Configuring Mitel 5330e on FreePBX 15

FreePBX Endpoints
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FreePBX 15.0.17.24 / Current Asterisk Version16.16.2 / all modules up to date / pfSense 2.5.0

On a whim, because it was inexpensive, I recently bought a Mitel 5330e IP phone. I thought I might try to get it to register with FreePBX. I did a fair amount of searching with Google to try to be able to access the 5330e via the Web Configuration Tool. It was a bit of a challenge, but I finally got it working with FreePBX, and thought I might share what I learned in the hope that I can save someone else the trouble.

The breakthrough came with this website:

Configure SIP Account on 5320e while in SIP mode

This website was so much help to me that I will put it in another pastebin in case it gets lost:

https://pastebin.freepbx.org/view/82a7d383

Note that the link above references a number of Mitel files, including firmware, that you’ll probably need to download from the following link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KM8i94DE7sOXnyGPLTHeCcycG-mvxpXU/view?usp=sharing
and put them in the tftp directory that your tftp server points to.

I should mention that I used the tftpd32 TFTP server available from Philippe Jounin at http://tftpd32.jounin.net. This is different from the TFTP server referenced in the http://mitelforums.com link above.

One issue I had was an error message on the display after a reboot:

bad 43 subopt end

It turned out to be a problem with DHCP option 43 on my pfsSense firewall. The following website titled Deploying Mitel IP Phones in a VLAN/DHCP Environment gave me some ideas about how to address the error message:

Deploying Mitel IP Phones in a VLAN/DHCP Environment

I changed option 43 in my DHCP server on pfSense as follows:

Number=43
Type=String
Value=“id:ipphone.mitel.com;sw_tftp=172.16.0.182;call_srv=172.16.0.175;vlan=0;l2p=6;dscp=56”

The above error ceased appearing on the display after a reboot, and I was then able to log in to the 5330e from a browser at http://Mitel-5330e-IPaddress with the default login/password as admin/5330e

There is a YouTube video which, altho’ a little old, provides more info re: registering the 5330e with FreePBX.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRUiH1etSvg

The Mitel 5330e seems to me to be a nicely designed IP phone, with buttons that can be configured as Call Forward, Do Not Disturb, Call History and more.

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A couple of additional things on the 5330e.

  • Although I didn’t spend a lot of time on this, I wasn’t able to get the 5330e phone to work as chan_pjsip, only as chan_sip.

  • I’m not clear on how to set up the BLF feature on the 5330e. If anyone has clear instructions, please advise.

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A link to someone who got BLF working on a 5330e:

Mitel 5330 - Finally working Correctly with BLF. here's how!

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Thanks for this tip, I have an entire Mitel phone system with about 20 phones that are very likely this model (they look the same) and I had no idea they could be used with a general purpose Asterisk server. I had always figured that these were proprietary to Mitel systems. It appears this trick can be used with other Mitel models of phones not just the 5330e.

However I would ask you please do not post links like this in these forums because years from now someone may be going through this and hit on your post and then discover the links are all dead. It is far better to post the key ideas/takeaways from these sorts of guides.

In the interest of posterity I have done some of your work for you as here’s the key bits for this:

These phones can work with regular SIP PBXes like FreePBX but NOT with current firmware. Originally like any normal SIP phone you could configure them with a web browser accessing a webserver on the phone itself, turn off all the Mitel-specific baloney and use it on anyone’s PBX. The default login is phone model and admin (i.e. 5320e//admin) - nothing more fancy than that.

Apparently at some point Mitel realized this and decided to end the practice of replacing the $$$$$$$ Mitel-branded rack-mounted-PC’s running “their” PBX software.

So NEWER firmware for these phones by default has it’s web server shut off - and apparently cannot be enabled.

The 5XXX series IP Phone firmware can be downgraded to Version 06.05.00.08 to restore the ability to configure your phone.

