i2050 Softphone keeps restarting\hanging over Broadband

[scottvtr]

We have recently installed an IP Line 3.1 ITG card and have IP phone running ok. We've also installed Softphones on a number of PCs, which also seem to work ok in teh office, the problem arises for home users via broadband.
Once connected to the corporate network (via a VPN) the softphone will restart\reboot every 3-5 mins and sometimes simply hang, even though it still appears to be connected! This means no callers can reach you until you manually restart the software.
Once the software has been restarted a call can be received or placed before it hangs, this call will be good quality and will not drop once it's been initiated? So it appears that if a call is made then the phone will not hang but if left alone it will freeze and prevent incoming\outgoing calls.
I've read something about watchdog timers expiring which I guess is why it's restarting the software but is there any way of configuring a value (increasing) on the ITG card\server to prevent the reboots?

Any help is appreciated.

Cheers.....Scott.

 

[Sennback]

I have seen just this problem you talk about from one of our customers.

It seems to be a firewall problem.

if the PC with the i2050 software was connected in the office it worked fine, but when it was outside the firewall it restarted about every minute.

The customer has not made a trouble ticket on this to us, and should try other settings in the firewall.

 

[Sennback]

Some more information:
a/
A watchdog timer sends a signal to every phone. This is sent from the system to the phone.
If the phone sends an answer back to the system after the watchdog signal is received, everything is ok.
If not, the phone will restart after a while.

b/
in some cases the i2050 use the same hardware ID.
Some software, such as VPN client software will create articifial network interfaces with mac addresses wich are not unique.
The hardware ID is in this case based on the network interface address in the pc. So, in this case more than one i2050 can obtain the same hardware ID.
The problem occurs when different i2050 has the same hardware ID and is fighting about who should have it.
They are rebooting to try to obtain the ID themselfs.

Most of this i read from a Nortel document..

 

[scottvtr]

Thanks, I'll check with our resident firewall expert to see if theres something that can be done.