Easy SIP Phone Setup

[darryla]

Need help!

I'm looking to hand my secretary a VoIP phone, have her plug it into her Broadband internet and it just works....

As an experiment, I attempted to do this with X-Lite to "pretend" that it's my secretary. Didn't work. I had to configure my Home Router to port foward UDP packets.

Is it possible to just "plug and play" with these things? I keep reading about people who go to Hotels and it just works.

What am I doing wrong?

 

[webguyz]

The 'secret' is to define STUN settings and you don't have to do things like forward UDP packets. Thats what STUN does, keep a UDP port open by sending stay alive packets every so many seconds.

 

[Mirzab]

The STUN Server used in 3CX and the STUN Server in the softphone should be the same. As long as the correct ports at the 3CX Server location is properly configured plus the options "Extension is External" and "Bind to Media Server" are checked, it should be just plug-and-play.

 

[darryla]

It's working at home. But not at my office. Same laptop.

Does this mean that the office router (I'm in a shared office) is blocking UDP / STUN?

Also, I ran WinSTUN and it said that the router "does not preserve port number". Is this bad? Does this mean that I'm behind a symmetric NAT or does it just mean nothing important?

 

[Mirzab]

Do you have remote access to the 3CX Server? Can you check logs when offsite? Is extension registering? Are there any errors in logs? The office router should not block any port requests from the LAN but some Forum members have reported that they have had to replace the occasional router. Winstun reports on my LAN:

Nat with Independend Mapping and Independent Filter - VoIP will work with STUN
Does not preserve port number
Supports hairpin of media
Public IP address: xx.xx.xx.xx

All works fine for me, just don't ask me exactly what it means :?

 

[Mirzab]

Forgot to ask: When trying at home are you using 3CX local IP or external IP (or domain)? The laptop should work fine even at home with the external IP or domain if all is setup correctly. Mine does.

 

[darryla]

Thanks for the replies.

When I'm at home and at the office, I use the public host name. I have the 3CX software running on a server in a data center. I can access the web based control panel from both locations, I can register the extensions. I don't see any errors in the log. But I will check a bit more closely when I get into the office today.

At the office, I can make calls, it rings the land line, and I can hear audio from the softphone to the land line, but not back through it.

It sounds like the router isn't playing nicely at the office. I'll see if I can get the system admin to understand that this isn't some security risk.

 

[RobLloyd]

Yes that sounds like a firewall issue.

 

[darryla]

Found an error in the log at the office:

52:35.876 MediaServerReporting::RTPReceiver [MS005001] Call(80) Ext.201: payload #126 doesn't correspond initial SDP datalen=4
07:52:25.351 MediaServerReporting::RTPSender [MS004000] Call(80) Ext.201: (ACTIVE): Can't send RTP stream to 0.0.0.0:60390 destination unreachable