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

[Ishfaq Malik]

Ken D'Ambrosio 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
>
>
>   
What firmware version were you using?
-- 
Ishfaq Malik
Software Developer
PackNet Ltd

Office:   0161 660 3062