Phones for multiple locations / remote use

[mstoffel]

I have some clients that are interested in 3CX for their phone system.

We would like to use Amazon Lightsail for the phones, which I have set up a demo using PBX Express. It's pretty neat.

I've read that having phones provisioned requires port forwarding on the network that the phones are connected to. These are physical Yealink T21 and T46G phones. Or for more than one a SBC can be used.

Is there a way to do this without requiring that to be done? I have clients that use Vonage business and RingCentral and could save a good bit by moving over to 3CX. Using Vonage and RingCentral does not require port forwarding. Why is this?

 

[eddv123]

Port forwarding is required to enable the correct ports (used for signalling, media and tunnel) through the respective firewall: https://www.3cx.com/docs/ports/

You could however:

* Limit port forwarding by using the SBC and/or remote smartphones (these only use port 5090).

* Use a VPN connection - check this is supported by your hosted platform provider.

 

[mstoffel]

Why is this required by 3CX but not by some other providers?

 

[eddv123]

I would take an estimated guess that it is because they use VPN for connecting up their phones - some rely solely on this - 3CX offers options. It may also be that the provider provides the router which is pre-configured with these already configured.

Some like Skype for business use ICE (a mixture of STUN and TURN) however it is my thoughts that anything that traverses the firewall (without VPN MPLS or VPLS connection) would require port forwarding.

The firewall after all is doing its job - blocking ports from unknown sources.

 

[Christopher Reagoso]

The reason vonage and some others don't require SBC is because they use non-standard SIP Ports , eg., 5062 instead of 5060 to avoid customers' routers messing up the SIP traffic with SIP ALG (since SIP ALG only watches 5060).

The SBC for 3CX does so more many great things, though, in addition to all of this ... it will also let you auto discover telephones that aren't provisioned yet. So you can literally not know the MAC address of a telephone, drop-ship it to Mr Customer, they plug it in, and you see it in 3CX dashboard. Also it allows hotdesking.

Always put in an SBC. They're almost free too.

 

[eddv123]

Always put in an SBC. They're almost free too.

SBC software is free to download - you need to pay for the hardware to run it on (Server, NUC or Rasperry Pi are common options - or virtualize).