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Free Worldwide VoIP Calling with iNum and Issabel 4




In our last article, we documented how to implement free, safe SIP URI worldwide calling with an almost-free Issabel™ server in the Cloud. Today we’ll add another free worldwide calling option using iNum™. As with SIP URIs, iNum provides a way for anyone in the world to reach you by phone without paying a nickel. And iNum adds the same functionality for Issabel PBX users to reach anyone else in the world with an iNum phone number. The iNum project was started almost a decade ago by Voxbone to create a free global phone network for IP communications. The International Telecommunication Union allocated a portion of its non-geographic country code +883 to the initiative. iNums are 15-digit telephone numbers in the +883 5100 area code. You can keep yours for life at no cost.


Let’s begin by obtaining an iNum telephone number for your Issabel PBX. Every PBX should have at least one. There are a number of iNum providers throughout the world that will give you an iNum telephone number at no cost. For our purposes today, we’ll document the procedure for CallCentric. Assuming you have 911 service with another provider, it won’t cost you anything to set up a CallCentric account and obtain a working iNum telephone number. Other providers (e.g. LocalPhone) typically require a modest deposit just to set up an account which is perfectly understandable. However, CallCentric doesn’t require a credit card up front. If you already have a VoIP.ms account from our tutorial last week, they also offer free iNum phone numbers: Order DIDs:iNum (limited to one per account).

Obtaining an iNum Phone Number from CallCentric

Navigate to the CallCentric web site and click Sign Up. Once your account is activated, login using your new credentials. Jot down your Username, CallCentric #, and Password for future access to the web site. From the main Dashboard, click View/Modify Extensions. Extension 100 should already be set up. Just create a SIP password and jot it down with your SIP username which is the same as your CallCentric #. Click Apply and then SAVE.

Next, let’s order the CallCentric freebies which include BOTH an iNum phone number and a traditional DID. Neither one costs you money, but you do have to use the DID once a month to keep it. The iNum phone number never expires. Under Products, click Order. Under Make Calls, choose the IP Freedom Plan unless you want to use CallCentric to make commercial calls. Under Receive Calls, choose Free Phone Number and Get a Number. Write down your 10-digit number. To obtain an iNum phone number, click here and then click Order an iNum Number. Write down your iNum phone number. UPDATE: CallCentric now will let you order multiple iNum phone numbers at no cost. Each supports two simultaneous calls and unlimited incoming minutes.

With CallCentric, you have two options in routing incoming calls. You can use the Default routing setup which will send the calls to your CallCentric registered trunk (which we will set up below) on your Issabel PBX. Or you can customize the routing and forward the calls for each DID and iNum number to a SIP URI. From the Dashboard, choose Phone Number Forwarding. If you simply want to forward both your DID and iNum numbers to the SIP URI that you set up last week with VoIP.ms, then no trunk registration (below) is required at all. However, you would lose the ability to use CallCentric to place outbound iNum calls from your Issabel extensions.

Integrating iNum Support into Your Issabel PBX

In the Issabel web GUI, we need to configure the trunk for CallCentric. The template already is included with Incredible PBX® for Issabel. Then we need to set up an Inbound Route for CallCentric as well as an outbound route to process iNum calls originating from Issabel extensions.

To configure the CallCentric trunk, navigate to PBX:PBX Config:Trunks:CallCentric. First, uncheck the Disable Trunk field. In Outgoing Settings, insert your SIP username (1777XXXXXXX) in the fromuser and defaultuser fields as well as in the initial field (before colon) and last field (after /) of the Registration String. Insert your SIP password in the secret field and the second field (after the colon) in the Registration String. Submit Changes and Reload Dialplan when prompted.

Next create an Outbound Route for iNum calls using your CallCentric trunk. Navigate to PBX:PBX Config:Outbound Routes. Click Add Route. For Route Name, use Out-CallCentric-iNum. For Dial Pattern, insert 008835100 in the Prepend field and XXXXXXXX in the Match Pattern field. For Trunk Sequence, choose CallCentric. Click Submit Changes and Reload Dialplan when prompted.

Next create an Inbound Route for calls coming from your CallCentric trunk. This will include BOTH your iNum calls and calls from your free CallCentric DID. Navigate to PBX:PBX Config:Inbound Routes. Click Add Incoming Route. For Description, use CallCentric-Incoming. For DID Number, use your SIP username (1777XXXXXXX). For CID Lookup Source, choose OpenCNAM. Then pick a Destination for the incoming calls, e.g. an extension, ring group, or IVR. Click Submit Changes and Reload Dialplan when prompted.

Placing iNum Calls from Issabel Extensions

With our simplified outbound route, users of Issabel extensions can dial iNum phone numbers by simply dialing the last 8 digits of the number, i.e. all of the numbers following 8835100. Most abbreviated numbers start with a zero. For example, to reach Lenny, simply dial 01198938.

Placing iNum Calls from SIP Phones

If you want to reach an iNum number and only have a SIP phone, you can dial any iNum phone number in SIP URI format. Use this syntax: sip:8835100xxxxxxxx@sip.inum.net. Note that the full iNum phone number is required.

