Who’s Ready for Polycom’s 3.2.0 SIP Firmware Release?

Polycom’s 3.2.0 SIP Firmware is set to be released very soon. Some of you may not be too inclined as 3.2.0 brings some drastic changes for certain Soundpoint IP Phones, leaving some in the dust while enhancing and adding new features to others.

If you don’t know already, Polycom has or will be discontinuing the following and very popular models from their SoundPoint IP family:

• IP301 – Replaced by IP321, IP331
• IP501 – Replaced by IP450
• IP601 – Replaced by IP650, IP670
• IP4000 –Replaced by IP6000, IP7000

With the introduction of the 3.2.0 firmware, the above models noted as discontinued will not be supported under the latest firmware. So what does this mean for “mixed” deployments of Polycoms which include newer and older models of SoundPoint IP phones? Well it means more management on your provisioning servers in regard to software and configuration files. Polycom did confirm that they will be supporting the discontinued line up until 2012 (I believe), but no new features or bug fixes will be pushed via upgrades.

So, in simplistic terms, Polycom may be leaving their older models “in the dust” and looking forward to the “newer” HD Voice models. You might also have noticed the introduction of two new models, the IP321 and IP331, just this past month. Yep l scratched my head too when I saw them. The reason Polycom has introduced these two models is because they have more on-board memory, which is needed for the 3.2.0 firmware. Polycom has also hinted that the IP320 and IP330 will also be going EOL sometime this quarter.

I look at it like this…. have any of you done firmware upgrades to the latest firmware (as of now 3.1.3RevC) on your older IP501’s or IP301’s? I know I have and compared to the newer models, let’s say an IP 550 or IP650, the time it takes for the upgrade is drastically longer on the older models than the newer. This is mostly due to the on-board built in memory support, which is nearing its capacity, and will with the 3.2.0 release. You might also notice that the file structure for both firmware and bootrom has gotten quite large in size, actually huge (if you look back to the ever so popular version of 1.6.7 that shipped on IP501’s for the longest time). Pushing these latest files on TFTP on a 1GB windows machine is not the most efficient method any longer as the larger size coupled with a higher number of phone upgrades causes server timeouts and crashes. Time to upgrade your provisioning server possibly?

So I ask again, who’s ready for SIP Firmware release 3.2.0? I sure know I am. Hopefully I will have more insight as far as new features and additions on this version, as this has yet to be released. Maybe even a firm date for its release.

If you would like to know more about these changes that are going to take effect very soon, please take a look at the (2) Polycom technical bulletins attached as they describe the discontinuation of the aforementioned models and configuration changes needed to encompasses a mixed Polycom deployment.

SoundPointIP Phone Support in SIP 3.2.0 TB35311

SoundPointIP SoundStationIP Phones Not Supported in 3.2.0 and higher (TB48161)

So what are your feelings on this change?