Setting Up A 7911 Phone At Home

[tmccabe]

What do we need for home users to use a physical phone at home ?

How do you get the phone to pickup and IP addy fromthe network and not from the router at home ?

[leciscokid]

The end point at the home users place would simply need to be put behind a tunnel, with path back into the infrastructure.

As long as there is IP connectivity, it wouldn't matter what IP address as long as it's unique, or natted to be unique, when it attempts to register with CUCM.

So if I am undertstanding correctly, I am thinking you want to put a 7911 at your house, and register it to CUCM ?

Setup a tunnel, between your home and the Corp site, which has IP access to the CUCM, with SIP opened (usually UDP 5060).

Manually configure the phone's TFTP server, to point to the CUCM TFTP IP.

Bam, done

[barry]

Hi

Several different ways of doing this, however easiest way to do this (IMHO) is to set up an IPSEC LAN to LAN VPN tunnel from your home office back to where CUCM is located.

The phone will receive an IP address from your home LAN, and register with CUCM over the VPN.  Pro is that you don't need to do anything clever on CUCM. Con is the additional bandwidth each call will consume due to IPSEC overhead (a G.711 call can take up to 100k of bandwidth). You are best configuring the phone in a region that uses G.729 - but ensure you have transcoding resources available.

You will need a routers / firewalls capable of setting up the VPN tunnel obviously. It is also desirable that the routers / firewalls can do elements of QoS over the tunnel.

I've done this numerous times, and providing you are careful with QoS, it works well.

The 7911 doesn't support the phone proxy stuff that some of the newer handsets types do, so no point in looking at that.

Barry

[tmccabe]

Works just fine with IP Communicator (softphone) on my old Dell dekstop from home so I know when I logon to the work network from home using my Sonic VPN client that it creates a tunnel and away we go.

What I cant figure out is how to configure the  7911 itself to use the ip address the tunnel creates and how to point to the tftp server. You can see the config on the phone when you punch the buttons but how do I get at it to configure it ?

[barry]

Hi

If you hit '**#' on the phone whilst in settings menu, ir will unlock and you can then edit fields.

However, the 7911 doesn't have any native VPN support - therefore you will need another device to establish a VPN tunnel back to the CUCM Server.

Barry

[tmccabe]

ok-so I grabbed a 7942G phone and it doesnt work either. Does anyone know what phone models support the VPN conenction I am trying to accomplish ?

[don_crowder]

How are you physically connecting the phone? If your Sonic Wall VPN is a software client, then I'm not sure how you will be able to use that connection for a physical phone. As Barry mentions, you are going to need a router/firewall that can establish a VPN tunnel to HQ. I use a 7942 with asa5505 and it works fine.

Regards,

Don

[tmccabe]

what is in the IP communicator (softphone) that makes it so easy to connect over my VPN as compared to a physical phone set like the 7942g ?

[barry]

Take a step back.

Something needs to establish a VPN connection back to your main network so that you can see the internal services and servers (including CUCM).

On your laptop, this is the Sonicwall VPN client. Once this client establishes the VPN tunnel, your CIPC softphone can then communicate directly to the CUCM server over the VPN. If you don't have the Sonicwall VPN client active, then CIPC won't work.

Your 7942 doesn't have a Sonicwall VPN client - hence it won't be able to work. It also can't use the Sonicwall VPN client that's running on your laptop - it needs it *own* VPN connection.

There is a VPN client type solution for the 7942, however it needs Cisco ASA firewalls at the head office to work.

Your other option is to install a firewall / router on your home office LAN that can create a LAN to LAN VPN tunnel back to the head office. Without this VPN tunnel, the 7942 can't communicate with CUCM, and hence will never work.

Barry

[tmccabe]

so it wouldnt matter what phone I used-none of the Cisco phones have any VPN "savvy" ?

Thanks to all that replied - Im new to the Cisco IP Phone world - so much to learn but I am enjoying it.

[barry]

Hi

Unfortunately not I'm afraid.

This is not strictly true, as some of them including 7942 and 7962 have "sort-of" VPN capabilities built in - howeve this does require a Cisco ASA Firewall at the main office end to terminate the connection. It won't work with a Sonicwall firewall I'm afraid.

Your best bet is to get hold of a router/firewall that supports IPSEC LAN to LAN tunnels. This means that the router/firewall will establish the VPN tunnel for you - and will allow all of the devices on your LAN to communicate back to the main office without requiring their own VPN client software.

Barry

[paolo bevilacqua]

Barry is correct, rated his post above.

The OP should do the same.