How do I know if the provisioner locked my phone?

Attacks on VoIP phone networks have steadily increased in recent years, and the provisioning app has built-in protection mechanisms.

Checking if the provisioner locked a phone

1. Go to Advanced Provisioner > Devices

2. Click the gear icon for the suspected device, and choose View Log File

   

3. Scroll through the log to see whether there is a message about a locked phone

   

Events that trigger a lock

If the provisioner encounters one of the following, it automatically locks the phone — blocking it from provisioning, so it will no longer connect.

Trigger	Detail
Moving to a new network	The phone was successfully provisioned from a factory reset state, then moved to a different network where its IP changed.
Delay between creation and provisioning	The device was created in Smart PBX more than a week before it was provisioned.
Suspicious activity	Our security system flagged potentially suspicious behaviour.
Re-using a phone	The phone is not new and was previously registered in your account.

Watch the one-week window when shipping

If you create devices in Smart PBX and then ship the units to customers, a delay of more than a week will lock the phone before it is ever plugged in. Factor this into your shipping timeline.

Dynamic IPs can trigger this

If your ISP uses dynamic IPs, the WAN IP may change from time to time. A phone that is factory-reset right after the WAN IP changes may be locked by the security mechanism.

Unlocking a phone

1. Open Advanced Provisioner > Devices

2. Select the wrench tool for your phone, and choose Unlock

   

Once you unlock a phone:

• The device with that MAC address can be provisioned to any IP address for one week.
• If the phone is not re-provisioned within that time, the lock turns back on.
• If suspicious activity continues, it will re-lock and you will need to contact support.

Additional notes

• If a phone has historically been tied to the same IP and is simply being re-provisioned — after a factory reset, for example — the provisioner will not re-lock it.
• If the IP address has changed and you want to reset and re-provision the phone, you must unlock the device first.
• If you have overwritten the phone’s config file with a custom configuration, which is very rare, this process will not work.
• You only need to unlock the phone after a factory reset at a new location.
• The lock does not affect phones with scheduled polling for updated config files, which typically happens every 24 hours and on reboot.

Related

• How do I know if the provisioner banned my IP? — an IP ban is a different thing from a device lock