Here is the setup I put together to have two SIP phones connect together over an encrypted channel. Since the two phones do not support encryption, I used Asterisk to provide the encrypted channel over the Internet.

Installing Asterisk

First of all, each VoIP phone is in a different physical location and so I installed an Asterisk server in each house.

One of the server is a Debian stretch machine and the other runs Ubuntu bionic 18.04. Regardless, I used a fairly standard configuration and simply installed the asterisk package on both machines:

apt install asterisk

SIP phones

The two phones, both Snom 300, connect to their local asterisk server on its local IP address and use the same details as I have put in /etc/asterisk/sip.conf:

[1000]
type=friend
qualify=yes
secret=password1
encryption=no
context=internal
host=dynamic
nat=no
canreinvite=yes
mailbox=1000@internal
vmexten=707
dtmfmode=rfc2833
call-limit=2
disallow=all
allow=g722
allow=ulaw

Dialplan and voicemail

The extension number above (1000) maps to the following configuration blurb in /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf:

[home]
exten => 1000,1,Dial(SIP/1000,20)
exten => 1000,n,Goto(in1000-${DIALSTATUS},1)
exten => 1000,n,Hangup
exten => in1000-BUSY,1,VoiceMail(1000@mailboxes,su)
exten => in1000-BUSY,n,Hangup
exten => in1000-CONGESTION,1,VoiceMail(1000@mailboxes,su)
exten => in1000-CONGESTION,n,Hangup
exten => in1000-CHANUNAVAIL,1,VoiceMail(1000@mailboxes,su)
exten => in1000-CHANUNAVAIL,n,Hangup
exten => in1000-NOANSWER,1,VoiceMail(1000@mailboxes,su)
exten => in1000-NOANSWER,n,Hangup
exten => _in1000-.,1,Hangup(16)

the internal context maps to the following blurb in /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf:

[internal]
include => home
include => iax2users
exten => 707,1,VoiceMailMain(1000@mailboxes)

and 1000@mailboxes maps to the following entry in /etc/asterisk/voicemail.conf:

[mailboxes]
1000 => 1234,home,[email protected]

(with 1234 being the voicemail PIN).

Encrypted IAX links

In order to create a virtual link between the two servers using the IAX protocol, I created user credentials on each server in /etc/asterisk/iax.conf:

[iaxuser]
type=user
auth=md5
secret=password2
context=iax2users
allow=g722
allow=speex
encryption=aes128
trunk=no

then I created an entry for the other server in the same file:

[server2]
type=peer
host=server2.dyn.fmarier.org
auth=md5
secret=password2
username=iaxuser
allow=g722
allow=speex
encryption=yes
forceencrypt=yes
trunk=no
qualify=yes

The second machine contains the same configuration with the exception of the server name (server1 instead of server2) and hostname (server1.dyn.fmarier.org instead of server2.dyn.fmarier.org).

Speed dial for the other phone

Finally, to allow each phone to ring one another by dialing 2000, I put the following in /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf:

[iax2users]
include => home
exten => 2000,1,Set(CALLERID(all)=Francois Marier <2000>)
exten => 2000,2,Dial(IAX2/server1/1000)

and of course a similar blurb on the other machine:

[iax2users]
include => home
exten => 2000,1,Set(CALLERID(all)=Other Person <2000>)
exten => 2000,2,Dial(IAX2/server2/1000)

Firewall rules

Since we are using the IAX protocol instead of SIP, there is only one port to open in /etc/network/iptables.up.rules for the remote server:

# IAX2 protocol
-A INPUT -s x.x.x.x/y -p udp --dport 4569 -j ACCEPT

where x.x.x.x/y is the IP range allocated to the ISP that the other machine is behind.

If you want to restrict traffic on the local network as well, then these ports need to be open for the SIP phone to be able to connect to its local server:

# VoIP phones (internal)
-A INPUT -s 192.168.1.3/32 -p udp --dport 5060 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -s 192.168.1.3/32 -p udp --dport 10000:20000 -j ACCEPT

where 192.168.1.3 is the static IP address allocated to the SIP phone.

On my Asterisk server, I happen to have two on-board ethernet boards. Since I only used one of these, I decided to move my VoIP phone from the local network switch to being connected directly to the Asterisk server.

The main advantage is that this phone, running proprietary software of unknown quality, is no longer available on my general home network. Most importantly though, it no longer has access to the Internet, without my having to firewall it manually.

Here's how I configured everything.

Private network configuration

On the server, I started by giving the second network interface a static IP address in /etc/network/interfaces:

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
    address 192.168.2.2
    netmask 255.255.255.0

On the VoIP phone itself, I set the static IP address to 192.168.2.3 and the DNS server to 192.168.2.2. I then updated the SIP registrar IP address to 192.168.2.2.

The DNS server actually refers to an unbound daemon running on the Asterisk server. The only configuration change I had to make was to listen on the second interface and allow the VoIP phone in:

server:
    interface: 127.0.0.1
    interface: 192.168.2.2
    access-control: 0.0.0.0/0 refuse
    access-control: 127.0.0.1/32 allow
    access-control: 192.168.2.3/32 allow

Finally, I opened the right ports on the server's firewall in /etc/network/iptables.up.rules:

-A INPUT -s 192.168.2.3/32 -p udp --dport 5060 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -s 192.168.2.3/32 -p tcp --dport 5060 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -s 192.168.2.3/32 -p udp --dport 10000:20000 -j ACCEPT

Network time synchronization

In order for the phone to update its clock automatically using NTP, I installed chrony on the Asterisk server:

apt install chrony

then I configured it to listen on the private network interface and allow access from the VoIP phone by adding the following to /etc/chrony/conf.d/asterisk-local.conf:

bindaddress 192.168.2.2
allow 192.168.2.3

Finally, I opened the right firewall port by adding a new rule to /etc/network/iptables.up.rules:

-A INPUT -s 192.168.2.3 -p udp --dport 123 -j ACCEPT

Accessing the admin page

Now that the VoIP phone is no longer available on the local network, it's not possible to access its admin page. That's a good thing from a security point of view, but it's somewhat inconvenient.

Therefore I put the following in my ~/.ssh/config to make the admin page available on http://localhost:8081 after I connect to the Asterisk server via ssh:

Host asterisk
    LocalForward localhost:8081 192.168.2.3:80

Allowing calls between local SIP devices

Because this local device is not connected to the local network (192.168.1.0/24), it's unable to negotiate a direct media connection to any other local (i.e. one connected to the same Asterisk server) SIP device. What this means is that while calls might get connected successfully, by default, there will not be any audio in a call.

In order for the two local SIP devices to be able to hear one another, we must enforce that all media be routed via Asterisk instead of going directly from one device to the other. This can be done using the directmedia directive (formerly canreinvite) in sip.conf:

[1234]
directmedia=no

where 1234 is the extension of the phone.