Help solve the double network problem :)

[mikehunt]

Hi,

I need some advice. Here is my problem!

In the office we have 2 routers on two separate ADSL lines.

1 x adsl for voip
1 x adsl for web

We have 10 pc's connected to web via wireless & we have 10 voip phones connected via wired cat5 lan.

So voip is totally separate and quality can be managed we keep it on it's own line. Problem is sometimes we need to use soft phones as a backup.

We use X-Pro softphones which can be configured to almost any need. What I need to do is to be able to get just the softphones to be able to connect to the same network as the hard phones so that we can control the quality of them too.

Each pc has a lan port and a usb wireless receiver.

So I was thinking would it be possible to run the pcs with a lan cable for the softphones and wireless for internet?

From what I can see the softphones can be given a dedicated IP but I am not sure how I would still set this all up?

Any ideas?

Thanks for any advice you can give.

 

[ColinR]

What about a proxy configured to use the voip adsl gateway.

 

[hyarion]

For a simple solution you could look at adding routes for the voip ips that the softphones must connect to.

Depending on what you are using for DHCP you can either add it to dhcp options or otherwise you'll need to add the routes manually to each pc. As a simple example:

Let's say the voip router is 192.168.0.2.
Let's say the server the voip softphones will connect to is 41.57.212.54 (making an ip up here)

You would add a route to the pc so that all traffic to 41.57.212.54 goes through 192.168.0.2 as the gateway. I don't recall the commands exactly offhand, but google will help you. Look up "route add".

If the ip the softphones connect to changes frequently then this method isn't going to work.

The one other drawback you have to consider with having the setups linking without using something like a proxy, is that any users with sufficient knowledge could change their gateway to the voip gateway on their pcs. e.g. to download torrents overnight leaving you scratching your head as to why the voip is using up gigs/bandwidth during the night with no calls.

 

[mikehunt]

Thanks hyarion I could do this as the voip is a fixed ip.

Routers web=10.0.0.2 voip =192.168.1.1 and actual server I will find out but it is fixed.

 

[Bern]

Simple option

Get yourself a multiwan router (like the Draytek 2820/2910/2830 for example), then make the data ADSL WAN connection the default route and add a static route for the VOIP traffic. Just note this will only work if all the traffic goes to the static IP (normal VOIP operation), if you have a setup where SIP clients connect to the SIP server and then the call can be handed off to the two clients (i.e. the voice traffic can go directly between the two) it will not work as this traffic will most likely now be routed across the default route.

 

[EasyUp Web Hosting]

Get a managed switch and set up vlans?

 

[Bern]

Get a managed switch and set up vlans?

Not going to help the soft-phone situation for a basic setup and fairly complex for an advanced setup where you are sending two traffic types from the device. Reckon the simplest is just adding a static route and a ACL to get VOIP traffic only over the one line. A managed switch is a good idea anyway, even just to get decent statistics. Maybe look at a compromise like the D-Link Websmart switches are a decent compromise on functionality and price, depending of course on what you want to do.

EDIT: sorry, maybe I should clarify - to use a managed switch properly for the softphones, you need the softphone to tag the VOIP packets with the voice VLAN tag, bit more complicated.

If you want to get more interesting you can use something like PFSense on an old PC as your router/proxy and set up traffic shaping etc. - PFSense has a fairly nice GUI which makes life a bit easier.

 

[dadiggle]

Hi,

I need some advice. Here is my problem!

In the office we have 2 routers on two separate ADSL lines.

1 x adsl for voip
1 x adsl for web

We have 10 pc's connected to web via wireless & we have 10 voip phones connected via wired cat5 lan.

So voip is totally separate and quality can be managed we keep it on it's own line. Problem is sometimes we need to use soft phones as a backup.

We use X-Pro softphones which can be configured to almost any need. What I need to do is to be able to get just the softphones to be able to connect to the same network as the hard phones so that we can control the quality of them too.

Each pc has a lan port and a usb wireless receiver.

So I was thinking would it be possible to run the pcs with a lan cable for the softphones and wireless for internet?

From what I can see the softphones can be given a dedicated IP but I am not sure how I would still set this all up?

Any ideas?

Thanks for any advice you can give.

good idea.