Home user solution

[computerhighguy]

What is the home user solution for IP phones?

What I don't want to do is
1) use the IP softphone.
2) use a VPN device

What I see are the issues.

1) queueing of the packets so that the phone gets priority over the rest of the broadband traffic.
2) being able to reach people at the corporate office who are behind our firewall

I can open the ports on the firewall to allow a phone to contact the tftp server (I guess I would have to manually add the the tftp server and call manager to the phone config since the PIX firewall cannot change the information embedded into the files). The phone should be able to register with call manager at that time. However, I cannot see a way that the external phones would be able to contact my internal phones since there is no valid path to them. Is there a gateway device (similair to a transcoder) that can be used to proxy the connections? I would like to save the cost of the VPN devices (physical as well as management coasts) and the latencey for the encap and decap of the packets going through the VPN tunnels. What are other people doing for this and how are they handling security?

 

[AdmanOK]

I'm afraid that the only solution that I am aware of involves using VPN. I use a 3005 VPN concentrator at the office end (already had it in place for VPN RAS anyway) and Cisco 3002 VPN clients out at the remote sites. These devices cost me just under $700, which is expensive, but it does provide bullet proof (or at least as close to that as possible) security. There is no management required... I configure it once in the lab and send it out to the remote site. It works like a charm and I rarely, if ever, have to touch it. The 3002 can provide DHCP (including a TFTP server) to the phone and any other devices behind it.

 

[mtashiro]

Short of putting CallManager on the Internet (which would be a disaster) You probably will not be able to connect a hard IP phone.

Any particular reason that you do not want to use Softphone?

 

[computerhighguy]

Mainly a Our users tend to turn up thier nose at a soft phone when their couterparts have a hard phone at the office. I would like to see a VPN hard phone. That would take care of all my issues in one piece of hardware. If it was remotely manageable and I was able to hook the users work PC into the dataport so that it was on the VPN would be great (*sigh* still dreaming). Does the 3002 hardware client have queueing features?

 

[mtashiro]

Ok. It seems that I softphone has some good arguments for it eg dialing from Outlook, etc.

i don't think the 3002 has QoS capability but not sure that will be an issue since it can process much faster than the internet connection would be able to handle anyway. A bigger concern would be QoS on the internet (or lack of QoS).

It would be nice to have a hard phone, like the 7920 wireless phone, that had VPN capabilities. With any luck maybe it will happen sometime.

 

[computerhighguy]

Thanks. By the way, you can have outlook dial out your hard phone using application plugin called Cisco telephony Service Provider. We use it all the time. It is one of the "cool" apps that gets management to for over some more $$$.

 

[mtashiro]

You are right, you can dial from Outlook using the TSP. There are a lot of neat applications that people much smarter than me can have created.

I spend a lot of my time with IPCC and the scripting piece and am amazed at what can be done with a little imagination and hard work.

 

[Wanabeelee]

Computerhighguy, I've been working on the same problem. By useing routes from our firewall I have been able to connect to call manager and call out anywhere. The only problem left is when call manager regesters the phone by its local ip address from the linksys it is sitting behind. Voice works out of the remote phone but not back in.

If cisco made a phone with built in vpn, they would not be able to rip us at every turn.

Let me know if you find a good way of setting up a single remote phone.

 

[allebone]

VPN wise, I have released several of my high profile clients into the remote world using ubr924 for home cable, PIX 501 units which I get at around $590 and do awesome hardware VPN really well, and also SoHo 831 routers for all have great hardware VPN capabilities (actually the 924 I have replaced with 925 for that reason.) and most of them have several ports to straight plug-in Hardware VOIP Phones. It is kind of a pain to have to carry it all, but I kind of put it togther as a kit for them.

Bryan Allebone