Now there, see how easy that was? Now, 5 years from now, someone stumbling on this post won’t waste a ton of time trying to dig stuff out of the Wayback machine. Bonus points for you personally actually making the older firmware available from your own Google drive or whatever. Double bonus points for reposting the original post here in a cleaned up fashion. I’ll give you a week or so to do the right thing. :slight_smile:

I have pulled down the firmware off the google drive share so I have a copy now. It is interesting that the original posters in 2019 had the audacity to post these instructions to a Mitel-controlled forum. Since that firmware is all copyrighted Mitel and they can execute a takedown against google drive if they want. Perhaps they are tolerating it because they know that back-reving Mitel phones produces an “orphaned” phone that they don’t have to support??? Who can tell.

1 Like
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“Do the right thing”? He didn’t have to post anything at all, actually.

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@tmittelstaedt Sorry I don’t have the older firmware available. I pulled it off the Google drive same as you. Also the pastebin is supposed to be a “forever” link. I guess no bonus points for me, darn.

I had some challenges trying to track this info down and put it all into a cohesive post, so sorry if it didn’t meet your expectations.

At one point a couple of days ago I had pretty much given up, so much so that I naively opened a ticket with Mitel customer support. A Mitel rep called me from New Jersey at 5:30 am my time. He was quite amiable but had no idea what I was trying to do.

This is tax time where I live (Canada), and I’m behind, so I doubt there will be any cleaning up any time soon. I’ll give you quadruple bonus points to follow up on your marvellous suggestions, and quintuple points if you can figure out a way to provide the firmware to others that is “Wayback machine” safe. :wink:

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One more thing I will add is that it’s quite easy to configure the Mitel 5330e as a remote extension. In the Quick Start menu in the Web Configuration Tool, set the SIP Proxy Server and SIP Registry Server fields to your www.fqdn.com.

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Since Shoretel is now Mitel. Has anyone had any luck getting Shoretel phones to work with Asterisk/FreePBX?

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@PitzKey As an aside, FWIW, as you probably know, Aastra is also part of Mitel. I have had an Aastra 6753i configured and working as chan_pjsip with FreePBX 15 for some time, and a friend donated a couple more a few weeks ago. Also as you probably know, there is a wiki listing IP phones that work with FreePBX (unfortunately Shoretel phones aren’t listed):

https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FPG/EPM-Supported+Devices

I should have (but didn’t) looked at this list when trying to configure the Mitel 5330e for this posting.

https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FPG/Supported+Devices-Mitel

It might have saved some time. (Note to self: RTFM)

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This broadly falls under the Right-To-Repair movement that is percolating right now:

Learn About the Right to Repair — The Repair Association

It would prevent manufacturers from issuing takedown’s on thing like old firmwares - which is doubly-egregious because when you peal back the layers on most IP phones, you find an Open-Source Kernel and OS 90% of the time.

Wankers!

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Oh absolutely Greg, I wish I had thought of RTR. In digging though the past via Google it appears that Aastra was a model citizen corporation and was very friendly to Asterisk. I have 2 of their older phones and when I got 'em it was soon after the Mitel acquisition and the Aastra FTP server was still active and I got my firmware for them. Mitel wasted no time in shutting that down. Shoretel was a purchase of Mitel’s and I am quite sure it was done as a way to knock off a competitor and Mitel will quickly throw their products into development hell and start pitching the Mitel products to Shoretel customers as upgrades.
To be fair Mitel does pitch SIP phones - the 68xx series - but they are doing the same thing Cisco is doing and that is doing what they can to make it impossible for their “proprietary system IP phones” to interoperate with open systems. They know, of course, that many time large corps will wholesale dump hundreds if not thousands of phone sets onto the market when they “forklift upgrade” their phone systems and they do NOT want those phones diverted into use with other people’s phone systems (like FreePBX)
As for using Shoretel on Asterisk/FreeBSD you want this:

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