Placing iNum Calls from Standard Phones

As part of the iNum initiative, local access numbers have been established in more than 50 countries around the globe. By placing a local call from any telephone to one of these local access numbers, any individual with an iNum phone number anywhere in the world can be reached without further cost. Here is a current list of the local access numbers. Once your call is answered, simply enter the 15-digit iNum phone number you wish to reach, and you will be connected. Here is the latest iNUM listing from DSL Reports:

Country             City                     Access Number
------------------- ------------------------ ---------------
Argentina           Buenos Aires             +54 1159839500
Australia           Sydney                   +61 280148200
Austria                                      +43 720880500
Bahrain                                      +973 16199200
Belgium             Brussels                 +32 28081771
Brazil              Brasilia                 +556135500791
Brazil              Florianopolis            +554840420809
Brazil              Rio De Janeiro           +552135006959
Brazil              Sao Paulo                +551146803621
Bulgaria            Sofia                    +359 24917555
Canada              Calgary                  (403) 775-1446
Canada              Edmonton                 (780) 669-9257
Canada              Halifax                  (902) 982-6937
Canada              London                   (519) 488-9336
Canada              Montreal                 (514) 907-7500
Canada              Ottawa                   (613) 686-4519
Canada              Quebec City              (418) 800-0384
Canada              St. Johns, Newfoundland  (709) 757-0060
Canada              Regina                   (306) 988-1600
Canada              Toronto                  (416) 800-4303
Canada              Toronto                  (647) 724-8777
Canada              Vancouver                (778) 786-3497
Canada              Winnipeg                 (204) 272-8182
Chile               Santiago                 +56 25813444
Croatia             Zagreb                   +385 17776363
Cyprus              Nicosia                  +357 22030500
Czech Republic      Prague                   +420 246019777
Denmark                                      +45 69918686
Dominican Republic  Santiago                 (829) 947-9610
El Salvador                                  +503 21131899
Estonia                                      +372 6681881
Finland             Helsinki                 +358 942419200
France              Paris                    +33 170619800
Germany             Frankfurt                +4969257385876
Germany             Frankfurt                +4969257380439
Greece              Athens                   +30 2111768444
Hungary             Budapest                 +36 14088951
Ireland             Dublin                   +353 15262600
Israel              Tel Aviv                 +972 37219555
Italy               Rome                     +39 0662207777
Japan               Tokyo                    +81 345209777
Latvia              Vilnius                  +370 52059090
Lithuania                                    +371 67652500
Luxembourg                                   +352 20880108
Malta                                        +35627780107
Mexico              Guadalajara              +52 3346242977
Mexico              Mexico City              +52 5511678222
Mexico              Monterrey                +52 8141703540
Netherlands         Amsterdam                +31 208080808
New Zealand         Auckland                 +64 99250499
Norway              Oslo                     +47 21031306
Panama                                       +507 8322488
Peru                Lima                     +51 17085500
Poland              Warsaw                   +48 223982688
Portugal            Lisbon                   +351 308803219
Puerto Rico         Bayamon Norte            (787) 395-7140
Romania                                      +40 318103500
Singapore                                    +65 31581212
Slovakia            Bratislava               +421 233002555
Slovenia            Ljubljana                +386 16001422
South Africa        Johannesburg             +27105002854
South Africa        Pretoria                 +27120042701
Spain               Barcelona                +34 931815653
Spain               Madrid                   +34 911883777
Sweden              Stockholm                +46 852500111
Switzerland         Zurich                   +41 435006262
United Kingdom      London                   +44 2033556363
United States       Albuquerque, NM          (505) 225-8243
United States       Charlotte, NC            (980) 202-0283
United States       Charlotte, NC            (980) 236-0398
United States       Chicago, IL              (312) 253-4880
United States       Houston, TX              (713) 474-2323
United States       Kansas City, MO          (913) 951-0932
United States       Los Angeles, CA          (213) 221-3799
United States       New York, NY             (646) 843-6969
United States       Phoenix, AZ              (602) 354-9444
United States       San Diego, CA            (619) 330-9640
United States       San Francisco, CA        (650) 360-0999
United States       Santa Barbara, CA        (805) 308-9649
United States       Seattle, WA              (206) 420-5904
United States       Spokane, WA              (509) 931-0459
United States       Tacoma, WA               (253) 343-1529



We’ve barely scratched the surface of what you can do with Incredible PBX for Issabel. Head over to our introductory article where we’ve documented dozens of Asterisk® applications that await your exploration. Enjoy!

Published: Tuesday, August 29, 2017  



Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

Free Worldwide VoIP Calling with SIP URIs and Issabel 4

SIP URIs make the VoIP World go ’round. They’re the email-like addresses that carry VoIP calls between SIP servers to reach their destination. But there’s gold in them hills if you know how to use SIP URIs because SIP URI calls are free even if the calls travel all the way around the world. We previously documented how to deploy SIP URI calling with PIAF5 and 3CX, and today we’ll show you how to make SIP URI calls from and to your Issabel™ server using Incredible PBX®. More importantly, we’ll show you how to do it safely without opening up the anonymous calling floodgates and compromising your Asterisk® server.

Now that we’ve gotten the price of cloud-based servers down to a respectable $1.50 to $2.50 per month, it’s time to cut the cord and kiss your home-grown server goodbye. The babysitting headaches and maintenance costs of running your own server and paying for electricity simply aren’t worth it. There’s another reason. NAT-based routers and firewalls complicate things when it comes to VoIP. Not only do you have to wrestle with SIP headers and ALG, but you also have to troubleshoot thorny one-way audio issues with VoIP calling. So bite the bullet and play along today. Skip that Starbucks coffee this week and you’ve all but paid for a full year’s worth of VoIP server hosting in the Cloud.

