BCM 50 ?

[norstarboy125]

Hello,

I have a cust. that has a bcm 50 basic and I need to
connect some ip phones( 2004's ) at the guys house. I have heard that I need at 221 router w/ vpn at the home location, do i need a 221 at the office location also or can I keep the bcm connected to the exsisting soho router/switch.

 

[endlesswinter]

you need a hardware vpn setup. You will establish a tunnel from his house to the network that the BCM is on.

 

[norstarboy125]

i am pretty new to vpn tunnels and how to set/program one if you are aware of how to do this please give detail.....
I am familiar with bcm's but i have never had to set up vpn.

 

[PainOfDeath]

First of all, both ends must have a router capable of creating VPN tunnels. Contivity 221 is one such device, although there are many SOHO routers from companies like Linksys and Netgear that will also do the job.

The VPN paramaters must match up pretty well exactly on both sides. Depending on the implementation, both sides may or may not require a static IP. To my knowledge the Contivity can form a tunnel with a dynamic IP endpoint, but the Contivity side must be static. If both sides are dynamic the Contivity will not work. His house probably has a dynamic IP if he is using DSL or cable. In that case, you need to use a dynamic DNS service (like DynDNS.org) to assign a host name to the house IP so that the office router can always find it. I know that newer Netgear SOHO routers that have VPN support will do the job there and can even handle the DNS updates.

As for the VPN parameters, use PSK (pre-shared key) and make up a 10 or 20 character string to use (the longer the key, the more secure it is theoretically). Make sure both sides are configured to use the same encryption settings (3DES and MD5 are common). Make sure each side uses a different subnet. After some trial and error, your tunnel should be up and you will be able to ping the BCM from the guy's house. There are plenty of guides on the net (and certainly this site) that will give you more detail, and there is also the router documentation.

I went through this same process myself when I was learning about VPNs and got very frustrated, but don't let it beat you. VPNs are a powerful tool and an essential element of any good BCM remote IP phone setup.

Good luck!

 

[tech1999]

Norstarboy,
I just setup a BCM50 with 5 ip2004 at an off site location, I used two Netgear ProSafe VPN firewall routers (FVS114, 129.00 bucks each) between the sites. I used the VPN wizard using the defaults and it worked fine.As painOfdeath mentioned make sure each LAN side has a different subnet, one is 10.10.10.0 the other 192.168.1.1 as an example. If you do not have a static IP address's you can go to dyndns.org and setup an automatic up date of your routers IP address( first one is free). The Netgear router, has a feature, that will contact dyndns.org each time it powers up. Just sign up at dyndns.org. Also Netgear tech support will help you with setup. Be advised that both location existing routers will be removed and the Netgear's will replace them.
Some Linksys routers will do this also but I found them more harder to setup VPN.

 

[tech1999]

Please excuse the "More harder" I should have reviewed first.

 

[norstarboy125]

Thanks for all the info POD AND tech1999. I will be applying it soon.....