How to run multiple IP Blue phones on a single PC
Posted by Josh on Wed 10 Sep 2008Categories: CCIE , Cisco , Cisco VOIP , Voice LAB - [61] Comments
In this tutorial, you will learn how to use IPBlue’s VTGO Lite softphone to test skinny phone registration and dialing by running multiple instances of emulated Cisco IP Phones.
This is the fourth tutorial in the Virtual Voice Lab Series for CCIE and CCVP studies.
Disclaimer and Due Credit:
This tutorial series is heavily based on CCIE Voice Home lab with Dynamips/VMware by Jayanm of Chicago, IL. Jaynam has obtained the following Cisco Certifications: CCIE (Voice) – CCVP – CCSP – CCNA – CQS (PIX,VPN,IDS) – VMWare Certified Professional.
I really appreciate the ground breaking research by Jaynam.
PC Preparation
- Install IPBlue on your workstation. This part really shouldn’t require much of an explanation. You will need to download VTGO Lite. Here is the link.
- If your PC does not have multiple NICs, you can use MS Loopback adapters. (If you do have multiple nics, this part is not necessary.)
- Go to Start > Control Panel
- Click ‘Add Hardware’
- Click ‘Next’
- Select ‘Yes, I already have a connection’
- Select ‘Add a new hardware device’
- Select ‘Install from a list’
- Click ‘Network Adapters’
- Select Microsoft Loopback
- Click ‘Next’
- Click ‘Next’
- Click ‘Finish’
- Double-Click ‘Network Connections’
- Rename the loopback interface to something descriptive.
- Gather the MAC addresses for PC interfaces using the ‘ipconfig /all’ command
Basic Phone configs in Call Manager and IP Blue
- Configure two ip phones in the CUCM server or turn on auto registration
- Configure the MAC address
- Select the default phone button template
- Select the default device pool
- Select the default device security profile
- Add a new dn and give it an extension
Run multiple IPBlue Softphones
- Create a new IP Blue shortcut with the ‘/d’ option following the softphone executable.
- Open the IP Blue Softphone
- Change the phone options
- Set the TFTP Server to the ip address of your CUCM server
- Set the MAC Address with the Network interface option
- Set the Primary Call Manager
- Select an IP Phone model to emulate
- Open the Windows registry editor (Click Start > Run and type regedit)
- Export the Phone settings
- Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_USER\Software\IPBlue branch
- Right-Click on the IPBlue folder and select ‘Export’
- Give the registry file a descriptive name and click ‘Save’
- Repeat Steps 3-5 for each virtual phone you would like to use.
- Double-Click one of the .reg file for one of the softphones saved in steps above.
- Open the IP Blue Softphone.
- Double-Click another .reg file for one of the softphones saved in steps above.
- Open the IP Blue softphone again. (The IPBlue software references the settings in the system registry during startup)

September 10th, 2008 at 1:08 am
[...] How to run multiple IP Blue softphones on a single PC [...]
September 10th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
josh your the man,great work,keep it up
September 11th, 2008 at 3:37 am
johnno… something tells me that u havent yet seen the angelina jollie starrer, “wanted”… go see it and read your reply again… man its so hillarious… haha…
but.. yes, i agree… good work josh… i have just got the cucm set up in my ubuntu 64bit 8.04… (i have to reformat the disks..coz i need 80 gb for this.. man its so disk intensive.. it ate away my 5 gb before i could say… wow… ;(..)
I have real doubts regarding the 3 vmnet, 2 bridged and 2 host only.. i will ask that when u release the videos for that… great work… again…
Though am just getting ccvp now…ccie has always been the ultimate motivation….;)
September 11th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
really gr8 videos
September 12th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I am getting an error on the phone “phone template type mismatch”. Any ideas?
September 12th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
@khoi…
if ur getting a phone template type mismatch error then u must go to ipblue tools—> settings—>Phone—->change phone type to 7961
ie u must use d same phone type which u selected during the call manager registration
thnx
September 13th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
gr8 service josh
blindhog rocks…!!!!
raj
September 16th, 2008 at 12:12 am
so…shall we using Cisco IP Communicator do this?
September 19th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
I created two MS loopback interfaces, but I got duplicate mac-address. The mac-address on MS loopback# 1 is looked exactly the same as MS loopback# 2.(IP address are different on MS loopback1 & 2) In addition, VMware (I am using VMware workstation 6.x) does not discover my PC’s NIC card (I have one build-in NIC card) as shown below.
Any idea ? I can’t run multiple IP phone since MS loopback mac-address are the same. Please help.
