Avaya 9608 can't connect using VPN on the Verizon FIOS network

[Trevor S.]

Hi everyone,
We have some Avaya 9608 phones that can't connect using VPN on the Verizon FIOS network. We send out phones to our remote employees and for a small number that are on the Verizon FIOS network, the phone won't complete the connection to our PBX. I have done some searching on this, but haven't seen anything recent that has helped. Contacting Verizon was also not helpful. The same phone taken to another ISP works fine, so it seems like something on their network is blocking the connection. In our VPN logs, it does make some connection, but the phone kind of gets "stuck" on the final screen right before it would show the normal button configuration on the display. Eventually, the phone will reboot and try again. The phone does show up in the system Monitor->H323 Phone Status program, but it shows up as "NoPhone VPN" instead of "9608 VPN" in the "Phone Type" column and "RAS: ReRegistration Pending, DHCP: Returned" in the "Status" column.

IP Office version: 9.1.7
9608 firmware: 6.6115

Thanks in advance for any advice you may have.

Regards,
Trevor

 

[AACon]

If you google "verizon fios blocking VPN" you'll find tons of people having issues with it. Dosen't seem to be any one way to to solve it. But I would check the firewall settings and make sure ipsec/vpn is allowed through. May even have to make a static entry for allowing it out (and statically program the phone IP's).

-Austin
I used to be an ACE. Now I'm just an Arse.

 

[Trevor S.]

I did see some issues related to this in my previous searches. I was a bit more specific in my search and included "Avaya" in there. Because of that, I didn't get as many results as I did with your search. I did find most of them were pretty old(ish) and there wasn't any one single fix. In some cases where there was a fix, the router firmware has changed or the model of the modem/router is different, so the setting they reference doesn't exist anymore. I didn't see any hits on it in these forums either, so I was hoping to try to get this resolved and then have a thread about it here for others to reference.

I did set IP address of the phone to be in the router's DMZ and also changed the firewall settings from "medium" to "low". Neither made a difference.

It would be helpful if I had Verizon in my area to be able to work on this, but as it is, I have to mess with people modem/router remotely. I was hoping to find someone here that had seen this to be able to try something specific instead of trying random things on someone else's router (who would be pretty upset if I broke their Netflix, etc.).

 

[JayNEC]

You could try messing with the encapsulation type on the phone.

New England Communications

http://www.necomm.com

 

[Trevor S.]

We have tried all of the encapsulation types and although the results do change the behavior depending on the setting, none of them resolve the issue.

 

[amriddle01]

Only Verizon can fix something they're breaking

 

[Trevor S.]

I am hoping that this can be worked around. They claim they are not blocking any ports, but clearly something is going on. We are continuing to work on the issue, but it is taking time due to multiple factors (time zone differences, the end users schedule, our schedule, their technical savvy, etc.). If we find a resolution, we will post it here to help others, but if there are other suggestions to try, we are open to giving them a try.

 

[AACon]

Seems it may be easier at this point to just send out a cheap vpn router and do a site to site connection, I doubt that would be blocked.

-Austin
I used to be an ACE. Now I'm just an Arse.