One Way audio using i2050 over a VPN

[spen2]

Hi,

I have recently set up a an i2050 softphone to connect via a VPN from home to the office BCM400. The VPN is a Checkpoint VPN-1 Securemote. The softphone works if I keep a call open from the start, but if the application is running for a couple of minutes without a call being active, I then loose any sound/dialing tone if I try and answer or make a call. I can still dial out and the caller can hear me, only I now cannot hear them.

Any help with this problem would be much appreciated as I haven't got a clue where to start looking to troublshoot this.

Many Thanks

 

[JeeMan]

Sounds like your VPN is timing out. Are there any parameters that you can change on the router to see if you can extend this?

Another idea is to make yourself a little batch file or right a C program (VB or anything for that matter) that pings your gateway every 30 seconds or so. This will keep traffic on your VPN and will tend to keep it alive.

We had this problem when using Sonic Firewalls for VPN connections. We ended up ditching them for Cisco's.

 

[spen2]

Hi Jeeman,

Looks like it was definately a VPN issue as you suggested. I tried setting up a ping to keep it from timing out and this did not work. I eventually reistalled the VPN client and it now works fine. Thanks for your comments.

 

[MagnaRGP]

Checkpoint VPN is notorious for this. I fought with a customer for weeks and they swore that it was the i2050's fault. I showed network packet traces that showed that when the VPN rebuilt it's NAT table after 3 minutes of idle time, it did not correctly rebuild for the i2050.

I ran this right up the flag at Nortel and they said it was Checkpoint's problem. The customer's Checkpoint vendor didn't say anything (to me at least)and their own in-house people SWORE it was Nortel's problem. They wanted $$$$ back and threatend contract if the issue wasn't resovled by me.

Oddly enough, after applying 16 patches to their VPN, the problem MYSTERIOUSLY went away. Didn't even get a thank you for the hours I spent on this from them.