atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems Vertical Telephones & Systems Another sbx networking problem

I have a customer with 2 sbx 3.5 networked. This has been in for about 3 1/2 years. For three years it worked fine, it was going through an MPLS. Then one location moved an switched to comcast and the other location switched to a local company called fibernet. They use fiber from customer to their building then hand off to Windstream. The first problem was a known issue with the comcast modem (smc i think). It was replaced with a cisco. The issue after that was the net call would work 50% of the time. Make a net call then next try wouldn't go thru. Tech support had me upgrade to 4.0 but the ring tones went back to default and would not change and it started having phantom ringing on the PRI. Also the net problem was still happening. I then changed back to 3.5. Tech support had me do trace and send it to them. Now they want me to use wireshark witch i have no experience with. I have a friend that works for competitor that is going to help me tomorrow so we can be at both locations at the same time. Neither of us has used wireshark before. About a week ago both locations started having phantom ringing on the net lines. I reinitialized both systems and loaded known good back ups but no change. Both providers say its not their problem. Sorry to be so long winded but this is driving me crazy. Any thoughts or opinions welcome. Thanks.

Phantom ringing is a huge issue with all voip and digital connections right now...happens at all my sites except those with managed services such as point to point metro e, mpls, or t-1. I can only hope it will stop just as it did the last time I had this trouble. No provider will admit that there is a problem.

It's not a provider problem, it's a hacking problem. There are people in this world who do nothing all day except try to hack VoIP systems. They come across your IP and start trying to get in, causing you problems.

This is why it is bad practice to connect any VoIP system/card directly to an internet connection with all ports open. You're always going to have problems. You need to put the system behind a router and only allow access to the system from trusted users. At a minimum, block ports (especially 5060) from IP's that don't need access to it.

If you're using a Summit/eMG80, or one of the other products that uses the IPECS engine, you can use the Access Control List to help keep out the bad guys.

Thanks for your response guys.

nfcphoneman, my colleague basically told me the same thing this morning. So my next question is how do you handle a remote ip phone. From my understanding, you can't port forward ip phone. This same customer has another location that we will be installing 4 ip phones in. Vpn?

The remote side with the IP phones will not need anything special. They should be able to connect just fine.

Of course, a VPN would be preferable.

I'm going to be installing routers on both sides. Does anybody know what ports to use for the voip card?

I talked to Toni at tech support. She said the sbx doesn't support port forwarding. She told me to program the net lines in CO ring assignment to ring vmib msg. Then use msg 50 and record a second of silence. So i'll try that and see if it works. This is to keep the customer from hearing the phantom ringing. nfcphoneman, if you have a better way please let me know.

It doesn't support port forwarding? I find that hard to believe. Most every VoIP system supports 1-to-1 NAT port forwarding.

Unfortunately, I don't have a way to test this. We never networked an SBX. Good luck!

The SBX technically has the same port forwarding capability as the IPLDK60. The trouble is implementation....so Vertical doesn't support port forwarding due to so many types of routers out there. Same thing for the Summit..it may do it but you are on your own getting it to work...the only port that Vertical tells you about is to open 80 for admin remote access from inside on a lan when the summit is on a public ip in front of the router at the same site as the lan.

Thanks Derrick.