August 31, 2005
VOIP-Problem solved
VOIP Testing
Success! The major issues I have been having since this post have been resolved. My VOIP server ( asteriskwin32.exe) is now running as a service and the biggest changes were in the sipdefault.cnf. the changes are listed here for my Cisco 7960 and 7940 phones. Seems like a human error problem but I really didn't know that these setting were important or needed to be changed.# Outbound Proxy Support
outbound_proxy: "" Had to add this line and put an address in it
# RTP Call Statistics (SIP BYE/200 OK message exchange)
call_stats: 1 ; 0-Disabled (default), 1-EnabledAnd because I was crossing timezones...
# Time Server (There are multiple values and configurations refer to Admin Guide for Specifics)
sntp_server: "69.25.96.11" ; SNTP Server IP Address
sntp_mode: directedbroadcast ; unicast, multicast, anycast, or directedbroadcast (default)
time_zone: CST ; Time Zone Phone is in
dst_offset: 1 ; Offset from Phone's time when DST is in effect
dst_start_month: April ; Month in which DST starts
dst_start_day: "" ; Day of month in which DST starts
dst_start_day_of_week: Sun ; Day of week in which DST starts
dst_start_week_of_month: 1 ; Week of month in which DST starts
dst_start_time: 02 ; Time of day in which DST starts
dst_stop_month: Oct ; Month in which DST stops
dst_stop_day: "" ; Day of month in which DST stops
dst_stop_day_of_week: Sunday ; Day of week in which DST stops
dst_stop_week_of_month: 8 ; Week of month in which DST stops 8=last week of month
dst_stop_time: 2 ; Time of day in which DST stops
dst_auto_adjust: 1 ; Enable(1-Default)/Disable(0) DST automatic adjustment
time_format_24hr: 1 ; Enable(1 - 24Hr Default)/Disable(0 - 12Hr)
All in all, looking back on this. The setting do make sense but it was very frustrating trying to figure out which ones would make the difference. Now all the phones are working great and Broadvoice is( without fail) serving all of our needs. Three-way calling is a wonderful feature that I have now had a chance to use quite a bit because of how easy the Cisco 7960 and 7940 phones are to use. Now if I could just get a Vonage account to work...
Posted by Sean at 02:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 23, 2005
VOIP Takes Off
VOIP in every home?
More and more people like you and me...According to analysis done by the TeleGeography research group, VoIP usage is on the rise as more and more people abandon their traditional telephone companies for broadband telephone service also known as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).
According to the analysis VoIP usage has toped 2.7 million in the second half of 2005 compared to just 440,000 just a year ago.
The revenue for VoIP is also on the increase and it is expected to top 3 billion USD by the end of 2007.
This raises a very good question. What is the ratio of minutes of VOIP versus the minutes of plain old telephone service. My take on this is simple. The people that have VOIP use it mainly as a toy/only for certain types of calls i.e long distance and the rest of the time they are still using there plain old phone or cellular phone. On this point I could be wrong. What are your thoughts?
Posted by Sean at 09:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Broadvoice and Asterisk
VOIP Testing
I am in need of some help... I have a asterisk server hosted out on the net and it has started a new issue. The problem seems to stem from the fact that the clients are all behind firewalls and the server is not sending phone calls to them. The service I use is broadvoice and that part seems to be working alright but I can not for the life of me receive a VOIP phone call through the system. The testing environment I was using before involved a locally hosted Asterisk server and so the big change was taking it outside my local network. I use Cisco 7960 and 7940 phones and have multiple phones set up to ring for various VOIP calls but at this point none ring and that is the issue. Any suggestions would be helpful at this point. I will keep testing and let you know if I find a solution or cause for the problem. Please check back as this is really driving me nuts and MUST be solved soon. Thank youPosted by Sean at 09:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 08, 2005
Asterisk -Wiretap backdoor
I don't think so... at least not for the home users...
ISPs and some VoIP providers will be forced to build backdoors into their networks that make it easier for law enforcement to run wiretaps. What does this mean for asterisk? I suppose not much unless you are a VOIP provider using it. What kind of a backdoor do you think asterisk could have. Open source seems a bit frightening when it comes to topics like this.
