Cisco Presence/Jabber both internally and externally

[gkeel]

We have installed the Cisco Presence server and intergrated it with our Microsoft Exchnage for ldap, Cisco Unified Communications Manager, and Cisco Unity Connection for phone and voicemail support.  It is all installed inside our corporate network and with my testing, I have found it to be available outside our Corporate network as long as I have a VPN configured and active from outside.

However, management wants the enitre thing accessible from both within and from the outside without having to have a VPN connection. Does anyone know of a method for doing this or could point me to some good documentation as to what would be required?

Thanks in advance.

Gene

[Curtis Fuentes]

Hi Gene,

       If the Cisco Jabber is able to communicate to the CUCM over the Internet then you should be good. The deployments with VPN are usually because we would want to have the CUCM in the Private network and not accessible over the Internet and the other advantage is Secured

[gkeel]

Thanks for the reply. 

So then, I guess I would have to open access to my CUCM and to the Presence Server and the Unity Connect server from the outside in order for the system to work from the public internet without having a VPN session to my inside?

Gene

[Tommer Catlin]

If you are using Jabber onPrem with CUPS, the only way this will work (for now) is using VPN.  This will give the external using IM/Presence/CUCM.  You cant really open CUCM or CUPS via 5060 Ports and expect it to work.  The problem is the internal/external IPs are not proxied correctly and presence will not work.

If your management really wants to have this seamless inside and out, the best solution right now is to use Jabber Cloud and use VPN back for CUCM call control on the client. (mobile or PC/Mac).

Hopefully sooner than later we will see a "Presence gateway" that will sit in the DMZ and connect external IM clients to the internal CUPS server,

[rjrii]

Did you ever come to a solution for this scenario? I'm working on the exact same problem on CUPS 8.6.4 and Jabber clients.

[gkeel]

No.  The more I investigated, the more I felt that I would have to rely on a VPN type solution.  However, that was a solution that would only work with a external Wireless connection and in my testing, 3G (I don't have 4G capability) was not conducive to VPN and wireless VPN using public internet HorSpots was also hit and miss.  Moving between the two was a real no-go.

If you find a possible solution I would really love to hear it.