First, let me preface this post by letting you know that remote phone for microsoft response point is an unsupported functionality. I have a phone that has working in this configuration for a week or so, and Jim has a few phones in this configuration that have been working for a month.
With Service Pack 2 (scheduled release February 09) remote phone over VPN will be supported, but right now, it is completely unsupported.
It is so unsupported, that I was only able to find one person on the Internet who had been able to get it to work. Special thanks go to Bruce Williams and Jim Egan who helped me figure this out. (Jim was the one guy on the Internet who had gotten it to work).
Now to the nitty gritty: How to get Microsoft Response Point Remote Phone to work over a site-to-site VPN.
1. Set your base station and ATA’s to reserved DHCP Leases on the server. This will ensure that whenever they reboot, they will get the same IP address.
2. Register the phone that is to become a remote phone on the network using the response point administrator tool. This will set the base station and ATA IP addresses in the Phone’s configuration.
3. Setup a Site-to-Site VPN between the remote location and your main location. You must be able to ping in both directions when the link is up.
4. Hook up the Response Point phone at the remote location, and it should work.
CAVEATS:
1. Response Point Remote Phone is unsupported by Microsoft. This is a hack that is works pretty well, but don’t call Microsoft saying Vi Wickam told us this will work.
2. Response Point Client does not work over the VPN. I expect this will be fixed with RP SP2.
3. According to the sources that I have read, Response Point Remote Phone will be supported under Service Pack 2, so unless you are in a hurry to get this to work, you can wait until February when it will become a supported configuration.
Here is a Roadmap of the scheduled updates and functionalities of Microsoft Response Point:
http://www.rptricks.com/blog/index.php/2008/10/31/rp-roadmap-published/
Rob’s Response Point Blog also has a great post about doing a Branch office configuration with Response Point. With his configuration, a base station is required at each location.
http://blogs.msdn.com/robertbrown/archive/2008/10/07/branch-office-with-response-point-sp1.aspx
Good Luck!
