Polycom Provisioning Problems

Let me start by saying I am COMPLETELY NEW TO THIS! A few weeks ago our phone system crashed, it was also freepbx however it was several years old… So when it crashed I called the original installer and had no luck, so I took it upon myself to build a new system! After about 3 hours of reading, 3 hours of trial and error I was able to get the new system up and running! SO to my problem, I used endpoint manager, to provision the phones in the office and it worked great! I am now having issues getting phones in satellite offices to work. I set them up in endpoint and pointed the phones to look for the server at our static IP and have opened and directed ports 5004-50082 and port 84 to the phone server but keep getting could not contact boot server. anyone have any ideas? Remember I am learning as I go…

I would like these to plug into any internet source and work, so I’m trying to stay away from a VPN project…

My interoffice phones are ip450 and work flawless for the most part (there is an occasional interoffice call that has no sound)

My Satellite office phones are ip330

I am running the latest Freepbx distro

Thanks In advance

How are the satellite office connected back to your main office? Are you using a VPN? Are you trying to point the phones at your public Internet interface?

Alan,

The satellite offices only connect back to the main office with RDP, Currently we do not use any VPNs. I used our Carrier provided static IP address (same one the RDP uses) as the provisioning server address.

For this to work you would need to allow the correct ports through your firewall. SIP, RTP and tftp or FTP or HTTPS for provisioning. This is very risky when not done correctly.

The easiest and most secure way is with a VPN.

Do your satellite offices have static public IP addresses? You could limit what addresses can get to your phone server with your firewall.

My firewall is configured for SIP (ports 5004-50082), TFTP (port 69) What am I missing?

I would prefer not to use a VPN…

I always do an informal survey, why would you rather not do VPN? It’s the simplest solution?

SkykingOH,
I prefer not to use the VPN method because from time to time the employees are required to work from home and will have to take their phones home.

I think people don’t understand VPN’s I work from home and all my tech’s have VPN’s to their homes for when they are on call.

Most routers today have built in Clients. Only allow traffic to the FreePBX box in your VPN settings and you are ready to go.

You might also want to look the Yealink phones have a built in VPN client. You can take them to hotel’s etc. and just plug in. If the VPN client on your computer works so will they!

SkykingOH,

To use VPNs would require us to purchase new routers, and then have them installed… This would turn into a huge expense that my boss simply wont go for. I’m stuck using what I have. I know that the Polycoms can work as 2 of them are currently on “hosted pbx” from our carrier until we can things on our end to work.

I would love to use VPN’s it would make my job much easier, however I cant get my boss to pay for a network rack muchless more equipment.

I give career advice in other places but typically if your company won’t invest in infrastructure it also doesn’t invest in people.

If you are taking this much effort to learn FreePBX you should polish your resume and find a firm that would appreciate your hard work.

Also, I found these little gems. VPN interfaces for $50.00 !

http://goo.gl/7vlzns

I contemplate that everyday…