C:\>ipconfig /all
Windows 2000 IP Configuration
Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : ccm-pub
Primary DNS Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft Loopback Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 02-00-4C-4F-4F-50
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration IP Address. . . : 169.254.55.97
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . :
September 19th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
u must use aonet-vpn http://openvpn.net/index.php/downloads.html, this will create tap interfaces, and each tap will have different mac… i m using it too….
September 20th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Joe,
You can change the Mac address’ on the loopback interfaces.
Right click on the interface–click properties. Select configure and go to the Advanced tab. Select Network Address and change to value to something different.
James
September 20th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Thanks Vijay and James. Both solutions are working well, I tried.
Question: My CCM is not tied to any physical interface. As of right now, it uses 127.0.0.1 ip address, but when I created the MS loopback interface, CCM changes its ip address to the newly created MS loopback interface. I wanted to assign a “Perm” ip address for CCM. Do I really need a physical interface to do that? Any thought? Thanks!
October 12th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
thanxxx dear u r realy gr8..
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Hi Guys,
Whenever I run multiple instance of VTGO I only get sound (ringtone, dialtone) on one VTGO not the other one. Can someone let me know how to get around this issue
Thanks
November 25th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
I need some help with setting up the ip blue phone in CUCM 6.0.1. I get this error message when trying to save the phone configuration.
Update failed. [4910] Request unsuccessful to license manager(Please check the Licensing logs for further details
November 26th, 2008 at 6:58 am
Amir,
Yeah…voice quality or functionality is a little sketchy when running two instances on a PC. It may take multiple sound cards.
To be honest, I have never really cared enough to research it.
I am normally just concerned with call routing.
Josh
February 20th, 2009 at 1:57 am
Пинайте своего хостера – сайт с трудом открылся
March 30th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Hey Guys,
I cant get it to work VTGO wont register, it cannot get to the TFTP server. Can someone help please.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:52 am
Hello everyone,
Succssfully registered single VTGO phone with VMware-CCM. however I’m facing a problem in running multiple instances.
After making the exact registry changes (entire process stated above), I could able to open different instances, but not at the SINGLE TIME. Can someone help me to find what I’m missing out?
Thanks in advance.
Cheers! Anis
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:11 am
@ Anupam
Greetings…!
1)Check the virtual connectivity between your real host and VM machine.
2)Check whether you’ve enabled CCM & TFTP services. Choose Application > Cisco CallManager Serviceability> tools menu.
3)It is possible that you might have started services from serviceablity menu, still restart it from start>run>services.msc
Best regards, Anis.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:18 am
@ Anupam,
I belived you’ve done, following settings in VTGO phone end. [before testing the above three steps]
1) TFTP/CCM ip address
2) MAC address and relevant interface of VM network.
April 24th, 2009 at 12:30 am
Hello Again,
I apologies. Finally got the solution on my problem. In the haste [;)], I typed \d instead of /d.
Now able to run multiple instances.
Cheers!
April 24th, 2009 at 12:52 am
Hey Guys,
I made another successful attempt.
By using VMware bridged network (VMnet0 option). I successfully registered individual instances on my colleagues laptops. and now able to taste each flavour of CUCM without any interruptions.
Thanks to everyone.
Cheers! Maddy_of_networks
I dream about networks
April 25th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Hi,
Thanks for the great works. I have a little problem with my Softphone. When ever i run the application, it always comes up with an error message “Softphone cannot seem to find a network connection or it is disabled” I installed it on my host machine(2k3). Any solution, please?
Thanks
April 30th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Hi,
Thanks for the excellent tutorial! I would just like to add that IP Blue has added many features to their new VTGO for Windows Mobile softphone to make it compatible with many different smartphones. They have also worked on their Attendant Console to make it best in class. Download a trial today!
Thnaks again,
tom
August 25th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
I successfully followed all the steps up to registering the ip blue phone with call manager. The softphone never successfully registers. When running a packet capture, I see tcp packets going between the softphone and call manager; however, after the softphone sends a tftp read request, call manager returns with an icmp destination unreachable message. This has got me stumped because I can ping between the call manager and the machine that has the softphone installed on it. Any ideas?
September 1st, 2009 at 2:44 pm
It turns out that the CallManager service and the TFTP service kept crashing, so the softphones never had a chance to register. I scrapped CUCM6 and started over with CUCM4.3. All I needed was the Cisco OS 2003.1.2 install disc and the CUCM4.3 install disc to get everything working. (NO HACKS NECESSARY!!) I personally believe this setup works better because you can install vmware tools on this version since the OS is basically Windows Server 2003; if someone could figure out how to install vmware tools on CUCM6 or 7, I would be interested to know how to do it. Thanks for all your help Josh.
