I wanted to share how I got my Endian Firewall and Vonage voip to work. After looking at the Vonage website, reading many posts and talking with Vonage I realized that there did not exist a complete set of instructions that I could find on the internet for EFW and Vonage.
These instructions are for the EFW Community version 2.2 rc3. you can use this for for ver 2.4.1
I have a Uniden voip phone from Vonage, Earthlink DSL contracted through Verizon, and originally an SMC Barricade Plus router. Vonage worked right out of the box (pre EFW).
After getting the EFW up and running (thanks to the other posts on the forum for the help!!) I tried the various port settings found on several posts found on the internet. I managed to get a dialtone and call in or out, but no audio.
I found one post that talked about the fact that the older Vonage servers do not support Stateful Packet Inspection and that could be the cause for no audio. I have had Vonage for five years and figured that might be the case for me.
Here are the settings that I used in EFW to set-up the Firewall Ports:
Under the Firewall Tab and then Outgoing Traffic Tab you want to click on the “Add a new firewall rule” and create the below Firewall rules. (I attached these “Vonage specific” rules to the MAC address of my Uniden phone.)
You will need to click the “Update Rule” button after creating a rule and then click “Add a new firewall rule” to create the next rule.
You can also click “Apply” and “Save” after creating each rule if you want or you can “Apply” and “Save” at the end. “Apply will appear at the top of the page and the “Save” button is at the bottom of the page.
Source Destination Service Protocol Dest Port Action Remark
(UserDef) RED SIP UDP 5060 Allow Vonage SIP
(UserDef) RED TFTP UDP 69 Allow Vonage TFTP
(UserDef) RED TFTP UDP 21
2400 Allow Vonage TFTP
(UserDef) RED NTP TCP+UDP 123 Allow Vonage NTP
(UserDef) RED <ANY> UDP 80 Allow Vonage HTTP
(UserDef) RED <ANY> UDP 10000:20000 Allow Vonage RTP
Each of the above lines is a firewall rule for Vonage.
A of notes.
• DNS 53 is also required but is already a default rule for EFW. Change the Protocol from TCP to TCP+UDP and click the “Update Rule” button.
• The (UserDef) is where I chose MAC and then listed the Uniden MAC address in the box below. You can change this to whatever you would like.
• You see two rules for TFTP. If you select TFTP as a service EFW automatically puts in UDP and port 69. I left the port 69 rule alone and created the other rule for ports 21 and 2400. (You could probably put all three ports in the same rule.) After you type in 21 press “Enter” and on the next line of the box enter 2400. (Don’t let the statement above the box “Destination port (one per line)” fool you. You can enter more than one port or a range of ports.
• The RTP ports 10000:20000 are a critical part of the firewall rules. The : tells the rule that this is a range. Vonage randomly picks an RTP port number between 10000 and 20000 for each phone call placed. Once you get Vonage up and running if you open NTOP you can see the RTP port used each time you place a phone call.
At this point you should be able to unplug your Vonage phone, reset it and test it. If you are able to place and receive calls you are good to go. If not then you need to call Vonage. (I know, you are thinking "How do I do this with no voip." Think creatively. I have a phone on my POTS line, a cell phone, or maybe a string and a dixie cup. You do need to be able to get to your Vonage phone as the technician will ask you to unplug it a of times. They can see when you unplug it and plug it back in.) Explain to the technician that you have installed a new firewall that does Stateful Packet Inspection and you believe you are on an old Vonage Server that does not handle SPI. They can check this and tell you if the server hadles SPI or not. It took about 10 minutes for the technician to switch me to a new server that handles SPI. I was set and voip restored.
I hope this helps you with Vonage voip and EFW Community version.
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