NEC SV8100 IP phones can't talk to digital phones through the Netlink

[madwizard57]

I am at a loss, so hopefully someone with more knowledge on this system can point me in the right direction. I have a customer that is moving to IP phones to work remotely at the moment and while they can make calls and receive calls just fine, they are unable to make calls to the other offices that are connected to the main office via netlink. The netlink is running through VPN tunnels with open firewalls and nothing blocking it. Digital to digital calls work fine. IP phone to IP phone work wonderfully. Digital to voicemail work beautifully, it is ONLY IP to the digital phones that are running on the remote offices connected via netlink. So ideas? GO!

 

[madwizard57]

Okay get this after the previous changes that were made and verified that we have all looked at and discussed. The customer just now informed me that digital to digital across the netlink connection are doing what the VoIP phones were doing. Calling one location will just hang up on you, calling the other location just has no audio. Apparently it has been going on for at least a week.

 

[CoralTech]

Can only be 2 things. Network programming is messed up or Netlink isn't working or programmed right. I would verify your licensing that you have at least 2 netlink licenses. Both processors need to be identical software level and size. Is this new or was/has been working in the past? If it worked in the past then it points to the Network very hard. You really need to wireshark this to fix it. Do you have databases to look at?

 

[madwizard57]

The digital phones had been able to talk to one another, Branch to Branch. It would seem one of the changes made changed this. Licensing is not the issue, all software is the same level and size. If it was still just the IP phones I would say it was certainly a Network issue.

 

[madwizard57]

okay what port forwarding do I need setup with the VPN tunnels?

 

[CoralTech]

You shouldn't need to open any ports if the VPN is open like it should be. Again if you added NAT remote phones, there is specific programming you need to look at. If you have a way we can look at your database(s) (both sites) it would be a lot easier to see what or IF anything is wrong.

 

[madwizard57]

As the sites are linked via Netlink they are the same Database and I am not going to dump my whole database. The third party IT group claims up and down that the VPN is open and is not blocking anything, but they are Fortinet and I always have issues with those when running SIP or MGCP phones do to their SIP "helper". The NAT phones were the original issue when calling into the branch offices through the main location as that is the only IP gateway we were utilizing. If you want Database information what particular parts of that database are you wanting?

 

[belevedere]

My bet is the issue is with the fortinet. We have had nothing but problems with them. We had one customer work with fortinet support to get things working properly. I would try to set up a conference call with the 3rd party IT and fortinet support.
I know this is not much help, but it's what we ran into in the past. We even had a customer replace the fortinet.

 

[CoralTech]

Fortinet...the problem child. I have found out that they run a LOT of stuff in the background for their own phone system that needs to be shut down or removed.

 

[madwizard57]

I know fortinet has a lot of SIP helpers and things running in the background. I have worked a lot on them to get them resolved with Tadiran Coral, Shoretel, NEC, and Yealink phones. I believe most of that is done again it is only through the VPN tunnels it seems to be having issues and only with the audio packets. I am going to try to get them to forward all RTP packets to the gateway, but I don't see how this would affect the digital to digital across the netlink connection.

 

[CoralTech]

Because everything is VOIP across a Netlink connection.

 

[madwizard57]

Yes, unless the netlink is not an old school netlink like I am use to from IT world then it is its own small VPN like tunnel. And now I see why issues are popping up. I have to see what changes are made in the version upgrades in the Fortinet. Their Third party IT people have updated all routers with out informing anyone. This is why I am working on taking over IT for them and bridging IT and Phone. I will let you all know when I have an update.

 

[madwizard57]

okay I believe I found the beginning of the issue. Version 6.2.2 renamed the sip-helper to Sip-expectation and it is removed from the system settings when the update occurs. Do not ask me why this company would do something as annoying as this, but I will have to get into the routers and disable this and then test it.

 

[CoralTech]

One word....Billable.

 

[madwizard57]

okay I am at a loss, how can I dump this database so you can look through it if you still want to? Fortinet says they see UDP going through the switches.

 

[CoralTech]

Dropbox works.