Now an aside. Our new phone system is in. PRI should be installed Monday. SBC has moved the date out a number of times, but the guy that's assisting in the phone system installation, who also works for the SBC reseller that ordered our PRI for us, says he's coming out to test it on Monday, and I'm confident in his confidence.

We've purchased a 3Com NBX system. Specifically the Superstack 3, with redundant hard drives and power supplies and 250+ hours of voicemail recording. I add the "+" because I've been told that the 250 hours was the figure with the original Superstack 3 with a 10GB hard drive. They put in whatever hard drive is most cost efficient--rumor is it's a 40GB now. And we get to use all of it. Of course, we've got 3 hours of voicemail on our old system, so having 1000 hours now isn't gonna matter that much. :)

The NBX can technically be called a Voice over IP (VoIP) system, but that's more of an added ability that it has. At it's core it's an ethernet based system. All of the phones are ethernet based. By default they work at layer 2, so they never even touch IP. But they definately can.

I fell in love with the NBX a few years ago when I saw it on an episode of Hometime. Of course, they had the money to install a (installed, at the time) $2000 phone system in a house. My wife doesn't quite understand why I would want one at my house. To me, the idea of making everything in a home or business ethernet based makes perfect sense. Make every jack an active ethernet jack. No more wondering "What is this one" or "How do I move this extension". Even a lot of VoIP systems are simply VoIP at their core, and still use "traditional" PBX style phones. I did some serious looking at phone systems (I wasn't going to make a $30,000 purchase for my company based just on an episode of Hometime), and found that my original feelings were accurate--I like the idea of a networked phone.

One thing that the 3com system differs from it's competitors in is in the idea of one large system as compared to multiple connected systems. Most VoIP systems are strongly centralized. You've got one massive server that runs most everything. Some systems, like the Shoreline, add some redundancy by separating out call management to seperate devices that can be spread throughout the network, while still being managed as one system. For most companies, this is probably ideal. For us it isn't. We don't have the resources to spend on the redundant high speed WAN connections that a traditional VoIP system would need.

The NBX, on the other hand, operates independently at each site where we install it. The systems can communicate with each other, allowing for simple site to site calls. But if the line goes down, everybody is still up and running happily. No phone calls are lost.

Enough about the system, though--onto why I brought it up. I've got a 3Com phone at home right now. Like I said, they can easily do IP--they just don't by default. I've got the phone running over the XP VPN server that I built. But one of the difficulties that I've faced since I started looking at phone systems is the fact that upper management will probably want a phone at home, but I won't want to maintain some sort of VPN router for their house. Originally I was also concerned about getting them static Internet IPs, but the XP server removes that need. Now if only I could remove the need for the VPN server (without punching holes in the firewall).

Each of them has a Windows XP machine at home already. It finally hit me this week--I don't need a separate router. So, here's the plan:

I'll configure the broadband firewall at each person's house to use a "unique" address range. I'll have to maintain records of this. I can't have them all using 192.168.1.x like they do now. So perhaps Manager 1 will use 10.0.1.x, Manager 2 will use 10.0.2.x, etc.

I then enable IP routing on their XP workstation at home, and give it a static address in that range.

I set up their networked phone with an IP address in that range as well. The phone, though, will use the address of the XP workstation as it's default gateway.

I configure the remote access settings of their user ID to route traffic for their specific 10.x.x.x network through their VPN connection. (I realized this morning that I'll have to do a blog entry on this)

Now, when their VPN connection comes up, the phone connects and is available for use. When they disconnect, the phone goes offline. All they really have to do is plug the phone into the switch on the broadband router, and everything should work.

I'm looking forward to trying this out this coming week. I'll keep everyone posted.

Well, it's 5:40am on Saturday. I've discovered that alcohol (in moderation) is the perfect sleep inducer for me--I sleep like a rock for a few hours, and wake up wide awake (which never happens usually). But when you go to bed at 9:30pm (hey, I was tipsy after dinner, and feeling really tired! :) ), that few hours puts you up at 2:30 in the morning.

So, why not blog?

Routing in XP. It's still pretty simple to turn on, although not as easy as it was in NT 4 (check "Enable Routing"). There's a registry update necessary. You can find it pretty much anywhere on the net, including here:

Stupid little note: Changing the registry is dangerous stuff. I've heard of people losing limbs. Sprouting a second head is a very real possibility. You've been warned--anything you do on your computer, to yourself, or to others, is none of my business nor my fault.