This follows a new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule that expands the reach of the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), says the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Under CALEA, passed in the early 1990s, all telephone providers must build "tappability" into their networks, but it expressly ruled out information services such as broadband, says the EFF, stressing that it’s argued against the expansion to the FCC.
Now, this tappability extends to broadband providers, says the foundation.
“Practically, what this means is that the government will be asking broadband providers - as well as companies that manufacture devices used for broadband communications – to build insecure backdoors into their networks, imperiling the privacy and security of citizens on the Internet. It also hobbles technical innovation by forcing companies involved in broadband to redesign their products to meet government requirements.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is also asking airlines to build similar backdoors into phone and data networks on airplanes, says the EFF, adding:
“EFF and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) submitted joint comments to the FCC arguing against the DOJ's unprecedented and sweeping new technology design mandates and anticipatory wiretapping system.
“The FCC's new proposal to expand CALEA to airline broadband illustrates the fallacy of law enforcement's rationale for its CALEA request. The DOJ takes the position that broadband has ‘substantially replaced’ the local telephone exchange, but this claim is reduced to the point of absurdity aboard an airplane and opens the door for CALEA to cover just about anything.”
As Asterisk goes. I do not believe it will be an open source backdoor. Think of the privacy implications. So for the mainstream provider that is using asterisk as a backend, the module would have to be custom made and compiled. Think of the implications of having a few hundred different implementations of the backdoor out there. It would be a free for all... Just my two cents.
The original article can be found here.
Posted by Sean at 05:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 04, 2005
3Com Expands Reach
I found this to be a fun tid-bit and a good read
MARLBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 2, 2005--
Specialized Convergence Distributor Increases 3Com's Footprint by Offering Broad Portfolio of Secure, Converged Networking Solutions
3Com Corporation (www.3Com.com) today announced that the company is expanding its reach into the strategic Voice over IP (VoIP) market through the addition of Target Distributing, a true convergence technologies distributor, to its list of authorized U.S. distributors. Target Distributing extends 3Com's reach into the VoIP market through its extensive and deep relationships with value-added resellers.
"The convergence market is strategic for 3Com, and one of our fastest growing segments as we continue to drive traction with our NBX(R) platform for small- and medium-sized organizations and VCX(TM) platform in large enterprises," said Nick Tidd, vice president North American Channel Sales at 3Com. "Adding Target Distributing to our list of authorized distributors is designed to accelerate that growth by leveraging Target's expertise as a true convergence distributor, as well as access to new reseller partners."
"Target Distributing shares 3Com's commitment to helping organizations fully realize the potential of a converged network," said Michael Momsen, general manager, Target Distributing. "Adding 3Com's extensive and award-winning portfolio of secure, converged products will give our reseller partners an unprecedented opportunity to provide end-to-end solutions for their customers that few other vendors can deliver."
"Given our long history with both Target Distributing and 3Com, we're extremely excited to now have combined access to Target's outstanding service and support and the product portfolio from one of the true leaders and innovators in IP telephony," says Bob Rankin, general manager, Telephony and Data Solutions of Dublin, OH. "We've successfully been selling 3Com since 1998, and we now plan on making all of our 3Com purchases thru Target Distributing going forward."
Having delivered the first IP-based NBX system in 1998, and expanding into a broad portfolio of systems and applications, 3Com is uniquely positioned to satisfy customers' needs for IP-focused convergence solutions. Target Distributing has a 30-year legacy of offering communications solutions to enterprise organizations in a wide range of industries, including education, healthcare and government. Target Distributing focuses on Convergence solutions and will carry the full portfolio of 3Com products in order to have the capabilities of providing complete secure, converged networks. Additionally, Target will provide training and education, and service and support capabilities for 3Com's products.
About 3Com Corporation
3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS) is a leading provider of secure, converged voice and data networking solutions for enterprises of all sizes. 3Com offers a broad line of innovative products backed by world class sales, service and support, which excel at delivering business value for its customers. Through its TippingPoint division, 3Com is the leading provider of network-based intrusion prevention systems that deliver in-depth application protection, infrastructure protection, and performance protection for corporate enterprises, government agencies, service providers and academic institutions. For further information, please visit www.3com.com, or the press site www.3com.com/pressbox.
