Vodafone Ultra hub behind Edgerouter lite with Vodafone voice; can it be configured?

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markqj

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#243773 31-Dec-2018 13:08

Just wanted to check I've explored all of the options with our setup.

We recently ported our VDSL Vodafone plan to Fibre 100 with voice. With the new plan we decided to improve the network hardware and invested in an Edgerouter lite, a UniFi AP AC-Pro and a couple of TP-Link managed switches.

Thanks to the wonderful tutorials on this forum, the Edgerouter setup to connect to the OTN was easy to accomplish and it's ticking over nicely. The UniFi AP is fabulous and gives us great coverage. So the Ultra hub would be kind of redundant right? Well there's the rub - we have a broadband package with voice, and when I connect it up behind the Edgerouter the phone service doesn't work.

From what we've been able to glean from the forums here is that the problem lies in ATA being part of the Ultra hub and the configuration (sip server etc) is not available for the end user to adjust. Were that the case I could offload the settings (I assume) into our Gigaset A580 IP which already gives us offshore outbound VOIP connectivity to the family in Europe.

I've tried packet sniffing the WAN and LAN interfaces on the SIP ports (5060/5061) but the only thing communicating using that protocol is the Gigaset to a sip server in Switzerland. Tried to configure eth2 on the Edgerouter with a VLAN (15) which I also set the Ultra hub WAN interface to. Tries connecting the ultra hub via both LAN and WAN ports but no dice.

Can the Edgerouter be configured to have the Vodafone voice ATA in the ultra hub work or are flogging a dead horse?

If we are then is the best choice to go with a VOIP provider that we can port our 'landline' number to e.g. 2talk and cancel the voice portion of the VF broadband plan (if that's at all possible)?

The simplest solution is of course to just suck it up and have the Ultra hub be the router but then that leaves us with a redundant Edgerouter.

I know we should have done the research but I honestly didn't think the VOIP part of the changeover was going to be the challenge.

Any help much appreciated

Mark

fe31nz

1200 posts

Uber Geek

#2152809 1-Jan-2019 00:19

As I understand it, Vodafone do not support using their router as an ATA like that, and they will not give you the information required to use an other device as an ATA. However, when I first connected to Snap, before the sale to 2Degrees, they similarly did not support a configuration like that with their FritzBoxes, but I was able to make it work in such a way that 2Degrees was able to connect to my FritzBox when it was connected behind my Edgerouter Lite, and they could not tell that their FritzBox was not working as the primary router. To do that, I actually had to use two Edgerouter Lites. The first one is my primary router, connected to the ONT. The MAC address of the Ethernet port the ONT is connected to is spoofed to be the same as the MAC address of the WAN port on the FritzBox. The primary router forwards the ports used for the TR-069 protocol used by 2Degrees (and most ISPs these days) to manage their router, and also all the VOIP ports, to the second Edgerouter Lite. The second Edgerouter Lite sets up a PPPoE server for the FritzBox to be connected to. It provides the same static IPv4 address given to me by 2Degrees as the address for the FritzBox over the PPPoE connection, and spoofs the MAC address of that Ethernet port to be the same as the MAC address of the 2Degrees router the primary is connected to. So the FritzBox sees what it thinks is a direct connection to the 2Degrees router, and is able to be remotely configured for VOIP operation automatically by 2Degrees.

This setup relies on my paying for a static IP address. It might be possible to make it work with dynamic IP addresses by running scripts on the Edgerouters, but that would take a fair bit more work. And it does not support getting IPv6 to the FritzBox as the PPPoE server version in the Edgerouters does not support IPv6. So if Vodafone use IPv6 for their VOIP, it would not work. But I think it is very unlikely that Vodafone would be using IPv6 for VOIP.

The reason it requires two routers to work is that the static IPv4 address assigned to me needs to be used in two different ways. First, it needs to be used in the normal way as the IPv4 address of my WAN port on the primary router. But the same IPv4 address needs to be used as the address of the FritzBox WAN port. Both of those uses need to be as a routable address, so packets can be sent to and from those addresses. But a routing table can not have the same address used in two different places. So if the PPPoE server was run on the primary router, attempting to add the second copy of that IPv4 address when the PPPoE server started would fail as that address would already be in the routing table for the WAN port. So the solution to that problem was to DNAT the traffic being sent to the FritzBox and route it to the second Edgerouter. The second Edgerouter reverses the NATing and routes the packets to the FritzBox on its PPPoE server port.

When I first set this up, the kernel version used in the Edgerouters was quite old, and did not support namespaces. Since it got updated to a version that does support network namespaces, it should be possible now to set up the PPPoE server in a second network namespace on the primary router and then it would have a second routing table in which the static IPv4 address would not be a duplicate. The packets for the FritzBox would be routed between the two namespaces, instead of having to be routed between the two Edgerouters. I have never actually gotten around to trying this, as all the second namespace configuration would need to be done at the Linux level - the Ubiquiti software layer does not support any use of network namespaces. So it would be quite complicated to set up, but I certainly think it would be possible to do. If I am feeling inspired and have enough spare time, I do eventually want to try this. But in the mean time, since I have it working with two Edgerouters, I can just leave it like that.

So the quick answer to your question is, yes, I do think it can be configured. But it takes a pretty high degree of networking, Edgerouter and Linux knowledge to do it.

