best practice for remote IP phones 1

[jsaad]

I have a BCM 400 4.0 with 10 remote ip phones and a cisco PIX vpn. I have not had good luck with the vpn, it is maintained by an IT department who is not cooperative. For example the IP phones cannot call each other because VPN won't allow traffic from spoke to spoke. Call quality is very poor and the phones lose their connection altogether. I am ready to put the second port of the BCM on the public internet and point my ip phones at the public ip. Customer has a full T1 at BCM location and cable modems at remote sites. Am I digging a bigger hole for myself with this plan?

Customer is generally dissatisfied and I am tired of finger pointing.

 

[gwebster]

Signaling is done between the ip phone and the bcm. Voice packets are routed directly between two endpoints (either ip phone to ip phone, or ip phone to bcm for analog/digital/trunk). So putting the BCM on the public network may help with the signaling but you will still have problems with the voice packets.

 

[jsaad]

So i suppose i need to open the necessary udp ports in all of the firewalls? voice packets won't go through the vpn.

 

[DocVic]

Hey J, you would be amazed at what a couple of small BCM50's could do for you. You would look like a hero among your peers. Your IT department would wonder how you did that. Your voice packets would flow across your network like NEVER before. Quit trying to do damage to yourself, and get those lazy IT guys off their butts.

DocVic
Dedicated to Nortel Products till the end.
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[jsaad]

why would i want to change to a small system? The bcm 400 4.0 is just fine.

 

[jsaad]

would these be the ports to open to allow ip phone to ip phone communication (taken from my BCM)?

UDP Ports 28000-28255 and 51000-51200.

 

[oldestgeek]

Jsaad, When you do this without a VPN your packets and thus the entire conversation could be sniffed and recorded. The VPN will do the encryption for you to prevent this. Depending on the type of business, you could be opening yourself up to liabality by using the public address. Use the VPN and get the higer-ups to force the IT staff to turn on VPN-to-VPN communication and set the links up for QOS. Unfortunately, you have no control over the Internet, so you could be stuck with some degree of poor sound quality.