Asterisk and FreePBX

[Fox's Mercantile]

Anyone here running the Asterisk BX with the FreePBX GUI?

--
"I am a river to my people."
Jeff-1.0
WA6FWi
http:foxsmercantile.com

 

[Jon Elson]

Fox's Mercantile wrote:

Anyone here running the Asterisk BX with the FreePBX GUI?

I don't know what BX is (Business Exchange??) But I run Asterisk/FreePBX at
home (which is also my home business).

Wow, the setup was BRUTAL, there's a LOT you have to figure out the hard
way. I run a funny setup, two copper CO lines into the PBX, and then
several Snom 300 phones via a PoE switch. One of the copper lines is
actually a VOIP modem, but that is what the ISP provided, and I'm fine with
that, as this machine has no WAN address, only a local address via NAT.
More secure that way.

The DAMN thing is so complex, we really haven't figured out how to transfer
or park calls reliably. But, the voice mail works great!

So, what did you want to know?

Jon

 

[Fox's Mercantile]

On 2/14/18 2:44 PM, Jon Elson wrote:

Fox's Mercantile wrote:

Anyone here running the Asterisk BX with the FreePBX GUI?

I don't know what BX is (Business Exchange??)

It's a typo because I make mistakes. ;-) I meant PBX.

Wow, the setup was BRUTAL, there's a LOT you have to figure
out the hard way.

The FreePBX forums are almost as brutal.

> So, what did you want to know?

I want to replace my Panasonic 6x16 hybrid system.
Two copper lines from the phone company and a third line from a
Magic Jack. 16 analog extensions and a door phone.

I'm using the TDM2400P 24-port analog card. Four FXO inputs and
twenty FXS outputs. I managed to get the "internal" extensions
and the door phone, a Bogen ADP1, to work.

The door phone was a lot of laughs on the FreePBX forum.
"RTFM" and my favorite "Read the FreePBX Wiki."
<https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FOP/Door+Phones>
Very useful.

The problem I'm having is I can't dial out or receive incoming
calls.



--
"I am a river to my people."
Jeff-1.0
WA6FWi
http:foxsmercantile.com

 

[Jon Elson]

Fox's Mercantile wrote:

On 2/14/18 2:44 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
Fox's Mercantile wrote:

Anyone here running the Asterisk BX with the FreePBX GUI?

I don't know what BX is (Business Exchange??)

It's a typo because I make mistakes. ;-) I meant PBX.
I mostly guessed that.

Wow, the setup was BRUTAL, there's a LOT you have to figure
out the hard way.

The FreePBX forums are almost as brutal.

So, what did you want to know?

I want to replace my Panasonic 6x16 hybrid system.
Two copper lines from the phone company and a third line from a
Magic Jack. 16 analog extensions and a door phone.

OK, that's about what I did. I had a NEC system from the '80s, and the damn
thing just kept chuggung along. But, finally, it croaked, and I was already
partly set up with Asterisk and some phone extensions. So, suddenly, I
needed to get the Asterisk system up and running.

I'm using the TDM2400P 24-port analog card. Four FXO inputs and
twenty FXS outputs. I managed to get the "internal" extensions
and the door phone, a Bogen ADP1, to work.

I'd skip the FXS ports, and just get VOIP stations. I got a bunch of Snom
300 basic phone extensions for $5 each on eBay! Some don't have PoE, so you
want to be sure to get the ones with that feature. I got a cheap 48V PoE
switch and ran cables where the phones would be, in a lot of places using
the old quad wire from the NEC to pull the Cat 5 cable in. I already had
the Cat 5 crimping tool from TP Ethernet work.

The door phone was a lot of laughs on the FreePBX forum.
"RTFM" and my favorite "Read the FreePBX Wiki."
https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FOP/Door+Phones
Very useful.

Umm, yes, the whole purpose of FreePBX seems to be to sell Sangoma phones
and hosting. If you are not using Sangoma products, the support is a bit
less helpful.

The problem I'm having is I can't dial out or receive incoming
calls.

Ouch, that is a fairly serious non-functioning situation. It seems rather
FEW people are using the analog stuff. I got the FXO cards working, but am
still not real happy with the echo cancellation on my real telco POTS line.
The copper line that is 20 feet long to my cable-VOIP modem is great,
however, sounds like a recording studio.