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TheMantis

142 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#2152821 1-Jan-2019 06:57

I too am in a similar situation. Following instructions on here the best config I ended up with was by connecting the Vodafone HG659 after the Edgerouter Lite and only using the VOIP features (virtually all other networking functions were turned off). Other than wasting energy by having the HG659 powered up, it worked fine. Unfortunately I also have Vodafone TV via fibre and I could never get that to pass through the EdgeRouter Lite to the HG659. Eventually I just threw it all into the too hard basket and now use the EdgeRouter Lite behind the HG659 and accept the limitations of this.

SpartanVXL

1256 posts

Uber Geek

#2152829 1-Jan-2019 07:36

As mentioned you can have voip services with vodafone by plugging in their ultrahub or huawei hg659 behind your edgerouter and disabling vlan tagging.

Plug in a LAN port from your switch or eth into the (usually) blue WAN port on the Vodafone box and make sure you set it to be on a sepearate subnet than the one your main network is on as it doesnt do this automatically. Vlan detagging happens on your edgerouter so you dont need this on the VF box. You will need Admin login to do this.

Also just as FYI for vodafone TV you can get this to work with Edgerouter. You need to configure a IGMP proxy for vodafones servers and allow traffic from them through your firewalls explicitly.

I have a config back when i used VF TV but id need to find it when i get back from holiday. If you search using the aforementioned terms you can find out how to get the IP addresses you need to work with.

cyril7

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#2152834 1-Jan-2019 08:32

Hi FYI the new Vodafone TV, which uses a smaller black TV box does not require igmp proxy as multicast is not used, and it works without issue on 3rd party routers.

Cyril

TheMantis

142 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#2152836 1-Jan-2019 08:36

cyril7: Hi FYI the new Vodafone TV, which uses a smaller black TV box does not require igmp proxy as multicast is not used, and it works without issue on 3rd party routers.

Cyril

Yes, I understand this is true. Unfortunately the new Vodafone TV is vastly inferior to the old Vodafone TV.

cyril7

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#2152851 1-Jan-2019 09:53

...snip. Unfortunately the new Vodafone TV is vastly inferior to the old Vodafone TV.

Sadly this is also true.

Cyril

froob

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Lifetime subscriber

#2152863 1-Jan-2019 10:31

A year or so back, I put together a short step by step guide on how to set up a Vodafone HG659 behind a third party router and still have the VOIP work: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=40&topicid=198107&page_no=3#1595908

As SpartanVXL said above, it is basically just disabling VLAN tagging on the HG659 and connecting it to your LAN via its WAN.

I unfortunately don’t have an UltraHub, so haven’t tested whether the same approach works for it, but I would expect it to.

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hio77

'That VDSL Cat'
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#2152928 1-Jan-2019 12:19

cyril7: Hi FYI the new Vodafone TV, which uses a smaller black TV box does not require igmp proxy as multicast is not used, and it works without issue on 3rd party routers.

Cyril

wait, they dropped multicast? guess paying that extra bit to chorus didn't meet the books..

chorus have built so much stuff into the network that simply isn't used :/

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cyril7

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#2152930 1-Jan-2019 12:41

hio77:

......snip

wait, they dropped multicast? guess paying that extra bit to chorus didn't meet the books..

chorus have built so much stuff into the network that simply isn't used :/

Yep the new system is built on Kaltura's OTT system, that does not use multicast, the old system is obviously still in use, I guess it will be phased out over time. Even if you are in a HFC area you no longer have the ability to ge HFC based TV.

Cyril

markqj

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2153003 1-Jan-2019 16:28

Many thanks for the responses.

The answer lay in the VLAN de-tagging as suggested by SpartanVXL and froob. Unfortunately I couldn't get the Ultra hub to do this - tried to set the VLAN on the fibre connection to 0 but that's not the answer. Without an admin level access to the router I think this might be a challenge.

I did however, still have the old HG659 which under the Admin login allowed the de-tagging and an Internet over Ethernet WAN configuration. Having that 2nd level access capability is great. Pity the Ultra hub is so locked down.

So we now have our local VOIP back thanks to you. Yay.

markqj

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2776450 11-Sep-2021 17:28

An update on this as the OP.

After we upgraded the speed to max accounts changed and the previous setup failed (SIP 402/Unauthorised)

The good news is, that after searching this forum the answer was again in VLAN-land and was fuelled mainly by this thread (https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=66&topicid=250644).

I first connected the Ultra hub directly to the OTN to make sure that the phone could connect and negotiate a connection with the SIP server and it could.

Then I set the LAN address of the ultra hub to 192.168.3.1 and enabled the DCHP

Reconnected the Edgerouter lite to the OTN.

In the dashboard tab of the Edgemax admin interface I added a VLAN to eth2 to create eth2.10

Then made sure to include the VLAN on the port forwarding tab

Added a DCHP for the VLAN so the Ultra hub would be passed a VLAN tagged address to its WAN port

And added the VLAN to the DNS forwarding list

Connect the eth2 port on the Edgerouter to the WAN port on the Ultra hub and connect the Siemens VOIP unit to a LAN port and Phone 1 on the ultra hub.

And it works. All thanks to the great people on this forum getting me to connect the dots on tagged VLANs.