Implemented Redundant SBC Support

[cobaltit]

I'd like to see support for redundant SBCs. So this would be two SBCs devices at the customer premise and both IP's entered into the provisioning tab of the extension. This would cause the 2nd (backup) SBC to be provisioned as SIP Server 2/Outbound Proxy Server 2 in the account (or as a second account, not sure which is better).

 

[accentlogic]

+1

 

[Jim Canfield]

+1 Just found this...I created a similar request.

 

[Tony Cave]

+1 for this, it would be incredibly useful

 

[liss]

+1

 

[yanceyworks]

Like this idea, not sure my top 10 in need yet, but definitely see the value. Suspect we could most easily implement with the Yealinks as they support 2 connections to proxys/sbc's.

 

[OCWI]

+10000

 

[nitrox]

+1

 

[accentlogic]

++

 

[contoured]

Big ups on that. Love SBC but its a usually a cheap piece of hardware that is likely to fail.

 

[dandenson]

FYI, this is really just a matter of phone provisioning for some models. Yealink and Grandstream for example can have a primary and failover proxy. If the provisioning templates and webui allowed for multiple proxies to be entered and passed to the phones, zero changes need to be made to the SBC.


Another option, 2 SBC and heartbeat. Set asside 3 IP addresses, 10.0.0.10,10.0.0.11,10.0.0.12. Install 2 raspberry pi SBC and give them .11 and .12. Install heartbeat and set the floating IP to .10 and the monitor to .1 (ie, the router). Install the SBC on each pi. Configure the phones to SBC address 10.0.0.10. Done.

Both of these methods work, I've tested them in the last few weeks. I'm avoiding version 1 because I don't like maintaining custom phone templates through updates.

I've had issues with the SBC though, specifically that issues it's supposed to solve, it isn't. So I've switched to VPNs to my hosted 3CX instances so everything is 'in net' and that's solved everything.

 

[AGidi]

oh nice, so you install the VPN server on the VM that runs the 3cx? do you connect from the phones openvpn or gateway at the client?

 

[accentlogic]

oh nice, so you install the VPN server on the VM that runs the 3cx? do you connect from the phones openvpn or gateway at the client?

3CX won't support any VPN installed on the 3CX server. Basically, you would use a site to site VPN from your cloud host (Google, Amazon, Azure, etc) to your local firewall/router. Works really well, but there is typically a monthly fee for the VPN from most cloud hosting companies.

 

[phoneuser]

+1

 

[Boschko]

+100

 

[javanbakhti]

The Redundant SBC Support is 100% Good Idea

 

[Caregnato]

+1

 

[timmy.gielen]

+1

 

[BrenttG]

So i havent tried it, but this may already be possible just based on DNS standards already in place, i may have to conduct an experiment to test the theory, but if you were to setup 2 SBCs and on the local DNS server at the site with the phones, setup an A record for each SBC, but with the same name.

A sbc.company.local 10.0.0.5
A sbc.company.local 10.0.0.6

and then instead of using the IP of the SBC in the 3CX provisioning tab, instead specify the local DNS name. from the DNS prospective this should work perfectly, and the phones will use either SBC essentially at random, and if one dissappears, should in theory use the other one. This is how services online such as google handle their search web servers, example, do a nslookup of google.com, and you are provide multiple IPs to try, your browser picks one and tries it, if no response, it tries another.

This behavior is standard practice for DNS protocols, its not something specific to a web browser.

 

[BrenttG]

OK so Yeah, i just tried setting an extension to use a DNS name for its SBC and it seems to work on the 3CX side, just need to test with an actual phone now to verify function.