I have been learning about asterisk and Piaf now for almost two months I think and there are still a few things that still bother me. I will leave the others to their own thread but I would like to talk about remote phones in this one.
I guess the thing that puzzles me the most is that it seems like I should be able to take a phone out of the office and have it work without setting up more equipment at that end. This may be because Cisco tells me their solution can do this and they demonstrated it for me by bringing their office phones into my building and calling out as well as receiving calls. They did not bring any other devices just phones. I wonder it this is because they use their own protocol and perhaps sip is just not as firewall friendly. Maybe their phones had built in vpn capability or something like that.
It seems like the preferred method by most here is to setup another Piaf server at the remote location that uses a vpn to connect the two. This just seems cumbersome though. Especially if I have several remote workers. What if I had 20? It just seems like a pain to have to setup 20 more Piaf boxes even If I used a super small solution like vpninaflash or an acer one netbook.
Much also seems to depend on the phone as may say they have no problems with remote phones such as not having to forward any ports at the remote end to the phone. I was using a polycom 601 for awhile and it worked good without messing with remote ports but I did have to force it to register every 30 seconds to work. Currently I am using Aastra 57i phones.
There seem to be lots of options like setting up a proxy or using a stun server. These are mentioned alot but I don't know what they are or how to set them up and aside from mentioning it there is little info that I seem to find.
If there are any good guides on all the options and how to set them up this would be great I think.
My remote users will not have control over a router at their end to forward ports and such. For instance in a hotel setting or they lease an office space with a provided internet connection. So what would be the best way?
I am not sure I guess why a softphone like x-lite would work without problems and forwarding ports but the phones themselves will need another piaf server.
Anyway I am just looking for to understand a bit more here other than the other info I have found and what the best solution for me would be.
If I used a VPN router like a dlink or linksys what would be the best way to do this? Would it go on the remote users end? And then I could connect to it from my Piaf server? Or do I have this backward?
Well thanks for putting up with the long post which is probably just a lot of stupid question, thanks.
I guess the thing that puzzles me the most is that it seems like I should be able to take a phone out of the office and have it work without setting up more equipment at that end. This may be because Cisco tells me their solution can do this and they demonstrated it for me by bringing their office phones into my building and calling out as well as receiving calls. They did not bring any other devices just phones. I wonder it this is because they use their own protocol and perhaps sip is just not as firewall friendly. Maybe their phones had built in vpn capability or something like that.
It seems like the preferred method by most here is to setup another Piaf server at the remote location that uses a vpn to connect the two. This just seems cumbersome though. Especially if I have several remote workers. What if I had 20? It just seems like a pain to have to setup 20 more Piaf boxes even If I used a super small solution like vpninaflash or an acer one netbook.
Much also seems to depend on the phone as may say they have no problems with remote phones such as not having to forward any ports at the remote end to the phone. I was using a polycom 601 for awhile and it worked good without messing with remote ports but I did have to force it to register every 30 seconds to work. Currently I am using Aastra 57i phones.
There seem to be lots of options like setting up a proxy or using a stun server. These are mentioned alot but I don't know what they are or how to set them up and aside from mentioning it there is little info that I seem to find.
If there are any good guides on all the options and how to set them up this would be great I think.
My remote users will not have control over a router at their end to forward ports and such. For instance in a hotel setting or they lease an office space with a provided internet connection. So what would be the best way?
I am not sure I guess why a softphone like x-lite would work without problems and forwarding ports but the phones themselves will need another piaf server.
Anyway I am just looking for to understand a bit more here other than the other info I have found and what the best solution for me would be.
If I used a VPN router like a dlink or linksys what would be the best way to do this? Would it go on the remote users end? And then I could connect to it from my Piaf server? Or do I have this backward?
Well thanks for putting up with the long post which is probably just a lot of stupid question, thanks.
Phone System 