How do you get a IP hard phone to work through a VPN?

[raknas]

I have customer who has a 403DS running V3 and 5410 Digital Stations.
They have a remote worker at home who very rarely comes into the office. This
person as Broadband at home with a VPN connection (2MB down with 512KB up)
in to the office. The IT manager has asked me if this person can have a 5610IP SW
Phone at home and utilise his VPN connection for VOIP. The set up at home is a 4 port ADSL router with basic setup. The VPN connection is intialised via the PC ( Network and dial up connections). When the VPN is intialised the ip address is given to the PC as normal ( via the WAN PPP adapter. My question is and you now where i am going with this how can i fit my IP Hardphone into this scenario. Does the ADSL router need to do inialise the VPN connection or do i have to set up LAN to LAN routing?

 

[photon33]

You need hardware VPN for the hardphone. I don't think ICS would pass data through your VPN adapter on the connected PC.

A VoIP softphone may be better suited in this particular scenario as it would work without implementing the hardware VPN or reprogramming.
Have the user plug a USB headset into the PC and go with it.

 

[andy4uk]

I have the same problem for one of my customers,
Advise I have received is that you need to have the broadband router to do the VPN connection (Hardware VPN).
VPN connection via your PC (Software VPN) is not advisable.

I have installed hundreds of homeworkers with software and hardware VPN connectivity, however this has been on a Mitel system to which they have provided plenty of documentation and advise.

Can anyone give any knowledge or documentation on Homeworker solutions ie: type of connections, and setup. (ON THE IP OFFICE)

I have set up a softphone on a remote worker via software VPN, software starts up no problem but no voice between devices,
I think this is down to the customers firewall, need to advise on the ports that require opened, however customer does'nt fancy opening 30,000 ports (any idea if you can bring this down)

 

[JeSTeROCK]

You shouldn't need to open up ports as the VPN should allow full access to the IP Office on all ports.

You need to setup up the IP extension correctly for it to work ie. packet size 80, compression auto, mac empty, out of band & allow direct media path ticked, all the rest unticked. Don't forget to put the extension number in on the extension tab.

I have had the most success with usb headsets (no echo).

Make sure all your sound recording, playback, voice (depending on what OS) are set to the usb headset. I've got it to work with ringing out the speakers and conversation through the headset but have read this will be fixed in the new versions. Have a play with different settings.

Phone manager config is pretty straight forward. Setup username, password and pbx address but do not use login. In preferences setup enable voip (obviously the phone manager type set to voip).

You can't use a softphone user for anything but softphone! ie. will not login to a normal phone as the users extension number is against voip extension.

 

[JeSTeROCK]

Sorry that last post was a little off the original topic.

Has anyone got a hard phone to work through a soft vpn?

 

[andy4uk]

Don't think you can have hardphone working through soft VPN as you require a LAN port to connect to the phone and will then need to set your router as hardware VPN,

Thanks JeSTeROCK for your input, I thought you did'nt need to open up ports on the firewall as you're already on the corperate network once a VPN is connected,

I'll have to look into the setup of the Voip extension, hopefully it might be one of the setting you have mentioned.

The setup I have is an IP Office with a customer at home with a connection using software VPN on a Laptop, and phone manager also on his Laptop, the phone manager connects ok but no voice at all, thats what made me think (FIREWALL)

 

[Morrack]

In my experience also the no sound on phone manager thing is usually a problem with your PC audio settings. Make sure you set the USB headset as the preferred device, then tick "use preferred device only"

Peter

 

[andy4uk]

Forgot to mention when the user is connected to his network at the office, this works fine.

It's only when he's at home connected via his broadband that causes the problem.

 

[raknas]

what routers to recommend for hardware VPN?

 

[Morrack]

Linksys - the big C helped them improve their firmware when they bought them, they work quite well now in my opinion.

On the other hand if you have more money to spend the Avaya SG's are pretty good. And of course it's hard to argue against a PIX.

Peter