[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
> 
> 
Would be nice if the VPN support could be back ported to the 360s.
-- 
Thanks, Phil