Do you need Teleworker in order for the UCA Softphone Client to work?

[akuhn]

Do you need Teleworker in order for the UCA Softphone Client to work outside of the office?  This is related to another posting I made in this forum.  With all of the ports I have open and the UCA only being partially functional outside of the office, I wonder whether a teleworker license is required.  Folks at Mitel told me no.

Thoughts?

Adam in DC

[martyn]

I found it to be a yes when I tried it. I tried it without and with, and could only get it to work with teleworker.

The soft phone extension needs to be registered as a device on MBG and an extension on MCD. Without this it wouldn't work.
If anyone has managed to get it to work without MBG then I'd love to find out too! 

[Mitel100]

If you don't have a VPN connection into the business LAN, then you will need to enable the Teleworker function

[akuhn]

I should have indicated that we have a 5000.  One Mitel Sales person said that the 3300 requires teleworker, but that the 5000 does not.  And that it's not just a license, but another server/layer of complexity.  I thought it was just a license of some sort.

In my case, all UCA features work outside of the office, except for softphone (big red X). 

Thoughts?

[akuhn]

Blurb from website.  This is the first hint at the issue I've seen.  I assume by secure connection, they are talking VPN.  While that's not a problem, it would have been nice if someone from Mitel actually knew this.  I've asked everyone up and down the chain.

http://www.mitel.com/wps/portal/public/home/products/business-phones/phones.ip-phones/unified-communicator-advanced-softphone/BusinessPhonesBusinessIPPhonesMitelUnifiedCommunicatorAdvancedSoftphone-34790/!ut/p/b1/vZPRToMwFIafxQdw55yuLeWSTXSDQVjbucHNgmLMELbFLOJ4ejHRCy8GN2anVyf58n_tnxQySEkhCS6FO4YNZPv8Y_ean3aHfV5975nccrRSu74T8YQpnIvpnVUzEzBDsIb0vqPSjsIL4-FQSADZ7qkeNc_1CEfEuXC5VGo8RpeQZOfI-hKmivqBcCUGAMl-gL439CY4bADQHOLZoX6BtMOci20wBAsb5FtTno_z9q3VZasDW4Ys8kVIPsVRm5h4VYVxoWNTLj-72zFjl63FahHhcXEqbFI86tXEm0wLvs6HhPLaQnFtoXNdofb-v9I_P0S6JAW5UihCh4jD-gHq7P18a7SvZw2p39N4N1-z0cFn/dl4/d5/L2dBISEvZ0FBIS9nQSEh/



Road warriors and teleworkers can enjoy the same intuitive communications management from a remote PC or laptop by using a software-based IP phone – the UC Advanced Softphone. When remotely connected to the Mitel Communications Director (MCD) or Mitel 5000 Communications Platform (CP) via a secure network connection, mobile users can make and receive calls as though they were inside the corporate network. The UC Advanced Softphone also lets users record calls on their computer, add customized ring tones, and configure HID-compliant USB devices through an intuitive user interface. And, of course, with UC Advanced, benefit from rich presence information, instant messaging, visual voice mail, and more. Keep your remote workers connected.

[bluewhite4]

Akuhn,
I don't know the 5000 at all, so this maybe a dumb question.

How are you routing outside traffic to the 5000? Via port forwarding on your firewall?

The UCA softphone for the 3300 is sip based, so communication is done on 5060. Depending on your answer above, I'd check that.

[akuhn]

I may not be interpreting your question correctly, but phone calls are delivered by a standard T1 to the 5000.  So voice is not handled by a firewall.

However, the 5000 is an IP aware system and it sits in our DMZ for the purposes of Admin, as well as talking to our UC server (VM) and AWC server (physical)

[bluewhite4]

I wasn't so much asking about the trunking, but that information is helpful as well.

Again, I've only ever done UCA against a 3300, so my understanding of the underlying connections needed maybe wrong.

The UCA client uses tcp port 5060 (SIP) for call setup, among the various other ports it uses for client authentication, directory sync, etc.

You state that your 5000 is in your DMZ. Is this DMZ created by your internet firewall or is it a physical DMZ? Because of your statement "it sits in our DMZ for the purposes of Admin" and that you say all other UCA functions work, I'm thinking this is a firewall based DMZ.

What I'm getting at is because SIP is required for call setup on the UCA client, if your firewall is say a Cisco ASA or a SonicWall, it maybe a SIP aware firewall and not allowing inbound SIP traffic to get to your 5000. I personally have seen an option within a SonicWall that prevented SIP traffic from being routed to a SIP-Edgewater-Router sitting in its DMZ. Once we turned that off, we were able to get SIP voice traffic through it.

A Teleworker/MBG server comes with a utility to test connections from a remote location to the MBG. I doubt it would work correctly against a DMZ'd 5000, but it does check the UCA and SIP ports. If you would like to try this, let me know via private message and I can email you a copy of the program. It maybe able to show you if the 5060 port is passing through to your 5000.

[akuhn]

This is good info.  We are a SonicWall shop, and though I opened 5060, perhaps this feature you are talking about is in effect.  Will message you separately.

Thanks.

[akuhn]

I made sure that 5060 TCP and UDP were open to both my 5000 and the UC Server.  Still a big red X with the softphone.

With the vpn, the softphone will work, but the quality is mediocre.  It would be great if my vendor was working as hard as I am on figuring this out.

 

[byknbob]

For what it's worth, The UCA softphone will work on a 5000 without a VPN or MBG.  There are additional ports that need to be opened up between the IP used for UCA and the 5000.  In addition, the 5000's public IP has to be configured in the PBX node tab.  I have the port mapping layed out nicely in a drawing if anyone is interested.  Just message me and I'll send it to you.

[Navarre]

My understanding is that the 5000 is only supported through MBG for SIP trunking at this time, although work on the 5000 soon will permit it to use MBG for other functions.

[akuhn]

I think I answered this in another thread, but I'm not sure I mentioned here, I did eventually get the UCA Client to work outside of my office without a VPN or a Boarder Gateway.  As I recall, we didn't have the 5000 and the MAS talking to each other correctly.  Either had an incorrect IP address or name in a key field.

Thanks!

[Jack Xu]

sorry posting here again. From contents above,i got that there must be teleworker when wanna use uca desktop softphone outside office. i'm wondering what phone type i should programmed in MCD & MBG for the softphone extension number ?
Thx.