sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems ESI Telephones & Systems Enhancement - Dynamic DNS for the NSP & Esi-Access

Don't you hate it when you setup an NSP for a customer, but then when you ask about having the admin port forwarded, you are told (or find) that the customer doesn't have a static public IP address, but rather a Dynamic one? Now I know the router, or even a workstation, can be setup to update a Dynamic DNS service with the current IP address, but what if the IT person isn't available or cooperative?

I think it would be cool if the NSP programming had a place to enter Dynamic DNS login information (with options for multiple Dynamic DNS services), so the phone system would actually keep the service updated. After all, if you're the one who's going to use it for remotely administering the phone system, why shouldn't it be the phone system that keeps it updated? Then (also), in site entry in ESI-Access, you could use EITHER the Dynamic DNS resolution, OR the customer's static IP address.

I guess a work-around could be to put a cheap router between the customer's WAN router and the NSP (I think that might work), but that's just one more thing to try to sell the customer, or to include in the sale.

I don't mind a router in front of the phone system, not for security, but because the dynamic dns is a simple config in these routers. you know if ESI did it, it would the most complex series of digits strokes to program it... couldn't be easily accomplished by a phone anyway.

What I need is for the Remote phones (and I guess Esi-Link too) to accept a domain name address for the PBX address.

My boss actually got something to work by writing a proxy, which tunnels the phone traffic through a local computer to the ip address of the PBX. (The phone is configured to look at the computer as the PBX) It was intended to solve both the dynamic IP of the cable modem for the PBX (we have 2 modems, one for office data, the other for the PBX and VoIP trunks) and the fact that we had an employee taking his phone on the road with him. It worked, mostly. But he abandoned it after only a couple days.

I like that idea, and it sort of goes along with this. It all falls under the FQDN (fully qualified domain name, to use a Linksys term), along with being able to resolve domain names to IP addresses, and being able to update a Dynamic DNS service. You're probably right, though, about the keystrokes. I hate keying in MAC addresses from the phone. Although it is possible to do, it didn't start out being that easy.