September 4th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Hello,
Thanks al ot for your effort , just I have 2 questions
1- I use 2 loopbacks , but one of them only connected in the cloud to fa0/0 on the router, the second one is not conneted and hence not pingable from the router, is that affect the setup.
2- the 2 ipblue phones are running , but using the same IP of loopback1 , when I try to call from 2000 to 2001 it is not working , so what is the problem , is it related to the IPs, note I don’t use VMware.
Thanks & BR
Moamen
December 6th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Josh, when I try to configure the TFTP server it never connects. What should I check?
December 7th, 2009 at 4:11 am
[...] Faire tourner plusieurs instance d’IP Blue sur votre machine : http://www.blindhog.net/how-to-run-multiple-ip-blue-softphones-on-a-single-pc/ [...]
December 20th, 2009 at 5:48 am
Hi All,
My Name is Karan #CCIE- 17289 Voice
If some one has any query regarding config
Please freee feel to ask me
February 26th, 2010 at 7:04 am
hi to all,
This Joe
I’m new to CISCO Voice, I need to know that how can I register an IP phone to CUCM6?
April 6th, 2010 at 7:27 am
Hi Josh,
Thanx for sharing gr8 stuff never saw before with this much detail keep it uop bro. But I m having problem with Mac addresses. I added 8 Loopback adapters when I fire up Blue phone I can not see mac addresses listed under Mac Station drop down. I have not added manually a single phone yet to the Call Manager, because thru different forums I came to know add phones first with seperate mac addresses then go registered /add in callmanager. Dude any idea what I am doing wrong & how can I add mac addresses, I also like to share one thing when I place the mac address under network value I place exactly like this 02-00-4C-4F-4F-50 dashes after every 2 characters & did change after 4 characters but never tried without dots or dashes. I need help if you can response me Thanx in advance.
April 6th, 2010 at 9:28 am
gujjar,
The only way I have found to set the mac address to something specific is if the first byte is 02. For instance … 00-00-00-00-00-01 will not work but 02-00-00-00-00-01 will work.
Hope that helps.
Josh
April 7th, 2010 at 6:55 am
Josh,
Appreciate your response but it didn’t help bro. I don’t know exactly where I am doing mistake because before registering to Call Manager the phone should have the list of the Mac addresses in the drop down but its blank.
And I did follow the sequence of your solution but no luck, if there is any advise pls let me know.
April 7th, 2010 at 8:29 am
gujjar,
Sounds like it might be a problem with the softphone itself.
Do the interfaces show up in the ‘ipconfig /all’ command?
Josh
April 8th, 2010 at 6:57 am
Yeah Josh it shows when I do ipconfig /all and I tried different version of the IP Blue Phones. IP Blue Moonfire only showed me the list of Mac addesses but didn’t work.
April 8th, 2010 at 7:04 am
Josh can you send me the correct version which you are using I mean 2.10.1 because there are several Blue phones available with 2.10.1 to download. If you want to share pls send me over gujjar68@hotmail.com
Thanx in Advance.
April 8th, 2010 at 7:30 am
gujjar,
I am using the latest version as of today (VTGO Lite 2.11.1.230).
http://www.ipblue.com/download.asp?product=vtgo
Josh
May 27th, 2010 at 3:24 am
Hi All,
I followed exactly the same process. But cant register the phone with CCM6.
I can ping the CCM and earlier i had successfully registered SIP x lite phone with the CCM – however i had to tick the proxy checkbox in that case.
Any help Plz.
Thanks
September 6th, 2010 at 3:51 am
Hello.
I run multiple ip blue softphones on a single pc but… all the softphones have the same ip, despite i connect it to different networks. Can you help me, please? Thank you very very much
September 6th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Dviqgar,
You might need to change the default gateway to send calls through the branch.
Josh
October 10th, 2010 at 10:02 am
gug, what command display the whole adaptor
on? hp laptop
October 26th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Josh
Thank you and I appreciate you taking time to help us, I have one question today and I am sure I will have more after
, I installed CM7 on vmware on window 7, I aslo installed ipblue and Cipc on my Hp laptop. I do have and ATA that is connected to 3550 switch fa0/1. I can see it up/up on the router. When I do show mac-address-table I see Mac address of 0013.1a59.1a75, when I added new device ATA 186. I went to device –> phone and cliked find . I see 3 phones.
ATA——-> ANALOG
IPBLUE —> LOOPBACK
IPBLUE —> NIC INTERFACE
I am able to make calls b/w Ipblue phones. I am not able to reach the analog phone.
October 26th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Xzyan,
Is the ATA registered to the Call Manager?
