Cisco Certified Providers

skeogan

Hey everyone,
I am messaging from Australia and I've been here for a few years so I am a bit out of touch with the set up at home so was hoping someone could help me. My boss is based 50% of his time in Ireland (Kerry to be exact). I was trying to set him on a VPN with a cisco router and ip phone so he can make and receive calls from the office for cheaper rates.

I have gotten some feedback from Vodafone and Eircom and neither can really support.. I think. The person I spoke with in Vodafone for instance made vagueness an art form and Eircom don't appear to want anything to do with VOIP like technologies!

Can anyone point me in the direction of some one who may be able to help or any IT companies who are Cisco Specialists? It may be that I will need to go separate from the Telco's on this

Any help/comments will be greatly appreciated

Seamus

ptdireland

skeogan wrote: »

Hey everyone,
I am messaging from Australia and I've been here for a few years so I am a bit out of touch with the set up at home so was hoping someone could help me. My boss is based 50% of his time in Ireland (Kerry to be exact). I was trying to set him on a VPN with a cisco router and ip phone so he can make and receive calls from the office for cheaper rates.

I have gotten some feedback from Vodafone and Eircom and neither can really support.. I think. The person I spoke with in Vodafone for instance made vagueness an art form and Eircom don't appear to want anything to do with VOIP like technologies!

Can anyone point me in the direction of some one who may be able to help or any IT companies who are Cisco Specialists? It may be that I will need to go separate from the Telco's on this

Any help/comments will be greatly appreciated

Seamus

The guys at KBB offer VOIP at keen rates. Talk to them

Cabaal

www.Blueface.ie are a pretty popular VoIP provider in Ireland, might be worth talking to them

Sponge Bob

cisco voip or cisco vpn ??

skeogan

Hey Spongebob
It'd be a cisco VPN

bhickey

skeogan wrote: »

I was trying to set him on a VPN with a cisco router and ip phone so he can make and receive calls from the office for cheaper rates.

I have gotten some feedback from Vodafone and Eircom and neither can really support.. I think. The person I spoke with in Vodafone for instance made vagueness an art form and Eircom don't appear to want anything to do with VOIP like technologies!

If you're using a proprietary VPN connection to a site in Australia and looking to run VoIP over that VPN connection then what on earth do you expect Vodafone and Eircom to be able to support you with? All any Internet provider can provide you with in your requested scenario is broadband - the rest is up to you.

But whatever Cisco router you want, set it up over there and then get your boss to bring it home with him next time.

Dardania

OP Do you have an IP PBX? Can you do as bhickey suggested, and configure an IP phone for your boss, and he bring it with him, pre-configured to access your PBX in Australia?

That way he'll have a local Australian number so cheap to call people in Aus, and cheap for people in Aus to call him.

I'd also suggest configuring a second line on the IP phone for blueface, to give him an Irish number, so people in Ireland can call him cheaply and vice versa.

It might be an idea to have the same phone, and same phone configuration for him in both Aus & Ireland

Sponge Bob

skeogan wrote: »

Hey Spongebob
It'd be a cisco VPN

split or unsplit ??

skeogan

not too sure on the technology but think it would be split from what I have read on it

To bhickey, apologies if I came across unreasonable but Telstra over here provided compatible routers and were a big help in us setting up the system here, eircom sales said they would have nothing to do with us and vodafones routers are not compatible. I will probably need to get a company at home to do this for us but searches for cisco registered companies haven't given me much, so I'm trying to find the next step

to be honest I wouldn't trust my boss to be able to configure the phone at home if we set it up here for him

Cryos

bhickey wrote: »

If you're using a proprietary VPN connection to a site in Australia and looking to run VoIP over that VPN connection then what on earth do you expect Vodafone and Eircom to be able to support you with? All any Internet provider can provide you with in your requested scenario is broadband - the rest is up to you.

But whatever Cisco router you want, set it up over there and then get your boss to bring it home with him next time.

Actually interleaving is quiet relevant with VPN + VOIP, if you reduce the base response time from point to point this has a positive impact on overall QOS within the VPN link. (Think about Riverbed equipment for example, or WAN Accelerators)

bhickey

skeogan wrote: »

to be honest I wouldn't trust my boss to be able to configure the phone at home if we set it up here for him

Okay then setup the Cisco router AND the IP phone over there and then send them to a semi-IT-literate person in Kerry who can test them and then install them for your boss.

That way you don't need to waste time searching for any Cisco-registered anything over here and you know that the equipment has been setup exactly the way you want it.

Dardania

If you're going to preconfigure the router, maybe get one with a DSL modem built in, and pre-program the PPPoE username/password into it - both vodafone & eircom have generic details...

skeogan

Thanks everyone,
Think the best way to go so I'd be sure to get what I need would be to configure here and test at home.. It seems to be the neatest fit considering all of the above

Really appreciate all the help with this

kleefarr

If this is purely for cheap phone calls, cut out all the hassle and try Mobivox.

If not, then I apologise in advance for butting in.

Sponge Bob

No need for a router, the cisco vpn is a software client

if the cisco firewall in Oz is configured split he can use an Irish VoIP provider, if unsplit he must use an Australian VoIP provider.

watty

All you need generally is a laptop + real broadband.

If you need something specialist and Enterprisey with VLAN etc talk to Digiweb. They could be one of biggest user of Cisco gear and have loads of Cisco experts.

But as Sponge Bob says, likely all you need is some software. If your OZ office has its own VOIP system all you need is a VPN client. Since it's a client you don't even need to setup port forwarding Certainly this is the case with OpenVPN which we have the server on Port 80 here so the client laptops can use WiFi points or college networks where ONLY port 80 (web) is open.