I know nothing about FXS ports. But, for sure, you want to get a VOIP
extension up, then you can try debugging one side of the analog at a time.
You can actually use any computer with a headset to run VOIP software.

The DAHDI setup for the FXO lines was not just plug and play, but it wasn't
too bad. Then, there were all the connection rule files for dialing and
routing incoming calls. I'm sorry, I went through this about 18 months ago,
and have started forgetting some of the details. The system has just been
running for some time and is just like an appliance, now. The event logging
is really helpful when things are not going right, they give a LOT of info
on the steps happening when you try to dial out or a call comes in. If you
haven't looked there, that's where you should start.

Oh, and there are a FEW things that cannot be done in the FreePBX GUI system
-- now, of course, I am not remembering what they were.

Jon

 

[Fox's Mercantile]

On 2/15/18 5:07 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
> I'd skip the FXS ports, and just get VOIP stations.

That's all well and good, except the house is already wired with
CAT3 wiring. Only two of the extension locations have an RJ45
connection available, so VoIP isn't really an option.

Umm, yes, the whole purpose of FreePBX seems to be to sell Sangoma
phones and hosting. If you are not using Sangoma products, the
support is a bit less helpful.

Yes.

I wrote:

The problem I'm having is I can't dial out or receive incoming
calls.

Ouch, that is a fairly serious non-functioning situation.

Yeah, that "feature" is sort of important.

Oh, and there are a FEW things that cannot be done in the FreePBX
GUI system -- now, of course, I am not remembering what they were.

One of which was setting up the extensions_custom.conf file for the
door phone. And of course, figuring out how to get the right set of
commands to make it work.


--
"I am a river to my people."
Jeff-1.0
WA6FWi
http:foxsmercantile.com

 

[Aleksandar Kuktin]

On Wed, 14 Feb 2018 17:16:34 -0600, Fox's Mercantile wrote:

On 2/14/18 2:44 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
Fox's Mercantile wrote:

Anyone here running the Asterisk BX with the FreePBX GUI?

Yeah, kind-of sort-of.

Wow, the setup was BRUTAL, there's a LOT you have to figure out the
hard way.

The FreePBX forums are almost as brutal.

The whole Asterisk configuration act is brutal. It's probably an
elaborate test to find the Chosen One.

So, what did you want to know?

I want to replace my Panasonic 6x16 hybrid system.
Two copper lines from the phone company and a third line from a Magic
Jack. 16 analog extensions and a door phone.

I'm using the TDM2400P 24-port analog card. Four FXO inputs and twenty
FXS outputs. I managed to get the "internal" extensions and the door
phone, a Bogen ADP1, to work.

The problem I'm having is I can't dial out or receive incoming calls.

I'm not experienced enough to see the problem immediately, but here's how
I would debug.

First, can the phones on the inside (16 analog + door) call each other?
If so, then at least you did something right.

Second, make sure Asterisk sees all the lines. The outbound lines (two
from the phone company and the magic jack) probably need to be configured
as "trunk" lines.

It is ideal to have some kind of real-time logging to observe Asterisk in
operation. Maybe you can SSH into the PBX? If so, you can get the logs
directly from Asterisk by running some command...

The point here is to use Asterisk logs to verify Asterisk interacts with
all the lines. If you call yourself (the phone number associated with
phone company lines), Asterisk should light up. Notice that if Asterisk
isn't registering activity, maybe you misconfigured it, or maybe the
phone company doesn't forward calls to the line.

Anyway, once you've configured all the lines, you need to create a proper
dialplan. This is where things get interesting, but basically the inbound
call from some line will trigger some point in the dialplan and you need
to specify what other line will be called and connected to this one.

This is too generic, I know and I'm sorry about that - but I really don't
have a FreePBX before me now, and I can't remember the exact bits of the
FreePBX interface.

Make sure to check all of the options in the GUI - I know that some
Asterisk based PBX-es require you to set a kind of permission to call out
in some GUI section that is both non-obvious and far removed from the
dialplan.

 

[Fox's Mercantile]

On 2/16/18 6:23 AM, Aleksandar Kuktin wrote:

On Wed, 14 Feb 2018 17:16:34 -0600, Fox's Mercantile wrote:

The whole Asterisk configuration act is brutal. It's probably an
elaborate test to find the Chosen One.

It would appear to be that way.

I'm not experienced enough to see the problem immediately, but here's
how I would debug.

First, can the phones on the inside (16 analog + door) call each other?
If so, then at least you did something right.

Yes, I seem to have gotten that part right.
Internal to internal is working, the Ring Groups are working and I got
the door phone working.

Second, make sure Asterisk sees all the lines. The outbound lines (two
from the phone company and the magic jack) probably need to be
configured as "trunk" lines.

I went thought the exercise again from scratch.
Step 1. DHADI configure DID. To assign a Direct Inward Dialing number to
each incoming line on an FXO port.

It is ideal to have some kind of real-time logging to observe Asterisk in
operation.

Two methods. At the command line on the box (not the GUI)
asterisk -rvvvvvvvvvv > /media/usb/call.text
or
cp /var/log/asterisk/full /media/usb/full.txt

Anyway, once you've configured all the lines, you need to create a proper
dialplan.

I found one of the problems. Outbound Routes
Silly me, 1 234 567 8901 is an 11 digit number. Helps to have "11 digit"
in the dial plan.

This is too generic, I know and I'm sorry about that - but I really don't
have a FreePBX before me now, and I can't remember the exact bits of the
FreePBX interface.

Don't apologize, all information is good.


--
"I am a river to my people."
Jeff-1.0
WA6FWi
http:foxsmercantile.com

 

[Aleksandar Kuktin]

On Fri, 16 Feb 2018 07:05:05 -0600, Fox's Mercantile wrote:

On 2/16/18 6:23 AM, Aleksandar Kuktin wrote:
First, can the phones on the inside (16 analog + door) call each other?
If so, then at least you did something right.

Yes, I seem to have gotten that part right.
Internal to internal is working, the Ring Groups are working and I got
the door phone working.

Well, than you are in the finnish line.

It is ideal to have some kind of real-time logging to observe Asterisk
in operation.

Two methods. At the command line on the box (not the GUI)
asterisk -rvvvvvvvvvv

YES! THAT! It was at the tip of my fingers. ^^

Anyway, once you've configured all the lines, you need to create a
proper dialplan.

I found one of the problems. Outbound Routes Silly me, 1 234 567 8901 is
an 11 digit number. Helps to have "11 digit"
in the dial plan.

Yes! Outbound Routes. There is also another one. DID and/or DOD. I remeber
we needed to set them properly, but that was for an all-VOIP instalation.
We use SIP, it carries metadata about the call, but maybe the analog line
also carries the same information, just in a different format?

 

[Fox's Mercantile]

On 2/16/18 7:16 AM, Aleksandar Kuktin wrote:

There is also another one. DID and/or DOD. I remeber we needed to
set them properly, but that was for an all-VOIP instalation.
We use SIP, it carries metadata about the call, but maybe the analog
line also carries the same information, just in a different format?

An analog telco line does NOT include DID.
They rightly assume, "It's a physical line, there's a tag at the
demarc telling you what the number is (and always is.)

The way around that is DAHDI Configure DID.
You can assign a "fake" DID to an analog FXO port. This way the PBX
thinks an incoming call has "xxxx" for the DID and does the Inbound
Routes using the DID like it's supposed to.

I suppose if you have more than one incoming line and you pay extra
for a hunt group, you would assign all the incoming FXO ports the
same "fake" DID using the primary number DID.




--
"I am a river to my people."
Jeff-1.0
WA6FWi
http:foxsmercantile.com

 

[Aleksandar Kuktin]

I just discovered I was using my old e-mail address when posting. This is
the correct one. The old still works, but is deprecated.

On Fri, 16 Feb 2018 07:38:31 -0600, Fox's Mercantile wrote:

On 2/16/18 7:16 AM, Aleksandar Kuktin wrote:
There is also another one. DID and/or DOD. I remeber we needed to set
them properly, but that was for an all-VOIP instalation.
We use SIP, it carries metadata about the call, but maybe the analog
line also carries the same information, just in a different format?

An analog telco line does NOT include DID.
They rightly assume, "It's a physical line, there's a tag at the demarc
telling you what the number is (and always is.)

The way around that is DAHDI Configure DID.
You can assign a "fake" DID to an analog FXO port. This way the PBX
thinks an incoming call has "xxxx" for the DID and does the Inbound
Routes using the DID like it's supposed to.