Copyright (C) 2005 3Com Corporation. 3Com, the 3Com logo and NBX are registered trademarks and TippingPoint and VCX are trademarks of 3Com Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective holders.
Posted by Sean at 03:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hemp, What do you know?
Hemp Facts from hemp.com
I put on my hemp Merrell shoes and went out to run some errands. The first store I went in to the person looked at my shoes and said "nice shoes, what are they?"
I answered and tossed in the fact they are made out of hemp. The response I got almost knocked me down.
"Oh, I am not into drugs"
I said "Drugs, what do my shoes have to do with drugs?"
She shrugged and said "don't people smoke hemp?"
The conversation really didn't improve after that point but got me thinking about industrial hemp.
If you could tell somebody that you could fix the energy dependence we have in the US, High gas prices, Feed more people, Produce more clothing, make better paint, Make plastics, Make paper without cutting down whole forests, and about a thousand other substantial, beneficial, earth friendly things would you tell them? Why is it that we are so misinformed about things as simple as a plant that can be grown just about anywhere in the US. Many other countries are growing it including Canada, China, Australia, and 30+ others. However, here in the US we have a different stance.
Let take this a different direction for a moment.
If a pit bull is determined to be a more aggressive dog and deemed hazardous to our health and the health of people around them do we make dogs illegal of just make a pit bull illegal( i have nothing against pit bulls).
So with this logic...
The pit bull (marijuana) is deemed bad and the great Dane(hemp) is deemed good for society. Our government makes Canines (Cannabis) illegal to get rid of the pit bull(marijuana) problem rather than addressing the issue in a rational manner.
Misinformation and a genuine unwillingness to accept that the current mindset is taking away from what this country can become. We are supposed to be a country of people with open minds and a drive to improve society as a whole whether it is with technology, crops, knowledge, or whatever.
“Oh, I am not into Drugs.”Just doesn’t cut it when you are talking about something that can and will eventually change the way the US does business the world over. We can be energy independent, the answer has been around since around 10000 BC and we are choosing not to use it. Frankly, I am frustrated and feel that something needs to be done.
Posted by Sean at 09:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 03, 2005
Asterisk or Cisco or The cable company
Asterisk with a Cisco phone Revisited...
After many, many tests of calling locally, long distance and international I have found that the biggest problem I am having is with one phone inparticular which is behind a cable modem and NAT. It really doesn't make that much sense.
Here is the scenario:
Conference call scheduled for 8:00PM
I am at home and need to get onto the call. Cell phone dies. Plug in a Cisco 7960 phone point it at a tftp server and log into the Asterisk box at the office. So far so good...
I call in and get into it just fine 15-20 minutes later phone goes dead and hangs up.(no it wasn't unplugged)
I call back and am joined in again. All is well for 25-30 minutes and same thing. I call back in and again join the conference call. It is just about my turn to speak and it happened again. To make this story a little shorter, it happened twice more at very random times.
The coordinator for the conference call and I were on a first name basis by the time I got done(LOL). He said I was the only person having any issues.
I was puzzled...
When I got off of the call and tried calling somebody else. No problem. three, four, and five calls later and no dropping out, no issues whatsoever. Ran some test on the network last night and it seems that the cable company is losing more packets than usual every two or three hours for about an hour... It seems scary to me that the Asterisk PBX, and the Cisco VoIP phone are so finicky with dropped packets. Time to investigate. I am hoping this is a configuration error that I have created, otherwise, this will always be a random problem that might affect parts of town like the good old days of a large phone cable being inadvertantly cut by someone digging a hole somewhere. Anyway, I have a call in to the cable broadband people and am hoping the can plug the leak...
Posted by Sean at 03:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 02, 2005
Why Voice over IP Is on Hold
This is an interesting take on why VOIP isn't the standard for corporate america and the adopting of the technology has been so slow.
Vincent Ryan, www.NewsFactor.com
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, which allows enterprises to transmit voice calls over data networks, was supposed to make copper telephone networks obsolete and save companies millions of dollars in communication costs. But those ambitious goals have yet to be realized, and vendors are trying to unravel the mystery behind the technology's slow acceptance.
