No voice over internet with BCM50

[JaggedPath]

Hi all,

I've been reading through the archives here, and googling like mad for a solution I even went as far as contacting Nortel.. no help), but so far, no luck.

We have a BCM50 system with two expansion units.
Everything works perfectly with it locally, all sets perform exactly as expected.

We have two lic. for IP Softphone, which when installed on laptops and used on-site, work flawlessly.

However, my problem occurs when you take the laptop off-site and try to use the BCM phone system over the Internet.
I've opened port 7000 on our router, and you can connect to the BCM no problem with Softphone. I can dial extensions and make them ring, and I can hear paging tones, but there is no voice at all. Neither sending or receiving.

Since it works perfectly inside our router, I'm prety sure it's simply a port-forwarding issue.

Does anyone know what port(s) the voice data travels through?

I've tried forwarding the ranges listed in the Port Range section of the BCM administration, but no luck.

Cheers for any help or suggestions!

 

[kungfumstr]

port range 2800-28255

 

[MagnaRGP]

And 51000-51255.

 

[exsmogger]

I'm not real familiar with the BCM 50, but in our BCM 200 I had to set the next hop route to get a remote IP phone to work. This will be set to the gateway IP address of your LAN.

Brian Cox

http://www.jandjcommunications.com

 

[ktludwig]

It won't work without VPN.

 

[MagnaRGP]

It won't work without VPN"

It won't work WELL without VPN.

Search the forum. This has been debated to death here.

 

[Macoles]

This issue may arise for us shortly. Please keep the thread posted on the final solution - thanks.

 

[MagnaRGP]

Use a properly designed VPN. The added cost is minor compared to the cost of troubleshooting when it doesn't work like you expected without the VPN.

 

[JaggedPath]

Hi guys, cheers for all the suggestions!

I've tried forwarding different port combinations through the router (both those listed here, and port listings found within the BCM management software) with no luck.

I'm setting up VPN now on a test machine, I'll keep you posted with the results!

Again, greatly appreciated!

 

[JaggedPath]

SOLUTION

Posted for those who find this with a search at a later date.

----------

The following is a 100% working solution, I hope it helps others down the road!

----------

I setup VPN on a windows 2000 server.

Two network cards. 192.168.205.180 and 192.168.205.181

VPN is allowed to assign the IP addresses of .182 thru .185 to clients when they connect.

The 2K server is behind a router, however, the router supports VPN directly (had to enable PPTP in the router tools section).

I also had to add the VPN server's IP to the DMZ in the router. I'm sure with some playing I could make VPN function without exposing the server through DMZ. I'll leave that up to you.

Created accounts on the server for the dial-up (VPN) users who will have access to the BCM, and made sure to set the "allow dial-up VPN access" permission for each.

Setup the SoftPhone 2050 on each users laptop to use 192.168.205.155 (the IP of our BCM), so naturally without VPN, you can't connect to it.

Setup a new network connection on each users laptop for VPN access with their respective accounts.

Connect to the internet.
Connect through VPN to our server.
Load softphone.

It works flawlessly. No fuss no muss. No ports being forwarded.

Because our internet IP is dynamic, I setup a dynamic domain name through

http://www.no-ip.com

(free), and have the server update the domain name with the new IP every time our ISP's DHCP server changes it.



Thanks to everyone for the help and hints.
I hope that this helps others down the road.

 

[BringbackVNC]

It works without VPN, but why anybody would hang a system out on the internet is nuts. Set your trunks to Private, adjust your codec to 729, set your jitter to medium and you might get a call across. Other wise treat your voice like data and then maybe you data freaks will understand voice traffic.

 

[Macoles]

Related question:-

Can the softphone on the laptop utilise a wireless connection or must it be a wired internet connection?

 

[JaggedPath]

Hi Macoles.

Both laptops I setup and tested had wireless connections.
I had 3+min conversations without any lag or distortion.

It will depend on the overall speed of the wireless connection and the internet connection behind it, but my experience was great.
Hope that helps.

 

[mddcomm]

BringbackVNC (Programmer) 21 Oct 07 6:04
It works without VPN, but why anybody would hang a system out on the internet is nuts. Set your trunks to Private, adjust your codec to 729, set your jitter to medium and you might get a call across. Other wise treat your voice like data and then maybe you data freaks will understand voice traffic.

----------------------------------------------

They're correct - anyone who would place (hang) a BCM system in a DMZ of a Firewall/Router is absolutely nuts; especially without any port restrictions in place. I hope that no run runs a port scanner and finds the open ports to the BCM and that I hope your username/password still aren't the system defaults.

For a client PC (typically laptop) to access multiple servers remotely VPN is a must; especially when it comes to protecting sensitive data on a network and softphones.

 

[Macoles]

So we are saying that a) one needs a vpn, which I have and second port 7000 must be opened up on the service providers network. Any other thoughts or comments? Or have I missed part of the problem somewhere?

 

[BrainWreck]

This is interesting. A VPN should fix any softphone connection issue simply because you are part of the network once connected. What I would like to know is, if your BCM is conencted through a router, how do you fix one-way audio or no audio issues with your hard phones? This has me stomped.