Getting Started with Vultr

If you just want to experiment in a cloud-based sandbox, then there’s no better option than Vultr. For less than a penny an hour, you can build a VoIP platform, tear it down, and build another one for less than the cost of a nickel candy bar. You remember those, don’t you? I actually tried to think of something that still costs a nickel, but that was the best I could do… and that was 50+ years ago.

After you’ve created an account on Vultr with our referral link, the first step is to create your new cloud instance. Choose New York or Miami as your desired hosting site (they both have $2.50/month availability) and select 64-bit CentOS 7 as your server platform. An additional 50¢ a month buys you automatic daily, weekly, or monthly backups to a separate, fault tolerant storage system in the same data center. HINT!

(1) Once you’ve built and started your new virtual machine, log into your server as root using SSH/Putty and immediately change your root password: passwd.

(2) With the $2.50 size VULTR virtual machine, you must create a swapfile before beginning the Issabel installation. Here are the commands:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=1024k
chown root:root /swapfile
chmod 0600 /swapfile
mkswap /swapfile
swapon /swapfile
echo "/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0">>/etc/fstab
sysctl vm.swappiness=10
echo vm.swappiness=10>>/etc/sysctl.conf
free -h
cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

(3) Now skip down to the Issabel installation section to continue.

Getting Started with WootHosting

If $2.50 a month is too rich for your blood, there actually are two $1.50 a month options at WootHosting if you sign up for a year. With the New York special, you get a single VPS platform. With the twofer special, you actually get two VPS platforms in your choice of cities. WootHosting also offers considerably more horsepower with quadruple the RAM and more storage space. You can read our review of WootHosting here.

(1) Start by creating a CentOS 7 Minimal VPS platform in New York, Miami, or Los Angeles. If you opted for the WootHosting twofer special, then you’ll need to create a user and then a virtual server platform that looks something like this:

(2) Set a root password in the Root/Admin Password tab and enable TUN/TAP (needed for NeoRouter) in the Settings tab.

(3) Login to your server as root using SSH Terminal or Putty.

(4) Now continue with the Issabel installation as documented below.

Installing Issabel on Your VPS Platform

Issue the following commands to install Issabel. When prompted for a MariaDB (MySQL) and admin password, make certain to use passw0rd (with a zero) for your MariaDB password and a very secure password for your admin password, the one you’ll use to login as admin to Issabel’s web interface.

yum -y update
yum -y install wget nano
wget -O - http://repo.issabel.org/issabel4-netinstall.sh | bash

When the Issabel install is complete, your server will automatically reboot.

Installing Incredible PBX for Issabel on Your VPS

After the reboot, log back into your server as root and issue the following commands to install Incredible PBX for Issabel. You will again be prompted for MariaDB and admin passwords. Do exactly as you did above using passw0rd as your MariaDB password. At the conclusion of the install, you will again be prompted for the same admin password you used above. This is actually used for Apache web security and will be the first prompt you see when you attempt to login to any web application including Issabel, AsteriDex, and Reminders.

wget http://incrediblepbx.com/IncrediblePBX11-Issabel4.sh
chmod +x IncrediblePBX11-Issabel4.sh
./IncrediblePBX11-Issabel4.sh

When the installation finishes, reboot your server once again and then log back in as root. The Automatic Update Utility will load current patches and then display pbxstatus.

Using a browser, login to the Issabel web client at the IP address shown in pbxstatus. You’ll be prompted twice (http and https) for your Apache admin credentials which should be the same as your Issabel GUI admin credentials. Save your Apache credentials in your browser when prompted to do so. Then you won’t have to provide Apache credentials again. Next, login to the Issabel GUI with admin and your admin password.

That completes the basic install of Incredible PBX and Issabel. Our previous tutorial will walk you through the basics of setting up your trunks, extensions, and routes in Issabel.

Overview of SIP URI Implementation with Issabel

There are any number of ways to implement incoming SIP URI support on Asterisk-based servers. Most are terribly insecure and provide an easy target for the bad guys to make free calls using your paid VoIP provider accounts. The traditional method to permit SIP URI access to your server would require poking a hole in your firewall to allow unrestricted access to the SIP port of your server, UDP 5060. In addition, it would require enabling unrestricted anonymous calling access to Asterisk via FreePBX®. After all, that’s similar to the way the Ma Bell telephone system operated. Anyone in the world could call you provided they had your number. The major deterrent was that most of the calls incurred costs to the caller with no monetary benefits being derived. VoIP changed all of that. Using a SIP client and SIP URIs, anonymous individuals now can place unlimited calls to unlimited VoIP servers at no cost. And, if they get lucky, they can decipher a way to call into your PBX via SIP URI and then call out using phone trunks that you actually have to pay for. Bad idea!

We have a better way that’s entirely secure and won’t incur calling charges for incoming anonymous SIP URI calls. The solution is to set up a trunk with a hosting provider that supports anonymous SIP URI access and then leave it to the VoIP provider to manage the thorny SIP security problems which is not Asterisk’s strong suit. Once we’ve set up the SIP URI with the provider, we will register a trunk with that provider on our Issabel server. Then all of the anonymous SIP URI calls will come into the SIP provider and be rerouted to Issabel through our registered trunk with that provider. No firewall puncturing is required because we will be using a registered trunk and tunnel between our server and the provider.