Josh
October 28th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Josh sorry not responding to u on time. day job taking all my time. I have a mac of 00131a591a75 on the phone config. I took that one from cisco35050 port. its says on the config t product cisco ATA 186. how do I know if the ATA is registered in CallManager ? Ty Sir
October 28th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Josh
I found this on cisco website
Configure the Cisco ATA 186 with the IP Address of the Cisco CallManager
Use this procedure to configure the Cisco ATA 186 with the IP address of the Cisco CallManager.
1.Verify the IP address of the Cisco ATA 186.
a.Go off-hook on the phone attached to the ATA 186.
b.Click the red button on top of the ATA 186.
c.You should hear interactive voice response (IVR) playing the configuration menu.
d.From the dialpad of the phone, press 80#.
e.You should hear the IVR playing the IP address of the ATA 186.
2.Once you know the IP address of the Cisco ATA 186, you can connect to it with a web browser at http://IP address of the ATA 186/dev (for example: http//172.16.1.2/dev).
===========================================
When I press the 80# I get IVR saying
67.1
03.1
36.1
8
does look to me like an Ip address
December 20th, 2010 at 9:28 am
[...] softphone clients pre-installed, and test running multiple instances with different configs. (great article on blindhog.net for doing [...]
May 10th, 2011 at 1:32 am
Hi,
it is normal when i have more than 8 MAC address on my pc IPBlue does not want to stard he said “Softphone cannot seem to find a network connection or it is disabled”
June 21st, 2011 at 1:16 am
[...] dialing capabilities. Unfortunately, CIPC will still only allow one instance to run at a time…unlike IP Blue. I have tested this with VMWare ESXi but it may also work with other VMWare products. [...]
July 11th, 2011 at 11:45 am
How to connect IP Blue over VPN Connection ,the CallManager IP address entry is disabled.
I am running the demo version.
October 20th, 2011 at 11:38 am
It is wonderful but I face strange problem
phones get no’s and work normally but they take the same IP address ????
I have 4 loopbacks each with a different mac and IP ??
any help with that >>>>
e.mohamed.saad@gmail.com
November 12th, 2011 at 9:52 pm
I am using call manager 7.0 on VMWare workstation, when i tried to register softphone with call mamanger it prompt me to enter IP add. of call manager but i cant add IP add. of call maanger into softphone setting>Primary callmanager as that option is not highlighted. how to solve this.
please suggest.
Thanks
November 29th, 2011 at 7:57 pm
i use 2 NIC for 2 phone i add the command /d to IP PHONE but i have the same probleme i can’t enable 2 instance of IP PHONE someone can help me pls
December 3rd, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Hi Josh,
I tried the registry edit as you mentioned on the video. However it seems I messed up during this process. I am now gettting an error message software cannot seem to find a network connection or it is disabled. I have checked in Tool and network adapters to manually select my pcs physical network adapter, but it comes as blank and I cannot see any network adapters at all in the list. I tried to reinstall, delted all traces of the registry key and still get the same issue.
Any assistance will be much appreciated.
Thanks
May 6th, 2012 at 7:48 pm
Hi Josh,
I am the newest member to fall in love with this website. I need to share a wonderful news with you at the IP-Blue website they have launched a new software in Feb 2012 called VTGO-Multilab, with this software we can configure 5 IP phones in one go without registry edit.
I used the IP of the CUCM server and gave fake mac addresses in the setup wizard window and had the 5 functioning phones.
However the software is a little pain as we need to cancel the config setup multiple times to get the phone interface. Still better than going through all that registry hacking
July 6th, 2012 at 9:26 am
An old website, but hopefully somebody will answer.
I am confused on the mac address. I know one is the loopback, but is the other the VMware interface that CUCM is using?
It looks like it in the video, but it is not working for me.
November 26th, 2012 at 4:32 pm
hi guys,, why don’t use multiple lab for ipblue
December 2nd, 2012 at 6:35 am
TO RUN MULTIPLE CIPC ON JUST ONE PC
https://supportforums.cisco.com/community/netpro/collaboration-voice-video/blog/2012/11/30/run-multiple-cipcs-on-just-one-single-pc
March 18th, 2013 at 2:14 am
Hi There,
I am not able to run multiple IPblue phones with “/d” option. It seems every time I start softphone the same window opens. I am using version 2.15. Any idea how to get multiple instances/windows to be pop up? The rest of the procedure it pretty stright forward.
Thx.
April 29th, 2013 at 3:05 am
https://supportforums.cisco.com/community/netpro/collaboration-voice-video/others/blog/2012/11/30/run-multiple-cipcs-on-just-one-single-pc