Cisco SoftPhone (long)

[snootalope]

Hello

I'm looking at giving one of my users this SoftPhone, but I'm a little concerned if it'll even work in our situation. I'm in Iowa, and she's in Arizona. She connects to the internet via DSL, but she's also behind a router in the business complex she's in, so her segment is completly seperate than mine.. Plus, I have no control whats so ever over that router..

I've never used this SoftPhone before, so I don't know if it'll work if she's get a private IP on her local PC and i'm 800 miles away with firwalls, routers, and bla bla bla.. she's connects to our systems via a Citrix client, so of course she can access our systems...

Plus, what about local calls? Is that software configurable to pick up a LOCAL line instead of coming all the way back here and picking up a long distance line to go all the way back?

I searched Cisco's site, but I couldn't find any info for our situation.. I have complete control over my network here, so if it's just a matter of installing the phone, configuring the software on her PC, and opening a certain port here on my side, that'd be great..

Any info would be great!!
snooter

"tis better to remain silent and be thought of as a fool..
then open your mouth and remove all doubt" Mark Twain

"I should of been a doctor.." Me

 

[Bluecrack]

First of all, I wouldn't recommend this setup as there is no gauranteed quality of service. Jitter will become a huge problem. I've tried the softphone over a VPN connection and it does work but It wasn't great.

I'm not sure how you'd handle the line for her. I'm guess it would have to be a phone number on your Call Manager out of Iowa.

Perhaps SRST would help.

Bluecrack

 

[snootalope]

as of right now her QoS sucks.. that's why i'm looking into a different setup than what she has now..

We are looking at bumping our pvc down to our Arizona office (which her current voice jumps through) up to 256 from 128, so maybe that'll help overall..

Do you have to use netmeeting with it? I've been seeing that pop up alot on the data pages.. Another thing, is it just a matter of opening another port on the firewall and configuring NAT to push to our CCM?

"tis better to remain silent and be thought of as a fool..
then open your mouth and remove all doubt" Mark Twain

"I should of been a doctor.." Me

 

[Bluecrack]

I guess I'm confused about how she would connect back to CCM. Is here office connected over a private FR connection? Or is she going to be using the DSL connection over the Internet to hit CCM.

As for the firewall, I think you can poke a hole in it to allow Cisco's Skinny protocol through, but it might depend on the firewall. I think the PIX requires software version 6.1.x to do the fixup on skinny. It's possible there are other configuration options needed especially if NAT is used on her side.

 

[snootalope]

no, there's no private FR there.. see, that's where I'm so confused.. How's it going to know where to look for our CCM. She's getting a 192.x.x.x addy and the CCM is 172.x.x.x over here.. it's like, where the hell am I suppose to put some kind of translation except the firewall.. maybe some kind of dynamic statment on the router.. but i don't know..

I do have the absolute lasted ios on my PIX so I shouldn't have a problem there.. I might just have to get ahold of a CCE and see what I'm suppose to do.. even then, maybe going to a softphone won't even fix our qos issues.. it could just be an exspensive oops!!

"tis better to remain silent and be thought of as a fool..
then open your mouth and remove all doubt" Mark Twain

"I should of been a doctor.." Me

 

[MztrNyceGuy]

Just to understand your situation -

You have a user in AZ. They want to talk to you via the IP Softphone solution. You have no data connectivity to them other than the possibility of poking holes in your firewall. You have a Voice PVC that will be bumped up to 256K soon(connected to I dunno? a pbx?).

I guess first and foremost - what is your goal? Which way do you want this to end up being completed?


Other Questions - Is the Voice PVC (the one you spoke of) a direct tie line from a different PBX into the call manager cluster in question? If so why are you trying to use the IP Soft Phone? Is it for QOS? If the QOS is bad between the sites from the tie line how many people are using the line between AZ and Iowa? What compression are you using (G.711, G7.29b, etc.)

If the above is totally off base next question would be - Do you have a VPN solution that she can use to connect to your network? If yes is IPSEC over UDP or TCP enabled? If you answered yes to both questions and she has a regular "DSL" connection with no real "firewall" in play you should have no real problem enabling the soft phone however as Bluecrack says there is no guarantee of the service line quality if bandwidth between the sites over the internet is ever an issue. But all and all it works, and it works okay


Hopefully I may get more info to try to help your situation.

 

[snootalope]

I have an office in AZ that the PVC hits right now.. that user is outside of that office, but her phone is forwarded to from that site.. the AZ office is using g729 because of the lack of burst right now..

She has no VPN and no firewall.. just the DSL router.. I was thinking, if I setup this softphone maybe I could bypass that AZ office and just jump straight to the Iowa office from her ISP..

I don't know.. could be a waste of time and effort, but her voice quality SUCKS and i've done more screwing with their router than one person needs too..

"tis better to remain silent and be thought of as a fool..
then open your mouth and remove all doubt" Mark Twain

"I should of been a doctor.." Me