Implementing SIP URI Support with VoIP.ms

Our favorite VoIP provider to implement this is VoIP.ms in Canada. They have POP servers throughout the world so you can pick a server that is close to your cloud-based Issabel server. VoIP.ms POPs are available in Tampa, New York, and Los Angeles among others worldwide. Step one is to set up an account at VoIP.ms if you don’t already have one. Step two is to set up a SubAccount with a difficult-to-guess VoIP.ms Internal Extension Number. Be sure to jot down the Username and Password you set up for your SubAccount. You’ll need them in a minute. In our example today, we’re using 4772235642 as the internal extension number. This means other VoIP.ms account holders can reach this account by dialing 10+ 4772235642. And anyone on the Internet can reach this account by dialing your VoIP.ms account number + 4772235642 at the POP to which you are registering a VoIP.ms DID associated with this SubAccount. Clear as mud? Hang in there a bit longer.

Step three is to sign up for a VoIP.ms DID. This could be a free iNUM DID or a commercial DID (traditional 10-digit NANPA number) that your PBX could actually use to receive traditional calls. Commercial DIDs range in price from under $1 a month with incoming calls costing under a penny a minute to $4.25 a month with unlimited incoming (residential) calls. For our purposes today, the type of DID and its commercial cost really don’t matter. When any of these DIDs are connected to a SubAccount with an associated Internal Extension Number, SIP URI calls to that DID’s internal extension number are free! So… the cheaper, the better.

The final step on the VoIP.ms side of things is to associate your DID with a SubAccount and choose a POP server to process the calls coming to you. This is done under the Manage DIDs tab in the VoIP.ms web interface.

So let’s review what we’ve done. We set up a VoIP.ms account. We created a SubAccount in their web interface and created an internal extension number for that subaccount. Next, we ordered a DID. And finally, we associated that DID with the subaccount we created and chose a POP server to deliver the inbound calls to our server.

Now we’re ready to set up a VoIP.ms trunk on our Issabel server and test things out.

Implementing SIP URI Support with Issabel

Incredible PBX makes setting up a VoIP.ms trunk easy. The template is already in place in the Issabel GUI. All you’ll need are your VoIP.ms credentials (SubAccount Username and Password), your DID number that you ordered from VoIP.ms, and the name of the VoIP.ms POP server (from Manage DIDs) that will be delivering the incoming calls. You’ll also want to jot down your Internal Extension Number (without leading 10) that you set up in your VoIP.ms SubAccount. You’ll need that and the FQDN of the VoIP.ms POP in order to decipher the SIP URI (phone number) to reach your server.

While logged into the Issabel GUI, navigate to PBX:PBX Config:Trunks:VoIPms. Insert your DID in the Outbound CallerID field. Uncheck the Disable Trunk box. Under PEER Details, insert your VoIP.ms username in the username and fromuser fields. Insert your VoIP.ms password in the password field. Insert the FQDN of the VoIP.ms POP server in the host field. Under Register String, insert your username, followed by a colon, your password, followed by @, your POP FQDN, followed by /DID, e.g. johndoe:secret@tampa.voip.ms/8005551212.

Next, we need to create an Inbound Route to process the incoming calls from VoIP.ms. Navigate to PBX:PBX Config:Inbound Routes. Click Add Incoming Route. In the Description field, enter VoIPms-Incoming. In the DID Number field, insert your DID number. In the Source field, choose OpenCNAM. In the Set Destination dialog, choose a destination for the incoming calls, e.g. an extension, ring group, or IVR. Then click Submit and reload dialplan.

Finally, we need to adjust a SIP setting to support SIP URI calls from VoIP.ms. Navigate to Security:Advanced Settings. Set Enable Direct Access ON. Set Allow Anonymous Calls OFF. Enter your admin password twice. Click SAVE.

Next, navigate to PBX:PBX Config:Unembedded IssabelPBX. When the new window opens, navigate to Settings:Asterisk SIP Settings. In the External IP field, insert the IP address of your Issabel server. Click Auto Configure button immediately below that. Scroll to the bottom and, in Other SIP Settings, insert match_auth_username = yes in the two fields provided. Click Submit Changes and reload dialplan. Click Logout: Admin at the top of the browser window and then close the browser tab to return to the main Issabel GUI.

Deciphering the SIP URI for Your Issabel PBX

From the information you wrote down above, here’s how to assemble the SIP URI for your Issabel PBX. Start with your VoIP.ms account number, e.g. 101595. Add your Internal Extension Number, e.g. 4772235642. Add the @ symbol followed by the VoIP.ms POP routing calls to Issabel, e.g. tampa.voip.ms. You can give ours a try if you’d like to interact with Allison’s Demo IVR: 1015954772235642@tampa.voip.ms. Most SIP clients support SIP URI calling including Zoiper (PCs) and Telephone (Macs).

Placing Outbound SIP URI Calls from Issabel PBX

The easiest way to place outbound SIP URI calls from your Issabel PBX is to set up Custom Extensions for the destinations you wish to reach.

Navigate to PBX:PBX Config:Extensions:Other (Custom) Device. Assign an extension number and display name to the extension and insert the SIP URI in the dial field using the syntax shown below. Then click Submit and reload your dialplan.





We’ve barely scratched the surface of what you can do with Incredible PBX for Issabel. Head over to our introductory article where we’ve documented dozens of Asterisk® applications that await your exploration. Enjoy!

