Joeloman

I have not set up an AWS Lightsail 3CX Cloud Instance .... But I assume that all fixed IP phones and the 3CX client (phone app and desktop app) will be used and then there will often be many connections....Which does not matter as they are free. All connettons need bandwith and CPU. In most schools that use 3CX, the most common traffic is between the local extensions. What I want to say with that is that I think the best way to go is to sett up the 3CX on premise, so a lot of traffic avoids leaving school. My own experience of AWS Lightsail is that you pretty soon end up on regular AWS as the performance is usually not enough, then it was not so cheap anymore ... However, it is easy to test new things before the load comes ... When it comes to IP telephony, you always want as little jumps and as low a delay as possible. In a school environment, you often have an AP point, one or two switches and then a coreswitch and firewall ... before you are even out on the Internet. If you have 3CX in the cloud, it sometimes gets better sound by connecting up via 4G, but then it can be expensive with data traffic. Therefore, it is usually better to have your own 3CX server, just do not forget to take a backup and possibly go for the "ENTERPRISE" version which also includes the Inbuilt Failover and Standby License. My advice to you is to primarily run on your own server (pc) and secondarily run on a local ISP (not so many jumps and delays) maybe your IP telephone company also has that service? Otherwise, 3CX's own hosting works very well ... There is usually never a problem with setting up the different options with Smoothwall ..However, we do not usually use the SIP proxy in Smoothwall, so I do not know how it works with 3CX.

Since this just like you say has happened for quite some time ... We tried to roll them back after a Windows update and then the VPN worked again. When we then installed the update, it usually worked without destroying the VPN. Strange!?! What we came up with was that it probably depended on whether the VPN was running at the time of the update but we he never test on enough devices to be sure of it. Some of our clients also do not restart after an update, so it may take some time before the error appears....... How is it for you after a reinstallation? Ours works without any problems for a very long time, regardless of whether it is Smoothwall or another VPN client.

Unfortunately, this sometimes happens after version updates in Windows. If you roll back, the VPN works again .... Usually, the fastest and safest way is to just uninstall and reinstall the VPN client. Since this also happens with other VPN client is Smoothwall I do not think the fault lies in their software. A bit mysterious that one device works to update but the other crashes, but it can be so much that goes wrong with an update so we have given up troubleshooting and just reinstalling, as it is the fastest fix.

Some of our customers use their own internal time servers, which then Smoothwall distributes to the Lan who need it. GPS time server prevents the risk of someone spoofing the NTP domain or running NTP amplification DDoS attack on your firewall. For example. like this:https://timemachinescorp.com/product/gps-time-server-tm1000a/

You did not say that it works without a proxy ....We have been involved in incorrect geoblocks many times ... A quick search online I find this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/questions/behind-the-scenes/website-domain-change

The first thing you should do is check if your external IP address is looking to come from another country. Below you see some suggestions for some major geoplayers. If it is wrong location, contact the company behind the list, e.g. MaxMind and asks them to correct the error. It can then unfortunately take a while as some work with offline files instead of API. The list is often changed every week. If you do not find any error, I would contact the BBC and hear what service they use, to then get a fix. https://www.ip2location.com https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-demo https://www.home.neustar/resources/tools/ip-geolocation-lookup-tool https://ipgeolocation.io https://ipstack.com

Today only firewall, does not stop responses from e.g. browser. The traffic is only ignored (Dropped), no logs to save power in an attack. The geo list comes from a well-known company that has few errors in many tests. We have not tested but it should block Smoothwall admin and ssh if the traffic comes from blocked countries or regions.