Call quality, unstable technology, and the perceived oddity of migrating an enterprise's voice communications to its data network used to be the main reasons cited for VoIP's lackluster adoption rate. No more.
"You don't hear a lot of talk anymore about voice quality or QoS (quality of service)," Frost & Sullivan VoIP analyst Jon Arnold told NewsFactor. "There's enough confidence and faith in the technology. A lot of the gap has been bridged, although it's not perfect."
So, why are enterprises still hesitant to deploy VoIP on a wide scale -- and why are service providers still twiddling their thumbs?
Education Needed
The slow pace of VoIP deployment is connected not only to the economic downturn, but also to a lack of customer education or acceptance, according to Ralph Santitoro, director of network architecture at Nortel Networks (NYSE: NT - news).
To remedy that shortfall and educate enterprise customers, he said, Nortel now offers a network assessment program in which Nortel business partners "crawl through" a company's Ethernet network to determine its fitness for IP telephony.
Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO - news) also is trying to teach customers about the business benefits of voice over IP. "Customers aren't aware they can get QoS in a corporate network," said Hank Lambert, director of product marketing in Cisco's enterprise voice and video group. "When they talk about voice over IP, they confuse [it] with voice over Internet. That's a very different application of voice over IP."
Currently, most corporate applications send voice calls through a company's data network and tie in to the standard copper-wire phone system at some point, avoiding the open Internet altogether.
VPNs Lead the Field
Currently, most enterprises adopting VoIP are focusing on voice virtual private network (VPN) applications, said Bob VanSickle, vice president of the Americas at Vocaltec, the company that introduced the first PC-to-PC voice client back in 1995.
With this technology, companies with numerous remote locations can use small gateway appliances that interface with their PBX (private branch exchange -- a private telephone switching system) to place calls that bypass the phone companies' legacy networks, creating a secure voice connection. And one large retail chain is using its frame relay links, which are idle during the day, to do unlimited calling between stores, VanSickle said.
He noted that return on investment for such VoIP projects usually can be achieved in less than six months. "You're not spending money to hear a lot of garbles, clicks and buzzes," he said. "Interoffice communications are also lower risk."
Of course, VoIP is better suited to some applications than others. For example, some service providers that offer IP voice clearly state in their ads that they do not support 911 emergency services. "That might slow the adoption for certain applications," Santitoro noted. Cisco, for one, has addressed this problem by introducing an emergency responder server that gathers information about the location of an IP phone.
Static About Security
Unlike VPN-based voice over IP, the adoption curve will be steeper for IP PBX devices that allow users to place calls over the open Internet, VanSickle said. Slower acceptance of this technology will be due partly to technical problems -- packet jitter, missing and dropped packets, and compression hurdles -- and partly to security concerns.
Sending voice packets across firewalls, for example, is a potential nightmare for some IT managers. "When you packetize everything, the networks don't know how to distinguish very well," Arnold said. In other words, identifying which packets are or are not acceptable in terms of network security is a difficult task.
VoIP handsets also have their share of security vulnerabilities. Theoretically, hackers wanting to eavesdrop would not need to establish a physical connection to tap a VoIP phone line because the phone is connected to computers over the open Internet. VoIP phones also have IP addresses, which means anyone with a browser could access the phone's Web page and modify its features and options.
But tapping an IP phone call is a lot harder than it sounds, VanSickle said, because packets follow multiple geographic paths and pass through different gateways to reach their destination. "Where do you place the tap, and how do you reassemble the packets?" he said.
Integration Obstacles
Security issues aside, interoperability, or internetworking, is also key to promoting widespread adoption of VoIP over the open Internet. For example, in today's technology market, one vendor's flavor of session initiation protocol (SIP) -- a signaling protocol for Internet conferencing, telephony and instant messaging (news - web sites) -- may not be identical to another vendor's.
"Although the equipment meshes 90 percent of the time, there will always be glitches," Arnold said. "Until you can throw everything into the pot and have it all work, no carrier in their right mind is going to have a large-scale deployment."