Published: Thursday, August 24, 2017  



Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

A VPN for All Seasons: Introducing NeoRouter v2

Today, we want to revisit our favorite client-server VPN, NeoRouter. It’s included with all versions of Incredible PBX® and eases the pain of setting up air-tight firewalls as well as High Availability (HA) redundant servers with VoIP. NeoRouter relies upon a central server and uses a star topology to connect remote nodes. The major difference between NeoRouter and PPTP VPNs is that only registered devices participate in the virtual private network so there is no direct access to other machines on the LANs of the registered devices. If you have servers or users scattered all over the countryside, NeoRouter is an excellent (and free) way to manage and interconnect them. All data and communications between the nodes can then be routed through the encrypted VPN tunnel for rock-solid security.

With NeoRouter’s latest 2.3 (free) software, you can set up your VPN server using a PC, a Mac, a Linux or FreeBSD machine, OpenWrt Backfire, Tomato, or even a Raspberry Pi. With all versions of Incredible PBX, the NeoRouter Free Client is automatically installed. To bring up NeoRouter, all you need to do is install the NeoRouter Free Server on one of your machines and then login to the server from each NeoRouter Client using your server credentials. VPN clients also are available for PCs, Macs, Linux and FreeBSD machines, Raspberry Pi, OpenWrt, Tomato as well as Android and iOS phones and tablets. There’s even an HTML5 web application in addition to a Chrome browser plug-in. With the OpenWrt and Tomato devices or if you’re an extreme techie, you can broaden your NeoRouter star configuration and bridge remote LANs. See pp. 58-63 of the NeoRouter User’s Manual.



You can interconnect up to 256 devices to the NeoRouter Free Server at no cost. For $999, you can enlarge your VPN to support 1,000 devices. Screen sharing, remote desktop connections, HTTP, and SSH access all work transparently using private IP addresses of the VPN nodes which are automatically assigned in the 10.0.0.0 private network.

Today we are introducing the second generation of the NeoRouter VPN solution. It’s suitable for use on a dedicated server or running as a virtual machine. Whether to run NeoRouter Free server on a dedicated machine is your call. We never do. And NeoRouter never requires exposure of your entire server to the Internet. Only a single TCP port needs to be opened in your hardware-based firewall or IPtables Linux firewall. The only real requirement is a dedicated IP address for your server so that the client nodes can always find the mothership. We typically run the NeoRouter server component on our failover VoIP server with Wazo HA. We’ll finish up today by showing you how to back up the critical components of NeoRouter Server so that, if your server platform ever should fail, it only takes a few minutes to get back in business on a new server platform. Let’s get started.

Creating Your NeoRouter Server Platform

We’re assuming you already have an Incredible PBX server of some flavor running on a dedicated IP address with the IPtables firewall. If not, start there.

First, on your IPtables firewall, make certain that TCP port 32976 has been whitelisted for public access. On Incredible PBX platforms, this is automatic. You can double-check by running iptables -nL and searching for an entry that looks like this:

ACCEPT     tcp  --  0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0            tcp dpt:32976

Second, we need to download and install the NeoRouter Free Server for your platform. Be sure you choose the version that matches your operating system, CPU architecture, and type. Debian and Ubuntu servers use the same code. We do not recommend Raspberry Pi as a suitable platform for your NeoRouter server!

For RedHat/CentOS 64-bit platforms, here’s the download link. While logged into your server as root, issue the following command using the downloaded 64-bit RPM:

rpm -Uvh nrserver-2.3.1.4360-free-centos-x86_64.rpm

For Ubuntu/Debian 64-bit platforms, use this link. While logged into your server as root, issue the following command using the downloaded 64-bit .deb image:

dpkg -i nrserver-2.3.1.4360-free-ubuntu-amd64.deb

Third, each administrator (admin) and user is going to need a username to access your NeoRouter VPN. You can use the same credentials to log in from multiple client machines, something you may or may not want to do. Here are the commands to create admin and user accounts. Don’t use any special characters in the username and password!

nrserver -adduser username password admin
nrserver -adduser username password user

You’re done. Now let’s register your NeoRouter server with the mothership.

After your NeoRouter Free Server is installed, you can optionally go to the NeoRouter web site and register your new VPN by clicking Create Standalone Domain. Make up a name you can easily remember with no periods or spaces. You’ll be prompted for the IP address of your server in the second screen. FQDNs are NOT permitted.

When a VPN client attempts to login to your server, the server address is always checked against this NeoRouter database first before any attempt is made to resolve an IP address or FQDN using DNS. If no matching entry is found, it will register directly to your server using a DNS lookup of the FQDN. Whether to register your VPN is totally up to you. Logins obviously occur quicker using this registered VPN name, but logins won’t happen at all if your server’s dynamic IP address changes and you’ve hard-coded a different IP address into your registration at neorouter.com.

Configuring and Connecting Your NeoRouter Client

As mentioned previously, there are NeoRouter clients available for almost every platform imaginable, including iPhones, iPads, and our beloved Raspberry Pi. NeoRouter Client software is included in all Incredible PBX builds. If you’re using some other platform, Step #1 is to download whatever client is appropriate to meet your requirements. Here’s the NeoRouter Download Link. Make sure you choose a client for the Free version of NeoRouter. Obviously, the computing platform needs to match your client device. The clients can be installed in the traditional way with Windows machines, Macs, etc. Once enabled, you can use your NeoRouter Client to create a VPN tunnel to connect to any other resource in your virtual private network using SSH, VoIP clients, and web browsers.

