inherited a mitel 3300 cx control

[jjohn14]

hi to all.. i am a new to mitel system but have experience running asterisk system. i inherited this 3300 cx controller management. i got several concern with this i hope you can provide me an answer..
1. i am trying to extend this system to our second building(across the street) tru vpn, is this possible?
2. our license is 14 and we currently have 9 phones. so i am good for expansion. do i have to add additional license to accommodate my vpn plan?
3. i noticed that the mitel 3300 is trowing ip address on each phone therefore dhcp is active on the system, right! with this can i delegate my dhcp server to my vpn appliance and disable the dhcp service on the mitel 3300? is this possible? how can i manage this setup please guide me..
4. i just learned that if i am going to add a sip phone(from asterisk) i need to buy license, is that right?
i got a poe switch for my second building good enough for 4 phones (a planet switch POE)..
thanks for any help and assistance...

[brantn]

Well congrats on the inheritance on to the answers ...

1.) Yes you can communicate across the vpn do you already have a vpn in place ie site to site or what?
2.) No extra licenses are needed just network connectivity.
3.) I highly recommend running dhcp from the controller and segregating the phone system off to a voice vlan. It is a lot easier to configure the options since that is what it is for. You can move it to another dhcp server or appliance if you enable the Mitel options for tftp and phone server.
4.) That is only partially correct as it depends on the load of software the user licenses are all combined after MCD ie v10 and a user license will allow you to program a sip device. If you want trunking that is a different situation.

[ralph]

Welcome to the world of Mitel!

brantn laid it out correctly.  You may want to look up what version of software you are using and let us know.

Also, to make your phones work across the VPN tunnel, boot the phone while holding the 7 key and then enter 'teleworker' mode.  Put in the IP address of your 3300 then let the phone reboot.   This will bypass a lot of DHCP hassle at the remote end.

Ralph

[jjohn14]

thanks to both of you for responding to my inquiry.

i have allotted a vpn tunnel for the connection, i will just test the tunnel today. with regards to the dhcp server running on the mitel, do i have to edit the ip of the mitel especially the gateway (pertains to the ip address of the vpn), presently our mitel is not connected to the internet in running local only.

again thanks for guiding me with this task...


 

[ralph]

If you can't get to your VPN via the default gateway then you'll have to fix that.
Once you get your VPN tunnel up, try and ping the 3300 from the far end.
Also, some firewall notes:  Be sure that your subnet on the far side of the VPN tunnel can talk to any ip address on the local vioce subnet.

Ralph

[brantn]

Yeah simple basic network setup. Controllers gateway will be the switch/firewall so you should be able to ping it from anywhere in the network. As long as you can talk to all subnets as Ralph said across the VPN then you should be able to talk to the controller. Can you reach the controller currently from a computer in the main location or from the firewall/gateway? Check each step of the way ...

Phone System <-> Router <-> Far End Router

[jjohn14]

thank you very much!!!

[jjohn14]

i have additional question... so i am leaving the dhcp on the mitel and make my vpn to have his own ip address. i change the gateway of the mitel into the address of the vpn... but everytime i release/renew my computer it getting the previous gateway address of the mitel... i dont know where to go after changing the gateway address of the mitel..

thanks alot..

[ralph]

Are you sure your computer is getting your IP address from the 3300?
From a dos prompt enter "ipconfig /all" and it will show you where it's getting it's IP address from.

Ralph

[brantn]

The line you are looking for is DHCP server.

Here is the layout with fictional ips in what seems to work the best.

192.168.1.0 Local Data Network - DHCP Handed out by Server VLAN 1
192.168.2.0 VPN Network - DHCP Handed out by Firewall
192.168.3.0 Voice Network - DHCP Handed out by Phone System VLAN 10

Might want to look into getting a networking book as this is a rough fast throw together and there is much more and probably better ways to lay out the network.

[jjohn14]

just curious because they(vpn) have the same setup as my windows sbs2011 network. mitel vpn is working and i can make a call, my problem right now is that when i make a phone call they can hear me but i cannot hear them... my other concern is that how can i reset the 3300 system so that it can save my edited settings...

thanks again...

[brantn]

The Mitel is real time so once you ok a form it is saved to the hard drive. Obviously there is a routing issue if there is an audio issue. For more info you need to paint us a network picture but I bet if you try to reach the phones in the direction you are not having audio you will find your issue. Give us some details if you are wanting network help. Ie what is the Mitel plugged into what is the gateway what is a set plugged into and so on. I might suggest to find a local mitel dealer and have them come show you some ropes and get it all setup. A mitel controller is nothing but a linux server and works the same way your asterisk box does or any other server for that matter.