I suppose if you have more than one incoming line and you pay extra for
a hunt group, you would assign all the incoming FXO ports the same
"fake" DID using the primary number DID.

Well, you are a bigger expert on this than I. ^^ I'm afraid I dumped most
of my internal knowledge, and from this point on I can only look at the
interface and try to figure out the solution.

check lines/channels - done
set up the dial plan - done
fix those DID/DOD things - done

 

[Fox's Mercantile]

On 2/16/18 7:52 AM, Aleksandar Kuktin wrote:
> Well, you are a bigger expert on this than I.

One of the problems is using a Magic Jack for one of
the phone lines.

From elsewhere:
As to your MJ, then depending on your DAHDI hardware, then
it might not provide an acceptable ring voltage (90v AC 30HZ
expected) less than 30 and it likely wont be recognized as a
legitimate FXO

Always something.


--
"I am a river to my people."
Jeff-1.0
WA6FWi
http:foxsmercantile.com

 

[Fox's Mercantile]

On 2/13/18 9:46 AM, Fox's Mercantile wrote:
> Anyone here running the Asterisk BX with the FreePBX GUI?

I found out a few things to make it work.
you HAVE to assign a Direct Inbound Dialed number to make
incoming calls work.

Magic Jack does NOT comply with AT&T/Bell ring standards so
the FXO port never "hears" it ring.

And because I'm a stubborn bastard, I made a Cisco 7912 VoIP
phone work with the system as well. So I can have a phone at
the shop.


--
"I am a river to my people."
Jeff-1.0
WA6FWi
http:foxsmercantile.com

 

[Fox's Mercantile]

On 3/12/18 9:19 AM, Fox's Mercantile wrote:

And because I'm a stubborn bastard, I made a Cisco 7912 VoIP
phone work with the system as well. So I can have a phone at
the shop.

It gets better, I have 6 of them now AND a VoIP phone line as
well.

--
"I am a river to my people."
Jeff-1.0
WA6FWi
http:foxsmercantile.com

 

[Fox's Mercantile]

And because I have way too much free time, I'm configuring five
Cisco 7940G two-line phones.



--
"I am a river to my people."
Jeff-1.0
WA6FWi
http:foxsmercantile.com

 

[Jon Elson]

On Wed, 25 Apr 2018 23:41:18 -0500, Fox's Mercantile wrote:

And because I have way too much free time, I'm configuring five Cisco
7940G two-line phones.

Well, reading some Asterisk forum messages, I decided to steer away from
any Cisco gear, worried about license issues. There are TONS of other
phone makes that don't want licenses to use gear you have BOUGHT. I'm
using Snom phones, very basic, but do all I need them to do.

Jon

 

[Fox's Mercantile]

On 4/26/18 1:45 PM, Jon Elson wrote:

On Wed, 25 Apr 2018 23:41:18 -0500, Fox's Mercantile wrote:

And because I have way too much free time, I'm configuring five Cisco
7940G two-line phones.

Well, reading some Asterisk forum messages, I decided to steer away from
any Cisco gear, worried about license issues. There are TONS of other
phone makes that don't want licenses to use gear you have BOUGHT. I'm
using Snom phones, very basic, but do all I need them to do.

Jon

These are the same forums where some self appointed asshole will
tell you that Cisco phones are shit because THEY don't know how
to set them up.



--
"I am a river to my people."
Jeff-1.0
WA6FWi
http:foxsmercantile.com

 

[Jon Elson]

Fox's Mercantile wrote:

On 4/26/18 1:45 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
On Wed, 25 Apr 2018 23:41:18 -0500, Fox's Mercantile wrote:

And because I have way too much free time, I'm configuring five Cisco
7940G two-line phones.

Well, reading some Asterisk forum messages, I decided to steer away from
any Cisco gear, worried about license issues. There are TONS of other
phone makes that don't want licenses to use gear you have BOUGHT. I'm
using Snom phones, very basic, but do all I need them to do.

Jon


These are the same forums where some self appointed asshole will
tell you that Cisco phones are shit because THEY don't know how
to set them up.

Well, ANYTHING you read on the internet can be the result of ignorance, or
even a hidden agenda! You have to take that for granted!

But, I can usually find useful info on how to get almost anything working
after just a few articles.

Jon