Hi, this is my first post on this forum.
I’m not an IT specialist so please bear with me if questions below don’t make sense.
Unhappy with the provider’s managed router we decided that we needed our own, with a Mac-friendly VPN option. Encouraged by the reviews we purchased the peplink Balance One (to get something future-proof). The provider (cBeyond, now Birch) ensured us that bridging their equipment to give our router a public IP was flawless, but then the tech support made a remark that our phone system also needed to be configured on our router, mentioning PBX, which is completely foreign to me. We use an older Avaya phone system and our phone and internet has been redone into one integrated package by cBeyond, all traffic going through a single Cisco gateway and I was told that the traffic could NOT be split between phones and data.
I can set up and configure a router/firewall for a SOHO network, but I have zero experience with phone systems and VOIP. I don’t know if this is a process that requires certain services and ports to work that can be configured by an end user, or is it a job for a trained tech.
Could someone tell me if the Balance One can even handle this, or do we need some specialized hardware?
Could anyone highlight some general steps needed to accomplish this, so I could at least know what procedures to search for?
Like I said, I’m completely in the dark, any help or explanation is appreciated.
Do you mind to share network diagram to show the Peplink Balance One, router with public IP, phone system (SIP server?), Avaya phones and Cisco gateway? This will allow me to have better understanding and comment better.
Hi,
Thank you for replying - I spent some time looking at out network, and I don’t understand all the physical connections (it’s a cluster of wires).
I tried to provide a diagram of what is connected to what, and what we would like to accomplish: have the public IP assigned to our peplink Balance One and be able to configure DHCP, firewall and port forwarding on OUR router.
I have no idea what handles the phones.
The phone system is AVAYA Partner Communication System with its own Voice Messaging (forgot to label)
For search purposes: Cisco router IAD2400 Series (IAD2435-8FXS) and Actelis ML624 “network accessory”.
Like I said, the sketch is from layman’s perspective, I hope that it helps.
OK, I did a quick search and I may be wrong about what the FXS does. Apparently the “WAN” is T1 and FXS is the analog voice, but the WAN port is not connected to anything in the Cisco device. Also, I was probably wrong to call it a router, our LAN is managed remotely by ISP.
(Off topic: This is more of a “master and slave” arrangement than “provider and client”, which we weren’t really told when they were selling it).
Thank you TK and Tim.
Unfortunately Birch are not very helpful, except to announce that they will wash their hands clean after switching it over to us.
I got into a conversation with Birch about port forwarding to our box and eventually stumbled upon a tech support guy who said that what I was told previously was probably wrong.
He then proceeded to set up exactly what we needed because our phone lines apparently had nothing to do with the router setup and public IP. So, we’re enjoying our Balance One.
