Recently we started looking for an alternative method to distribute our analogue lines between our on-site buildings other than pulling fifty pair analogues under ground to our central building where our SG90’s are located. We found the solution in a product from Media 5 called a MediaTrix.
The MediaTrix units are a 19″ rack-mount unit that is available in a 4-port, 8-port, 16-port and 24-port version, although the 24-port version required 2u of rack space. They connect to your network through a 10/100 RJ45 ethernet port (the newer models have 2) and present the analogue lines on RJ11 ports on the front of the unit. Each port can be configured to connect to an IP based PBX using the SIP protocol and can be authenticated individually, which is how we have the units configured.
The units, although a great device, do have some minor bugs in the administration interfaces which, if unknown, can cause problems during configuration. Hopefully this post will help somebody configure a MediaTrix on a Shoretel telephone system.
To start with you need to install the management software (Unit Management Network) which may have been included on a CD with your MediaTrix. If not it can be downloaded from the Media 5 support site.
Once installed you need to plug the unit into your network and power it up. We will find the unit using the UMN utility. Once it is powered up open the UMN Client and click the find unit icon on the toolbar (second from left). This will open up the following dialogue box.
Insert the IP range of your network and click start. The utility will find the unit and list it in the box at the bottom of the dialogue. Select the unit from the list and click OK.
Now that you have the IP address of the unit we can start to configure it.
Hint: If you cannot find the IP of the unit you can plug an analogue phone into one of the ports and dial *#*0 and the unit will announce it’s IP address over the receiver.
This is where the configuration starts to get buggy. We need to perform configuration steps in both the UMN and the web interface of the unit as certain features don’t work in certain interfaces. First of all we will do the configuration in the web interface. Open up your browser and type in the IP of the Unit.
Hint: the default user name is “Admin” and the default password is “1234”. you may want to change these.
Once logged in click on the SIP link at the top of the page and then click “Authentication” on the sub menu.
For index 1 of each port change the “Validate Realm” option to disabled. Click “Submit” when done. It should look like the screen shot above.
Login to your Shoreware Director web interface and create a new user (or modify an existing one). Ensure the option to “Allow use of Soft Phone” is set and select “Soft Phone” for the default phone for the user. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and enter a User name and SIP Password for the user. We have chosen to use the extension number of the user in Director as the user name to make things easier to manage. Save the User.
Now go back to UMN and expand your unit from the left hand pane. Right-click the “SIP” object and click Edit.
Uncheck the “Use DHCP” option and enter the address of the SIP server to use. This might be the IP of your SG90 or the Shared IP of multiple SG90’s with SIP proxy enabled. Unless you have an advances setup you should enter the same address for both the SIP Registrar and the SIP proxy.
Double-click the line where the value in # corresponds to the port you wish to configure. In “User name” enter the SIP user name setup earlier in ShoreWare Director. “Friendly Name” can be set to anything that will help identify the device that is connected.
While the line is highlighted click on the Authentication button.
In the user column enter the same value as the User name in the previous screen. Password should be set to the password configured earlier in Shoreware Director.
Click OK and then OK again.
Now restart the unit. This can be done by right-clicking the unit in the left hand pane and selecting “Actions > restart (Graceful)”. Once the unit if back up you can check the status of the port you have just configured by single left-clicking the SIP object from the left hand pane. In the right hand pane it will display “Registered” next to the port that you have just configured.
Hint: This took roughly five minutes on our system before the port will register. Once registered it is instant the next time the unit is restarted.
Just remember that you cannot disable realm validation from the UMN and for some reason the unit will not register ports that were configured in the web interface. Hopefully this will be fixed with the next software update.
Dan McIntyre 