To activate the NeoRouter client while logged in as root, type: nrclientcmd. You’ll be prompted for your Domain, Username, and Password. You can use the registered domain name from neorouter.com if you completed that step above. Otherwise, be sure to use the FQDN assigned to your NeoRouter Server. Once you’re logged in, you will be presented with the names and private IP addresses of all of your connected nodes.

To exit from NeoRouter Explorer, type: quit. The NeoRouter client will continue to run so you can use the displayed private IP addresses to connect to any other online devices in your NeoRouter VPN. All traffic from connections to devices in the 10.0.0.0 network will flow through NeoRouter’s encrypted VPN tunnel. This includes inter-office SIP and IAX communications between Asterisk® endpoints. These private IP addresses can also be used to create a High Availability (HA) platform with Wazo even if the servers are not colocated.

Admininistrative Tools to Manage NeoRouter

Here are a few helpful commands for monitoring and managing your NeoRouter VPN.

Browser access to NeoRouter Configuration Explorer (requires user with Admin privileges)

Browser access to NeoRouter Remote Access Client (user with Admin or User privileges)

Manage your account on line at this link

To access your NeoRouter Linux client: nrclientcmd

To restart NeoRouter Linux client: /etc/rc.d/init.d/nrservice.sh restart

To restart NeoRouter Linux server: /etc/rc.d/init.d/nrserver.sh restart

To set domain: nrserver -setdomain YOUR-VPN-NAME domainpassword

For a list of client devices: nrserver -showcomputers

For a list of existing user accounts: nrserver -showusers

For the settings of your NeoRouter VPN: nrserver -showsettings

To add a user account: nrserver -adduser username password user

To add admin account: nrserver -adduser username password admin

Test VPN access: http://www.neorouter.com/checkport.php

For a complete list of commands: nrserver –help

To change client name from default pbx.local: rename-server OR…

  • Edit /etc/hosts
  • Edit /etc/sysconfig/network
  • Edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
  • Edit /etc/asterisk/vm_general.inc
  • reboot

For the latest NeoRouter happenings, visit the NeoRouter blog and forum.

Backing Up NeoRouter Server for That Rainy Day

Yes, servers fail sooner or later. So it’s best to plan ahead and avoid having to recreate your NeoRouter VPN from scratch. Backing up your server is easy. Log into your server as root and issue the following command:

tar cvzf nr-server-db.tar.gz /usr/local/ZebraNetworkSystems/NeoRouter/NeoRouter_0_0_1.db /usr/local/ZebraNetworkSystems/NeoRouter/Feature.ini

Copy nr-server-db.tar.gz and your NeoRouter Server installer to a safe place!

When that sad day arrives, be sure that your original NeoRouter Server is off line. Then reinstall NeoRouter Server on a new server platform using your original NeoRouter Server installer. If necessary, change the DNS entry for your original NeoRouter server to the new IP address. Then shut down new NeoRouter Server, load your backup, and restart server:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/nrserver.sh stop
cd /
tar zxvf nr-server-db.tar.gz
/etc/rc.d/init.d/nrserver.sh start

Published: Monday, August 21, 2017  



Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

Twofer Tuesday: $1.50 Cloud Bargains for VoIP Deployments

We’ve been big fans of $5/month VPS offerings of Digital Ocean and Vultr for many years. When Vultr reduced their lowest tier to $2.50/month, we were ecstatic. These weren’t ideal VoIP platforms because of their 512MB memory constraint, but they were perfectly suitable as a sandbox for experimentation. And then along came OVH with a 2GB VPS that was nearly perfect for VoIP at $3.49/month. As we all know, the Earth does not stand still, and WootHosting now has once again changed the landscape with two different $1.50/month offerings that include 2GB of RAM. That’s cheaper than the cost of electricity to run a server in your home or office. Never mind that you also have to purchase a server.

As most of you know, we eat our own dog food before recommending products, and we’ve deployed both the Wazo and Issabel PBXs on the WootHosting platform being reviewed today. In addition, we’ve deployed a multi-purpose web server to host more than a dozen of our personal sites using an even better second offering that we also will cover today.

The first offering (pictured above) actually provides a platform for two separate VoIP servers. For each of the servers, you have a choice of sites: New York, Miami, or Los Angeles. Why would you want two servers? The most obvious answer is redundancy. Wazo already offers High Availability (HA) redundant servers with the click of a button. Our deployment tutorial is available here. By deploying identical servers in two cities, you have a failsafe VoIP platform that can survive almost any natural or man-made disaster. And the total cost for both cloud servers is just $3 a month. A similar implementation for other Incredible PBX platforms is now under development on the PIAF Forum. Compare these free options to HA solutions from other VoIP providers costing $3,000 plus maintenance.

If a New York-based cloud offering will meet your needs, the second WootHosting offer is even more impressive with 4 CPU core allocations, 2GB RAM and swap space, a whopping 150GB of storage, 3TB of monthly bandwidth, and advanced DDOS protection for $1.50/mo.:



As we mentioned, we actually use this second VPS offering to host more than a dozen of our personal web sites without a hiccup. But it is sufficiently robust to host very large VoIP implementations with support for dozens of simultaneous calls. A deployment guide for Wazo is available here. As with all cloud-based servers, we strongly recommend redundant system deployments in separate locations. Additional WootHosting specials in their various locations are documented on the New York ordering page. Enjoy!

