Small Business - Avaya IP Phones/Cisco Switch/ISP DSL - Help with Router/Firewall?

[AtlasJQ]

Hey Folks,

I have a new office setup with an Avaya IP phone system. The local ISP has installed the following gear:

-Cisco SF 300-24P Switch
-Avaya IP Phone System
-1 DSL Router/Modem

We have a cat 6 network in the office which is running both the phones and LAN on the Cisco switch. The phones operate on 192.168.42.1 and the LAN is on 192.168.2.1.

We discovered that I am unable to access the Avaya system (on the .42 network) from my laptop which gets assigned a .2.1 address. The reason is the DSL is a pretty low-end residential modem/router with little to no capacity for advanced routing. The only way to access the Avaya currently is to plug directly into Port 1 on the Cisco switch.

This got me thinking to maybe I should look into a firewall/router solution that would solve this problem and give me some security on the office network.

We do not host any servers locally. We are on a Dynamic IP service. All of my office tools are cloud-based. It is unlikely that I will have share files on the office computers, we will likely do it via Google Drive. I do not have any real need to VPN into my network, although I believe the ISP could use it to remote service the phone system.

I do not need any content filtering, but I would like some reasonable level of security from outside threats should anyone internal get onto a web page that has potential problems.

I am an electrical engineer with a strong IT background but I am not a networking professional. A colleague recommended the Cisco 5505 or the Juniper SRX210 to me but my reading here indicates that both may be fairly complex to set up and I hoped that someone might be able to guide me with some friendly advice!

Thanks in advance.

 

[coxhaus]

From my perspective I think you will probably want a small business class router to be able to handle your routing needs. Once you start routing then you will want an access list capable router because once you turn on routing you need to control it. I am not sure which ones have these features. You need to check. Cisco does and probably others.

I don’t know which dynamic IP service you are using but only the very popular ones seem to be covered. You can run a client on a PC machine to perform this function. If you make sure your modem and router are on an APC battery backup, your IP address will not change very often which may solve the problem.

For you to be able to access your networks from each other you will need to turn on routing between networks.

I would also recommend Untangle as a UTM firewall running behind a router as a transparent bridge. You can download the code and run it on an old machine with 2 NICs. It is not free for businesses but a worthwhile investment. If Untangle saves your network from getting hit once or twice then the hours saved are worth the cost of Untangle in my opinion.