[asterisk-users] OpenVPN/SNOM 820: a review.

[--[ UxBoD ]--]

----- "Ken D'Ambrosio" <ken at jots.org> wrote:

> Hey, all.  Got an SNOM 820 in the other day to kick the tires.  As
> with
> many phones, provisioning it was a bit of a PITA.  The biggest
> problem, as
> far as I could tell, was that their firmware just doesn't seem that
> stable, and is sometimes hard to get to.
> - I managed to corrupt the firmware twice; fortunately, instead of
> bricking the phone, there's a fairly easy-to-use "rescue mode."
> - Google was *not* your friend to find the URL to current firmware
>   (for non-beta, it's http://wiki.snom.com/Firmware ; for beta, it's
>   http://wiki.snom.com/Firmware/V8/Beta )
> - There's a (non-standard) VPN release of firmware that has to be
> installed to get OpenVPN going.
> - Also got WLAN going; note that, apparently (and to my surprise), it
> appears that WPA keys are case-sensitive, and the phones default to
> uppercase.  Beware.  Also, you have to buy a ~$40 USB stick to get it
> going, but that sounds more awkward than it is: the phone has a
> nicely-recessed cavity on the bottom where it plugs in.
> 
> Next, if you aren't familiar with OpenVPN, I *do not* recommend having
> the
> phone as your first client.  Set up a Linux or Windows client, first,
> to
> get the hang of it.  Then move on to the phone.  For example, one of
> my
> firmware corruptions occurred when I named a file "client.conf"
> (.conf
> being the usual Linux-based OpenVPN configuration file extension),
> instead
> of "client.cnf".  Had to reflash.
> 
> Bottom line: the phone actually works quite nicely.  Provisioning for
> a
> one-off is a pain, but SNOM seems to have the hooks in place to make
> larger rollouts quite easy.  OpenVPN works like a champ, but should
> be
> handled with care for those who don't have experience with it.  The
> speakerphone quality is quite nice, and there are lots of nifty
> features
> the SNOM offers that I haven't seen on other phones -- for example,
> netcat
> is used for debugging OpenVPN, and a SIP log is truly nifty.
> 
> One-line summary: recommended, but be prepared to spend some time
> getting
> the first one going if some of the more esoteric features (VPN, WLAN)
> are
> used.
> 
> -Ken
> 
> 

We are testing 370/870s at the moment as we have a strong requirement for OpenVPN support.  We are still trying to get them to work! It would appear on the face of it that the phones use OpenVPN V1 and not V2 which is not to good.  Secondly you have to create a tar ball with the configuration in side it which has to include the key.  Hmmm, how would you get that to remote clients ? Put on a public webserver; not so good me thinks.  Now I could be completely wrong on these things so would be very grateful for your input.
-- 
Thanks, Phil