Published: Tuesday, August 15, 2017  



Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

Finding the Perfect Phone Solution for Small Organizations

Many of us wear several hats during our business careers. One of those invariably is managing a community organization of some flavor. We frequently are asked for advice on what the ideal telephony solution would be for such an organization. The reason for the inquiries typically is because the Bell Sisters have now jacked up the cost of a single, business phone line to well over $100 a month. And that gets you local calls only unless you sign up for exorbitant additional charges for long distance calling. It’s worth noting that most of the individuals making these inquiries stress that they do not want to get in the business of managing a phone system. They’re looking for a plug-and-play, set-it-and-forget-it setup that will require minimal tweaking. My first question is always: "What’s your budget?" Then we explore (1) how many phones, (2) the frequency of calls, (3) the number of simultaneous calls, (4) the mix of local and long distance calling, and, last but not least, (5) the must-have feature set. No shocker: the budget is always near zero.




Today, we’re going to start on the bottom rung and work our way up the technology ladder. If you never thought smartphones and cellular would be part of this equation, guess again. $60 will now buy you a 4G LTE smartphone at WalMart, and monthly plans with unlimited calling in the U.S. start at $25 for Walmart’s Family Mobile plan, a far cry from the Ma Bell business phone rates. And you can keep your number! If you need multiple phones but only a single line, that’s not a problem either. Add a Link2Cell digital cordless phone system from Panasonic and now you have as many as 5 phones that can make and receive calls using your cellular connection via Bluetooth®. Some even support a second cellphone connection. With many you can build a phonebook on your cellphone and import it into all of your cordless phones. And, of course, voicemail is included as part of your cell plan. For those with poor cellular service, the Family Calling Plan supports free WiFi calling on many cellphones. And $10 extra buys you rollover international calling funds with 5¢/min. rates to Canada and Mexico. Calling rates to other countries are less than impressive and do not compare favorably with typical VoIP rates.

Cellular phone service isn’t for everyone, and there are considerably more choices in the Land of VoIP. The wrinkle with all of the VoIP solutions is that now you need internet service at the site of your organization. To say there is minimal competition in the internet service provider market is an understatement. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a choice between AT&T and one of the cable companies: Comcast, Charter, or Time Warner/Spectrum. The downside is it adds an additional $25 to $75+ to your monthly costs unless the organization already has Internet service that is used for purposes other than telephony. What won’t work for VoIP is satellite internet service because of latency issues.




Once you’re over the internet service hurdle, there are numerous VoIP choices for phone service depending upon your skillset. Again, let’s start on the bottom rung. If you can make it with one phone and one call at a time, it’s hard to beat Ooma Telo. $100 buys you a device that delivers landline-like phone service at a monthly cost of $4 (you only pay communications taxes and fees) to $10 depending upon the feature set you choose. The basic, fees-only plan gets you toll-free nationwide calling in the U.S., call waiting, caller ID, 911 service, a call log history and voicemail through Ooma’s online dashboard. The premium $10 a month plan adds a second line, free calling to Canada and Mexico, voicemail via email, call screening, do not disturb and call forwarding to an Android phone or iPhone. As with cellular service, you can keep your existing phone number. If you need WiFi connectivity or cellphone Bluetooth connectivity for your Ooma device, add $50. Otherwise, just plug a standard telephone into the Ooma hardware, and you’re good to go. You also could use a wireless phone system such as the ones described in the previous section to add up to five extensions.



If you need additional lines or phones, the $200 Ooma Office offering is worth considering. You can add as many users as desired for $19.95/month/each with every user getting unlimited U.S./Canada calling, CallerID service, and an impressive collection of business phone features (shown above). The cost of the VoIP phones for each user are not included. While the monthly service charges are pricey, you’re paying for the simplicity of never having to deal with the intricacies of configuring and managing a business phone system. However, you do have to purchase and configure a SIP phone for each user.



When you get beyond the single user, single line requirement, the sky opens up in the VoIP market. The savings go from getting part of your hundred dollars back each month to saving several hundred or thousands of dollars every month. What becomes important is how much of the deployment work you’re willing to undertake yourself. If the answer is not much, then the phone systems from one of our corporate sponsors, 3CX or RentPBX, are probably your best bets. Both offer turnkey VoIP solutions, and 3CX also has a worldwide dealer network to handle all of the deployment chores for you as well. While the front end costs with the 3CX commercial solution must be considered, the long-term savings more than cover these costs in your first year.

If you’re capable of making your own dinner by reading the directions off the side of a box, then you can probably handle many VoIP deployments yourself. The list of tasks goes something like this. You’ll either need a computer or cloud provider for a computing platform. Then you need a Linux operating system for that platform. Next, you need VoIP software to serve as your PBX. Services such as RentPBX handle setup of all three of these tasks for a monthly cost of $15. Or you can do it yourself and reduce the cost to $5 or less per month. We have dozens of tutorials to show you how.

At this juncture, you’re pretty much on your own except for our tutorials. The remaining tasks include purchasing and configuring phones for your users and configuring trunks from one or more VoIP providers, the folks that interconnect your phone calls to the people you are calling. Then you configure your PBX to route calls in and out of your PBX, and you’re in business. All of these tasks are managed using web-based GUI software, and there are plenty of tutorials to hold your hand every step of the way.

We’ll finish up today by walking you through one of our favorite open source VOIP setups. It provides free calling and faxing in the United States. Typical setup takes less than an hour, and the monthly cost is $3 which includes nightly backups of your entire PBX. These backups can be restored with a single button click.

