Softphone on Laptop for roaming purposes. Truth or Lies?? BCM50 Rls 2

[Macoles]

RE BCM 50 RLS2

Hi The latest saga in me trying to achieve remote access: I am now being told by my Vendor that because I am running a Netgear firewall that the softphone on laptop scenario will not work. The reason being given is that we use a firewall that is independant of our Cisco 877 router. Bit late to be telling me this now.

Common sense tells me there are systems set up in the world that have independant fire walls and softphone accessing through laptops! The Firewall we have is a Netgear FVX538 if that helps in a reply.

I am confident in this Nortel product but would appreciate guidance. Am being told its up to me to arrange the VPN to the Netgear. Does this mean once that VPN is setup to the firewall that connection to the BCM is straightforward? I am confused (being a layman) as I thought the VPN would need to be to the BCM? Though I guess that ip softphones are on our network and what we are doing with a remote version is simply connecting to our network rather than the BCM itself. Can someone clarify for my benefit?

Am very frustrated with this because this project has been going on for months and I am moving forward at less than snails pace. I believe the bottom line is the local phone company and vendor dont want to lose revenue on forwarded calls! Small town monopoly thinking probably.

Bearing in mind I was charged 116 pounds labour for a basic install of a softphone on our in office network you can understand my frustrations and that charging on a 48 pound product is excessive in my opinion. But I digress!!

All help appreciate as I love this system and what it does for us and this is being marred a little by my vendor - no vendor choice on the island!

 

[Deweyhumbolt]

Once you set up a VPN from your remote laptop through your firewall and on to your network. Your golden. Your softphone will register to your BCM, just like your local softphones.

 

[MagnaRGP]

If you have a VPN router (any model) that uses VPN client software for client terminations, the only issue you may experience will be NAT traversal (when you are behind some firewalls).

If NAT is not an issue, you can connect via the VPN and have your laptop running the IP2050 all day long if you want and it will act the same as if you are sitting on the same switch at the office.

 

[PainOfDeath]

According to Netgear's site, your FVX538 should have come with ProSafe client software with 5 user licenses. Therefore you can install that software on any client computer, along with the softphone, and you can dial into the Netgear.

I don't know exactly what your setup is, but presumably your WAN connection is plugged into one of the WAN ports on the Netgear, and then the Cisco is plugged into one of LAN ports. My guess is that traffic should be routed correctly without doing any additional work. To test it, try plugging a different computer into one of the other LAN ports on the Netgear and see if you can ping a computer on the Cisco side, and vice-versa. If that works, you should have no trouble with your softphone once you connect with the VPN client.

I know exactly where you are coming from with the whole softphone setup. My original BCM vendor (Bell Canada) sold us all the equipment and licenses but gave almost no help in terms of setting up the VPN connectivity. I had to learn how to set it up myself - a great learning experience to be sure, but it took ages for it to work and there was a lot of heat on me to get a working solution going. So good luck, and let us know if you get it working!