Voice BLS Volume I – Initial Session

Today I had a Proctor Labs session, which I wanted to use to get a feel of the environment. I have an 877W router at home, so opted to use the hardware EZVPN option to connect to the rack. The EZVPN config was fairly straight forward to get going, and it worked first time – which was good! Here is the basic config that I used – I added the [POD] bits as these are variables that change depending what POD number you are using at the time, so a quick search and replace should speed up the config.

crypto isakmp key ******** address 209.124.41.250

crypto ipsec client ezvpn IPx-Pod[POD]
connect manual
group vpodg[POD] key *********
mode client
peer 209.124.41.250
xauth userid mode http-intercept

int dialer 1
crypto ipsec client ezvpn IPx-[POD]

int bvi 1
crypto ipsec client ezvpn IPx-[POD] inside

ip dhcp pool HOME-DHCP
option 150 ip 10.[POD].200.21

! Add outside ACL Entries – CBAC lets everything else initiated from inside back in
permit udp any any eq bootpc
permit esp host 209.124.41.250 any
permit udp host 209.124.41.250 any eq isakmp
permit udp host 209.124.41.250 any eq non500-isakmp
permit icmp 209.124.41.0 0.0.0.255 any echo

I have a couple of IP phones (7940 and 7960) that I bought a couple of years ago when I was playing around with Asterisk. What I forgot was that I loaded these phones with the SIP image to use them with Asterisk, so I will need to convert them back over to a recent version of SCCP. Hopefully I can do this in the next week or so.

The IPexpert vRack topology looks like this:

The aim of this session was to complete Section 1 and 2 of Volume I, which covered the basics of setting up the L2/L3 and CallManager infrastructure. I got a bit stuck playing around with the IP Blue soft phone, as it didnt like running in my Windows VM. I did get it going on my native XP laptop and got the PSTN phone working. Proctor Labs provide clear videos that show you how to set up multiple soft phones which was very helpful. I got all the L2/L3 interfaces configured and set up the DHCP scopes for HQ/BR1 on the UCM server and for BR2 on the BR2 router – standard stuff really. I got the phones registered with the CM server, but thats when I called it a day.

I didnt complete all I wanted to, but now that I have an understanding of the basic steps needed to set up the environment, will be able to make better progress next time. I think for now I will use the IP Blue soft phone, but will also look to get another two 7960’s and an ATA 186, so I can have all of the hardware local to me.

If anyone has any Voice kit for sale (7960’s) then please get in touch 😉