hundreds. Where I worked, we always had some NEC Dterm Series i and DT300-series phones instead which seemed much less sophisticated by comparison.
What does one do with such phones? There’s a few things I can think of – getting them working with FreePBX is probably the main one, but it’s not an entirely straightforward journey that requires a bit of persistence. I’ll get around to blogging about that later …
Having purchased three, I have to report that one of the three didn’t function quite right. The seller was more than accommodating and replaced it with another, allowing me to keep the broken unit … which was a nice touch. That will be the subject of the next post.
Bonus: More Blogs at element14
If it’s felt a little bit quiet here lately, it’s because I’ve been contending with a few systems migrations, a respiratory illness (not COVID-19, yet), work and a couple of reviews. That being said, I’ve been active posting at element14, so perhaps you might enjoy the following:
- Surprise Delivery: Maxim Integrated/ADI MAX32666FTHR Application Platform Unboxing
- Experimenting with Thermistors – Grand Prize Pt.1: Apple AirPods Max Review
- Experimenting with Thermistors – Grand Prize Pt.2: Fluke 279 FC/iFlex DMM Review
I hope that the coming holiday season means more time to pursue my long list of outstanding blogs-to-be … let’s see just how much I manage to get posted.
I was there, back in the day, at Caterpillar in Decatur, IL, USA, when they switched over to Cisco IP phones. I didn’t use any of the fancy features (tho I was in IT) and they worked just fine for me.
That design and its default ringtone got popularized by 24 tv series and made it one of the icons of early 2000’s. I had 7940 but later replaced it with similar looking Linksys/Cisco unit that was much easier to live with and was configurable through web interface.