Question about SBC's and hosting

[NAP-LN]

Infrastructure\Organisation background: Our organisation has 19 remote locations, most are currently connected to the internet via geostationary satellite connections with speeds maxing out at 25Mbps down and 5Mbps upload. We are looking to roll out StarLink at a primary connection with the GEO Internet as secondary. Part of this roll out will be upgrading remote sites to Fortinet and deploying SD-WAN due to some sites not having a connection to the corporate network..

Our 3CX instance hosted by a 3rd party called AATROX Communication and it works well, support is prompt and very helpful.

Question:
We are looking to trial the roll out of voip phones to these remote locations and rather than having 19 SBC's on Raspberry PI's which adds both complexity but also many more points of failure, I am wondering if there is a better way. As we are looking to deploy SD-WAN, would migrating the 3CX PBX to Azure mitigate the need to deploy SBC's? Can Yealink handsets register over SD-WAN? As we are having StarLink and GEO Satellite the risk of the site being offline is reduced.

Physical handsets would be the preferred option due to the nature of the conditions at site.

 

[SteveITS]

The SBC essentially proxies the connection. Without that phones can be set up using STUN which requires port forwarding (on the local router, to the phone). An SBC is not required if the phone and 3CX server are on the same LAN. Note STUN is not supported for 3CX-hosted servers.

Is there a PC on site that can run an SBC in a VM?

In various threads over the past month or so 3CX has mentioned they are working on phone firmware that lets the phone run the SBC. (no, I don't have any more info on that )

 

[NAP-LN]

The SBC essentially proxies the connection. Without that phones can be set up using STUN which requires port forwarding (on the local router, to the phone). An SBC is not required if the phone and 3CX server are on the same LAN. Note STUN is not supported for 3CX-hosted servers.

Is there a PC on site that can run an SBC in a VM?

In various threads over the past month or so 3CX has mentioned they are working on phone firmware that lets the phone run the SBC. (no, I don't have any more info on that )

I'd rather go the route of a Raspberry PI vs a PC - less likely to be touched by a user and we can keep them in the wall mounted racks.

Just to confirm, when you say "An SBC is not required if the phone and 3CX server are on the same LAN" I am assuming you are referring to the same broadcast domain or are you referring to the same physical LAN as we will be deploying VLANs to our sites so need to ensure the architecture is correct?

 

[EmmettsIT]

If you have VPN or SDWAN connection between the phones and 3CX server then you don't need SBC's. Do you anticipate being able to ping from a site to the 3CX server? If so, you don't need any SBC.

 

[NAP-LN]

Perfect, if we migrate the PBX to azure then all sites will be able to access the PBX over the SD-WAN. Appreciate the asssitance

 

[quadrant]

If you have issues with audio quality, analyze packet captures and watch the flow of RTP traffic. Some SD-WAN networks have the intelligence to manage RTP traffic, while others don't. One purpose of an SBC is RTP session management (hence the name "session border controller"). 3CX's SBC increases its usefulness by condensing BLF broadcast traffic. Sending all the signaling to make the lights blink on phones across the WAN can get expensive.

Best,