Although these obstacles to adoption are not insurmountable, overcoming them may take time.
Inert on IP
Service providers are the final piece of the VoIP puzzle, and they have been slow to deploy the technology and QoS-level agreements, Lambert said. But there are positive signs for VoIP on the horizon: Domestic RBOCs (regional Bell operating companies, such as BellSouth (NYSE: BLS - news), Ameritech and Nynex, among others) will need VoIP technologies in order to offer local phone service to customers outside their home regions, according to Arnold.
"If RBOCs push further down the road, they're going to need IP packet technologies to do it," he noted. "They're not going to build out their copper networks. That could serve as a big stimulus" to sales of VoIP services and equipment.
Even so, the RBOCs currently are dragging their heels on VoIP trials, putting the small, innovative equipment vendors running on limited capital resources in jeopardy. "There's nothing pushing [the RBOCs]," Arnold said. "Everyone is hoping they are going to do it all."
But there is an "X" factor that could change the RBOCs' tune: Cable companies, such as Cox Communications, are rolling out IP telephony services over HFC cable networks. If cable operators begin to make inroads into homes and businesses, the RBOCs may be forced to pick up the pace.
Posted by Sean at 08:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 01, 2005
Cisco 7960 and VOIP
The Cisco phones are an interesting beast. I have a few around that I get to play with. Some running SIP and some running the the Cisco Call Manager thing. I like some more of the features of the Cisco Call manager but the SIP functionality seems to outweight any benifit in the long run. The most important/fun feature of either is the XML services. Currently I have a phone that reads three different XML documents from my site. One is a XML from weather.com giving me the days weather, The second one is a dynamic telephone directory (for those of us that do not like typing something twice) and most importantly a RSS reader that allows a blog to streamed over the Asterisk connected phone.
The first two just get a mention but the third is where the fun begins. It took many tries but the phone now has a selection under the globe button that links me to a rss feed. Now I know why these phones cost a few extra dollars. I am expected to release a version of the XML services code soon after a few more revisions and perfections in the formatting...
Posted by Sean at 12:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Asterisk -In Windows Part 2
Windows for Asterisk... What a concept and in part 2 of this I am going to bear some of the inner working of what DID work for me.
This is a continuation of Asterisk - In Windows Posted Yesterday.
Sip.conf (Broadvoice and Cisco configs.)
The big change is right here!!!
The first does NOT work and what I read on their site.
;register => 303XXXXXXX@sip.broadvoice.com:itsasecret:303XXXXXXX@sip.broadvoice.com
And This one DOES work!!!
register => 303XXXXXXX:itsasecret@sip.broadvoice.com
An issue I can not seem to explain and will do more research on as it is completely different than any of my UNIX servers. And the rest below is pretty plain jane...
[sip.broadvoice.com]
type=peer
user=phone
host=sip.broadvoice.com
fromdomain=sip.broadvoice.com
fromuser=303XXXXXXX
secret=itsasecret
username=303xxxxxxx
insecure=very
context=from-broadvoice
authname=303xxxxxxx
dtmfmode=inband
dtmf=inband
canreinvite=no
nat=yes
disallow=all
allow=gsm
allow=ulaw
allow=alaw
(The cisco 7960 and 7940 phones)
[3000]
type=friend
username=3000
secret=itsasecret
host=dynamic
callerid= <3000>
nat=no
and six more of these all identical
The extensions.conf
[from-broadvoice]
Audio problem fix as reported in my last post(not exactly a great way to fix it) causes the audio to be passed immediatly as soon as the asterisk server gets a sip notification of the call.
exten => s,1,Dial(SIP/3001&SIP/3002,60,tm)
Here is the way it should have worked.(Any insight on this would be appreciated.)
;exten => s,1,Dial(SIP/3001&SIP/3002,90,t)
exten => s,2,Voicemail(3001)
exten => s,3,hangup
As I said all is going well and the AMD machine is not working very hard at all to keep up. Now I just need to figure out what the big difference is for the audio problem... As I said. Insight from you would be greatly appreciated as this is about as odd as I have ever seen Asterisk get.
Posted by Sean at 09:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack