Panasonic outsmarted by a 17-year old?
December 16th, 2007 at 4:30 pm by David Branco; 4 months, 3 weeks ago About a week ago my old friend, Mike Marseglia, now a security analyst for Verisign, informed me about a promo code on Amazon for Panasonic’s new Globarange joip-phone hybrid. Priced at $100, I would never have purchased such a device; however, Mike also provided me with a Amazon Promo code for a free Globarange BB-GT1500B unit so I couldn’t resist. The phone is both a voip phone, service provided by JoIP, and a regular 5.8ghz cordless land-line with mp3 ringtone options.
None-the-less, when I went to hook-up the device to my network I was instantly faced with a problem aroused by my paranoid security system; a situation similar to that of the xbox 360 NAT issue I had. Ether-way, I knew the solution was simple, I needed to unblock the ports used by the networked portion of the phone; it wasn’t that simple. First-off, the ports used were not included in the manual like they should have, and they were not listed on any part of their website.
After several hours of searching for a solution, I decided to call Panasonic’s tech support; this was a sad experience. When I first called, I was questioned and ridiculed as to why I needed tech-support for a phone and got disconnected quite a few times while on hold. Finally when i got though to the help-desk for the globarange phone, I told them the situation and they INSISTED it was because of an incompatible router. I told them I’m a software engineer and given the fact that my router was a software solution and not a cheap linksys box, I KNOW it’s not a router problem and asked for the specific ports used by the router. To-make-a-long-story-short, a few days later they provided me with the port numbers used:
External Ports Used by the BB-GT1500B: (Outgoing)
DNS: 53 UDP
Internet: 80 TCP
Timeserver: 123 UDP
Bind: 3478 UDP
Bind: 3479 UDP
SIP: 23768 UDP
Call ports: 8000-55998 UDP
