There is very little information out there regarding the installation of a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to support remote workers on Response Point so I thought I would share what we have done for one of our customers.

Overview
The Response Point installation in the main office for this customer was quite small. There were only a few users so they did not really have the need for an enterprise-class firewall (e.g. SonicWall, Fortinet, etc.) nor did they have they budget for a such a device, usually starting around $1200 CDN.

The client was using their existing LAN for both general data and Response Point voice and they were also using SMB Digital Voice exclusively without any backup POTS (plain old telephone system) lines.

As the service provider and hardware vendor we were not crazy about the fact this customer’s head office was reliant on just one Internet connection for their business phone service. We suggested they bring in a second connection from an alternate provider so they could at least see some redundancy in their network.

Equipment
At the head office we used a Linksys RV042 Dual WAN VPN Router attached to it was a Syspine AS-50 Response Point main unit. For the homeworker we used a D-Link DIR-130 VPN Router attached to an Aastra 6757i CT - Response Point Executive Handset. For phone service we were using the SMB Digital Voice lines provided by SMB Phone.

The two VPN routers seemed to work quite well together with one exception, the DIR-130 does not support multiple subnets, so don’t try and use this device at both ends or your efforts will result in a minor catastrophe.

Dual WAN + Failover
We plugged the Cable broadband connection (Shaw) into WAN 1 and their backup broadband (Telus DSL) into WAN 2. We set the router to both and load balance. Performance (Downstream bandwidth) took a bit of a hit when load balancing was turned on but the customer decided it was worth it.

VPN - IP Sec Tunnel
We used a 192.168.1.0 subnet on the RV042 (head office) and a 192.168.0.0 subnet on the DIR-130 (homeworker). We selected Gateway-to-Gateway VPN and matched the settings on both ends (e.g. Phase1 DH Group: Group1, Phase1 Encryption: 3DES, etc.). Our Tunnel was up and running.

Our homeworker plugged in the Response Point phone that was already configured from head office and Voila! They were connected to the Response Point unit at head office. The remote worker then turned on Response Point Assistant and now they could see all of their staff and their presence status. Everything was working as it should.

Apple Users
They were also using a Time Capsule router at the head office which had to be switched into Bridge Mode, which allowed the MAC users on that network to utilize the auto-backup features Time Capsule is known for. Most of the users already had Parallels installed on their machines and ran the VM in Coherence mode which allowed them to make use of Response Point Assistant without having to see the Windows desktop.

Time and Materials
The total cost for the VPN (both ends) was approximately $500. It took approximately 1 hour to install and another hour to test and make sure everything was working properly. Since the RV042 supports up to 50 tunnels, the additional users would only have to buy another DIR-130 which retail for about $150 CDN.

Summary
Success! Head office and the homeworker are now connected and can communicate using Response Point and SMB Digital Voice via 3-digit dialing, voice recognition or click-to-dial from Assistant. More importantly, the remote worker can now use SMB Digital Voice lines to make outbound calls over IP saving money and can now receive calls to his work handset in his home office and control the forwarding to his mobile phone on his own via Assistant.

We solved several problems here. The first major issue was to create some redundancy in the broadband connectivity for head office. Even though SMB Digital Voice lines provide inbound calling fail-over to a non-SMB Phone number there needed to be a plan to deliver outbound calling if the Internet failed. The Dual WAN failover + load balancing provided by the RV042 seems to do the trick here. The second was to connect the remote user so they could work virtually alongside their counterparts. The Response Point phone and Assistant worked as expected and the VPN provided other benefits related to file sharing etc.