Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Setting Up an Avaya VPN Phone

I recently had to setup a satellite office to use a VPN phone that would operate as an extension off of our IP Office. The documentation was limited but I eventually got it working. The idea is the phone operates a software VPN client that completes an IPSec VPN with the perimeter networking equipment and then communicates with the PBX. The benefit is that the phone can be used securely, from any internet connection.

First of all, the phone has to have the required VPN firmware on the phone for this to work. If you don't have the proper files in the Manager directory of the IP Office server, you can get them here. The MD5 hash of this file is 9E7916FC8E253F8D7BB9FF0AABDEF112, check that to make sure the files have not been altered. After you unzip the files to the IP Office\Manager directory, follow the directions below.
  1. Purchase a VPN IP Phone extension license for the IP Office system.
  2. Install it on the IP Office.
  3. Create an IP extension.
  4. Enable the “VPN Phone Allowed check box” on the VOIP tab of the extension you’re working with. This tells the phone system to give the VPN phone the necessary firmware when it boots up.
  5. Turn on the phone and tell it what extension to use.
  6. I set the VPN profile to use Cisco Xauth.
  7. Set the server name (or ip), user account information and password, group vpn name and password.
  8. The rest of the settings can be set to auto - my equipment negotiated automatically.
  9. There is one more setting on the phone to change. Press * when the phone is booting up. The setting that needs to be changed is the “Call Server” option. It needs to be set to the IP Office's IP address. This can also be done with DHCP options.
The phone should negotiate and complete the VPN, then communicate with the IP Office. From here, you should have dial tone and can make and receive calls from the VPN phone.