3CX v15 SBC

[Amardeep]

Hi

I have a remotely hosted 3CX (3CX Phone System Standard SPLA, 15.0.0) and have two SBC's (3CXSBC15.0.61335) in two offices.

The two offices are VPN'd at the router level and the servers that run the SBC's are physical but have a number of other roles such as DNS, DHCP and VPN. SIP ALG has been disabled on the Draytek routers.

The issue I have the more often than not only one SBC will allow the phones in the office to connect through. If Office 1 is connected then Office 2 will soon go offline and vice versa. If I restart the SBC where it not connected it knocks the other one off.

The firewall rules have been configured in each office as per: http://www.3cx.com/docs/3cx-tunnel-session-border-controller/

The guys we are hosting with have been unable to get to the bottom of this. Any ideas, suggestion are most welcome, if you need further information just tell me what you need.

Thanks

Amardeep

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

Hello @Amardeep

first of all having any of the DNS, DHCP and VPN on a PBX could cause issues. Having them all on the server i am surprised it works.
I would recommend finding a dedicated machine to install the PBX to avoid any future issues.
Are the sites connected with VPN between them and with the PBX server?

 

[Amardeep]

3CX is hosted externally, its not connected via VPN.

Can you explain why it should not work? I'm sure SBC does not use any of the ports or relies on any of the services.

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

In short, the SBC uses the tunnel service which in turn binds to the localhost of the machine. DNS, DHCP etc use the localhost as well. So you may have conflicts between the PBX / SBC services and the rest of the services. That is why we insist that the PBX is installed on a dedicated machine.

 

[Amardeep]

Maybe you could update http://www.3cx.com/docs/3cx-tunnel-session-border-controller/ and http://www.3cx.com/docs/3cx-sbc-windows/ to advise.

However, you are talking about £800 minimum for the hardware and a Windows license for each SBC.

 

[Lakota Morris]

You could use a Raspberry Pi for the SBC, couldn't you?

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

There is also SBC for Debian which does not require license.
and the machine running the SBC doesn't have to be very powerful (depending on the extensions you will use behind each one)
Try installing the SBC's on two laptops or pc's to see if your issue gets resolved and then invest on hardware. Your issue could be somewhere else.
http://www.3cx.com/blog/releases/session-border-controller-sbc/

Also what version is your PBX? are you on the latest service pack? You can find the build number under the information column on the dashboard.