Open Regedit, and find the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

If it's not there already, create a new DWORD value named "IPEnableRouter". Set it's value to 1. Thankfully "1" is the same in decimal and in hex, so you don't have to worry about which one it's set to.

After that, reboot. That's all there is to it.

Just remember, though--routing is useless unless you've got two IP addresses to route between. They can be on the same card. Yes, there are occasions where that's actually needed--like in an IP range conversion. Been there, done that. The addresses can also be on different cards, or, better yet, one can be a VPN connection. Wow, I might have a use for that... :)

Drumroll, please...

You know that Windows XP megadevice I've been yammering about? First one is installed. Of course, it's still in "Testing", but I've tested it enough to realize I'm really, really going to like this thing.

First, a little background (yeah, I've talked about this before). I work for a medium sized business with a number of sites. We've got a few sites that connect via IPSec VPNs back to the main office. It seems to be becoming our primary WAN solution. It actually does work pretty well.

Also, one of my pet projects has been to get some kind of file/print server out to each branch. My clients aren't very good at saving stuff to the server, and who can blame them--saving a big spreadsheet over the WAN link is painful sometimes. Add to that the nightmare that is printer administration right now (everyone prints directly to the IP address of printers), and you can see some of the benefits of getting a server to each site.

But why put two separate devices (server and VPN router) at each site? Seems like a waste to me. I went to Snapgear, who makes a VPN router that I really like (I've mentioned it before). It's actually a device running Embedded Linux. Seems like a no brainer to me to put a hard drive onto one of these, and, with Samba, turn it into a VPN/File/Print Server. No dice--they don't seem to have any plans to do such a logical, much needed product.

So, what do I turn to? Why, that Compaq Prolinea 2266 that I started off my blog with back in August, of course! Here's what I've got:

Prolinea 2266 running Windows XP
Two NICs (had to buy some used 3com NICs--the Netgear that came in the machine didn't take to well to having a twin)
Various registry updates to turn on routing within XP
Some (still in beta) batch files that detect the internet connection, and initiate a VPN connection (using PPTP, rather than IPSec, so it's client driven)
More (also beta) batch files that will connect to a dialup failover if the main internet connection fails (and then restart the VPN)
A DHCP Relay agent, which will pass DHCP requests on the remote network to our main DHCP server, for central administration
Print queues (using the ultra cool hierarchical queuing method that I mentioned in a previous post)
File shares

In short, everything that I want (well, other than QoS support, which I'm still looking into) in one device. The hardware we already own, and the software comes to around $200 (including the XP license). About the same price I'm paying for VPN routers now.

As I have time, I'm going to post more details on how this thing works, going in order of my list above (starting with the routing registry updates). I'll even be providing batch file source code, free of charge. I'm such a guy. :)

OK, the moves are done (we moved two branches into new buildings this month, which is part of the reason I've not discovered anything). So time to start sharing my vast wealth of knowledge with the world again.

Kinda tiny tidbit for this first one (trust me, I've got big stuff coming in a day or two): Why was my freezer broken? We've got a frost free upright freezer. Almost since we got it, it's been a little flaky. Twice a year, it seems to go nuts. The fan comes on, the condenser kicks on, and then the condenser kicks off. Fan keeps running, though. About a minute later, the condenser kicks on, and then off. This keeps up for days, until the freezer is about 40 degrees and everything has spoiled.

I've had a repair guy out 3 times on this. He's never found anything, because the problem seems to always occur on Friday, and by the time he gets out on Monday everything is working again. So the last time it happened I said "Screw the repair guy", and decided to fix it myself. A friend mentioned that problems like this could be the defrost heater or thermostat, so I located that and played around. I ran it without those devices for a while, and it seemed fine. By the time I was done playing, it was working again, so I hooked everything back up.

This weekend it started acting up again. So, knowing what I learned from last time, I removed the cover and bypassed the defrost thermostat--running the heater manually. The heater worked fine (it gets hot, and I've got the small burn on my finger to prove it). I then plugged everything back in, and waited for it to kick on again. When it did, it exhibited the same problems. So, next step--I disconnected the thermostat and printer, and put the cover back on. Within a minute, it was running normally again.

$150 worth of site visit costs from the repair guy, and it looks like my problem is a $10 part. I'm gonna order a new defrost thermostat today and find out for sure.