I have seen a few posts about Zerotier here so I wanted to put my two cents in on this as I feel it is not discussed enough. I feel this would be a great workaround to a central PBX with remote nodes or a lot of mobile users without having to deal with opening it to the internet.
A little background: I have been using zerotier for a number of years. I started when they offered 100 free devices. Initially I used it personally and then setup an instance for my work. Once they announced the limitation to 50 I quickly started looking at hosting my own controller as the limit is only if you use their cloud controller. I also have trust issues with security and the potential for a company to silently add its own devices to my instance so the self hosting was a benefit in both regards. It is crazy simple to host your own controller. I have been running my personal one with multiple networks and one for my work each in their own docker containers on separate servers.
Unfortunately the project I was using for the controller is no longer being supported/updated so I am having to change. The benefit of that is I had to actually look to see what was out there with updated features and such. I found a controller that offers a lot more than the one I was using: multiple users with individual permissions, oauth, much improved interface, controller options in the GUI that were not even an option in the command line on the old one just to name a few. This one you can install on a server or do the docker compose route. https://ztnet.network/ is the one I found. Now this is not an advertisement for the controller software as honestly I have not even installed the new one yet. I am only going by what is on the tin. But going by what others who are running it say it is exactly what it appears to be.
I use my zerotier multiple ways:
Now my question: should this work with the ClearlyIP softphone app? I don't see why it wouldn't but I have not messed with it any either. What about the ClearlyIP phones? Are they able to install other packages like zerotier or are they limited to just what comes in the box? With the recent HP/Poly announcement about them killing off the obitalk I am looking at moving my clients to something easier to support and I like what I see with the ClearlyIP phones.
A little background: I have been using zerotier for a number of years. I started when they offered 100 free devices. Initially I used it personally and then setup an instance for my work. Once they announced the limitation to 50 I quickly started looking at hosting my own controller as the limit is only if you use their cloud controller. I also have trust issues with security and the potential for a company to silently add its own devices to my instance so the self hosting was a benefit in both regards. It is crazy simple to host your own controller. I have been running my personal one with multiple networks and one for my work each in their own docker containers on separate servers.
Unfortunately the project I was using for the controller is no longer being supported/updated so I am having to change. The benefit of that is I had to actually look to see what was out there with updated features and such. I found a controller that offers a lot more than the one I was using: multiple users with individual permissions, oauth, much improved interface, controller options in the GUI that were not even an option in the command line on the old one just to name a few. This one you can install on a server or do the docker compose route. https://ztnet.network/ is the one I found. Now this is not an advertisement for the controller software as honestly I have not even installed the new one yet. I am only going by what is on the tin. But going by what others who are running it say it is exactly what it appears to be.
I use my zerotier multiple ways:
- I have a dedicated network for each of my clients machines. This allows me to push updates and such no matter what network they are on. No having to deal with port forwarding or any special sauce. Just point the updates to the ZT IP and bam.... it works.
- I have another network that all my cellular routers connect to. This allows me to get to the GUI or even ssh session to reboot or do other maintenance tasks without crazy reverse ssh or similar.
- One network is specifically for an "always on VPN" solution. Basically you setup a linux vm on a network that you want to route all traffic through and when you setup the zt client you enable the route all mode and it will route everything through that server no matter where you are. Its a little more involved but documented very well.
Now my question: should this work with the ClearlyIP softphone app? I don't see why it wouldn't but I have not messed with it any either. What about the ClearlyIP phones? Are they able to install other packages like zerotier or are they limited to just what comes in the box? With the recent HP/Poly announcement about them killing off the obitalk I am looking at moving my clients to something easier to support and I like what I see with the ClearlyIP phones.
Phone System 