Use IP Phone from home

[CHRIS KALETH]

What is the recommended solution for setting up a 79xx phone from a users home? We are running Call Manager 4.1 and have Cisco VPN 3005 concentrators for VPN access and also Cisco ASA/Pix firewalls. What equipment (besides the phone) will be needed at the users home?

[paolo bevilacqua]

For example the new ASA 5505 that is small and has POE so the phone doesn't need the power brick.

Or a small router pehaps with embedded adsl / cable / wirelss interfacse like the 850 or 870 be nice.

With all of them you can do a modern VPN archiecture like DMVPN to simplfiy configuraiton and management of many users.

[Tommer Catlin]

I find that the IP Communicator to work a little better and easier to administrator, rather than send 79xx phones home with people. With IPC, you can simply load it on the laptop or home PC, configure VPN software, and connect. With the 79xx, you will need to have a hardware VPN solution, unless you enable SIP on the 79xx series and create a SIP connection back to CCM. Then you can bypass the hardware connection and VPN tunnel all together.

There are pro's and cons... just a matter what the business requirements are.

good luck!

[CHRIS KALETH]

We do have and use the IPC but we aren't getting very good voice quality (not that a hardware solution will be better). Any thoughts to troubleshoot the IPC. We use the latest version and have high speed internet but it gets choppy.

[Tommer Catlin]

Have you tested it on your LAN? If it works ok with the LAN, you may want to then head to the firewall and check on the voice traffic. The traffic from the voice needs to be prioritzed coming and going in the firewall. If your firewall is bogged down, packets will slow or drop and voice quality will be of concern. It also depends on a few other items. I have seen networks where their Data center is in dallas and ccm is in Denver. Clients VPN into Dallas, then there is a data connection into denver. Customer complains of bad voice with IPC. Well, it turns out the connection between Dallas and Denver, is not MPLS, just a straight connection.

Little things like this can throw IPC off. It's hard sometimes though with end users using IPC at home. Questions to ask, when they are at home, are other computers on? (kids downloading or uploading on the home network affects the broadband from that location, etc)

The phone runs on the same protocol as the IPC running on XP. Its just a piece of software. So your results should be close the same, but it never hurts to try.

[paolo bevilacqua]

Try G.729, it helps considerably when you have a lossy connection.

[CHRIS KALETH]

How do you enable G.729 for the IPC? We have G.729 for internal calls between sites, but how do you configure for the specific device? On the IPC under Preference, Audio, Network Audio Settings there is the Auto Port Range. What is the default port range (which ports)?

If a client is connecting to the corporate network from a Cisco VPN client to a Cisco VPN3005 how and where do you prioritize the voice packets?

[paolo bevilacqua]

Hi, I use CME and codec is set from the router, not sure with CM.

The only place where you can prioritize with a such a setup is the broadband router, if capable to. All the rest is supposed to be automatic.

[JimSJ]

Regarding the codec, make sure you go Preferences > Audio > and check the box that says Optimize for low bandwidth. This will force it to use G.729.

Good luck,

Jim

[badkarma]

Typically this is set a couple of places, one the VG needs to be made aware as well as callmanager. I have run into this problem before, typically it was routes from the inside of the vpn concentrator, and i made sure the duplex was set properly on the vpn concetrator. everything might work fine for data, but when you start sending voice through the vpnc you start seeing issues of qos. A big question on the vpc is are you routing everything from the remote site or are you using NAC on the vpc.

[CHRIS KALETH]

I'm assuming the recommended duplex settings are speed 100 | duplex full for the concentrator and switchport?

The VPN is handling the routing (not the client). Also, we have a 100MB internet connection to the concentrator but the voice is still "cracking".

[adhernan]

I use both Communicator and 7960 at home using a IOS router/vpn. I do have priority queing enabled on the router for voice and believe this helps alot. I would say that the ip phone is perhaps better but with the limited QOS option I have great audio at least 99% of the time running on cable modem.

[Tommer Catlin]

saw this post in another forum. maybe it can help you as well.

http://forum.cisco.com/eforum/servlet/NetProf?page=netprof&forum=Unified%20Communications%20and%20Video&topic=IP%20Phone%20Services%20for%20End%20Users&CommCmd=MB%3Fcmd%3Dpass_through%26location%3Doutline%40%5E1%40.1dddff59