FULL DISCLOSURE: 3CX, RentPBX, Amazon, Vitelity, and Vultr all provide financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions were based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and their pricing,

The Vultr/VoIP Open Source Solution

Begin by setting up an account at Vultr using our referral link. Then create a new instance choosing the smallest Server Size and CentOS 7/64-bit as the Server Type. Pick a Server Location that supports the $2.50 server size. Currently, Miami and New York are available. Once your virtual machine is running, you can activate automatic backups under the Server Information:Backups tab in the Vultr Control Panel.

(1) Once you’ve built and started your new virtual machine, log into your server as root using SSH/Putty and immediately change your root password: passwd.

(2) With the $2.50 size VULTR virtual machine, you must create a swapfile before proceeding. Here are the commands:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=1024k
chown root:root /swapfile
chmod 0600 /swapfile
mkswap /swapfile
swapon /swapfile
echo "/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0">>/etc/fstab
sysctl vm.swappiness=10
echo vm.swappiness=10>>/etc/sysctl.conf
free -h
cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

(3) Now you’re ready to kick off the Issabel 4 install. Here are the commands:

cd /root
yum -y install wget nano dialog
wget -O - http://repo.issabel.org/issabel4-netinstall.sh | bash

When prompted for a MySQL password, use: passw0rd (with a zero). Choose a secure Issabel admin password for the GUI.

(4) After the reboot, log back in as root and install Incredible PBX for Issabel:

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/IncrediblePBX11-Issabel4.sh
chmod +x IncrediblePBX11-Issabel4.sh
./IncrediblePBX11-Issabel4.sh

When prompted for a MySQL password, use: passw0rd (with a zero). Choose a secure Issabel admin password for the GUI.

(5) After the reboot, configure your correct timezone: /root/timezone-setup

Be advised that, when you log into the Issabel web interface, you will be prompted (three times) for your admin credentials. You can save these entries to avoid having to repeat it in the future. Now you can jump over to the Incredible PBX for Issabel tutorial to complete your installation. Within a couple minutes, your PBX will be ready to accept calls. Enjoy!

Published: Monday, August 7, 2017  


Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a difficult place to address support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forum. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, the PIAF Forum is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.



Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

Almost Free: Professional Grade TTS Comes to Issabel 4



There’s no need to be chained to your TV for breaking news and weather forecasts when they can be as close as the nearest VoIP phone. Today we’re elevating text to speech with Issabel to commercial-quality. We’re wrapping up our month-long romance with Issabel 4 by introducing IBM’s Bluemix TTS service for Incredible PBX®. It’s surprisingly affordable. The first million characters of text-to-speech synthesis are FREE every month so, for most users, upgrading to commercial quality speech synthesis is a no-brainer. Try out our 10-second demo and prepare to be amazed. We provided a plain text demo (without any voice transformation SSML) to show how incredibly accurate IBM’s basic voice synthesis engine is. With additional tweaking using IBM’s SSML functions, any voice nuances can be quickly corrected or enhanced. Feel free to build a few samples on your own at IBM’s demo site.


[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/335398310″ params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="80%" height="414″ iframe="true" /]

An awesome text-to-speech engine, of course, is only half of the story. You still need application software to bring TTS to life on your PBX. Nerd Vittles tried and true news and weather applications for Incredible PBX provide the glue that binds news and weather updates to your phone by simply dialing a 3-digit extension on your PBX. 951 gets you the latest breaking news from Yahoo, and 947 gets you current weather conditions and a weather forecast for any zip code in the United States. It’s pure, open source GPL code so feel free to modify it to meet your needs. Additional weather data is available from IBM Bluemix at modest cost for our international friends. Make that your weekend project!

Getting Started with IBM Bluemix TTS Service

NOV. 1 UPDATE: IBM has moved the goal posts effective December 1, 2018:

You can start your free, 30-day trial of IBM Bluemix services without providing a credit card. Just sign up here. Once your account is activated, here’s how to obtain credentials for the TTS service to use with Incredible PBX for Issabel. Start by logging in to your IBM Bluemix account. Once you’re logged in, click on your account name (1) in the upper right corner of your web page to reveal the pull-down to select your Region, Organization, and Space. Follow the blue links at the bottom of the pull-down menu to create an Organization and Space for your TTS service.



Next, click the Menu icon which is displayed as three horizontal bars on the left side of the web page. Choose Watson. Click Create Watson Service and select Text to Speech from the applications listing. Watson will generate a new TTS service template and display it. Make certain that your Region, Organization, and Space are shown correctly. Then verify that the Standard Pricing Plan is selected. When everything is correct, click the Create button.

When your Text to Speech application displays, click Service Credentials and then click New Credential (+). When the Add New Credential dialog appears, leave the default settings as they are and click Add. Your Credentials Listing then will appear. Click View Credentials beside the new entry you just created. Write down your URL, username, and password. You’ll need these to configure the IBM Bluemix TTS service in Issabel momentarily. Logout of the IBM Cloud by clicking on the little face in the upper right corner of your browser window and choose Log Out. Confirm that you do, indeed, wish to log out. NOTE: For new implementations, you will have an APIkey instead of a username and password.

Implementing IBM Bluemix TTS Service with Issabel

Now for the fun part. We’ve built all the pieces you’ll need to deploy IBM’s TTS service and to reconfigure the Incredible PBX news and weather applications to take advantage of IBM’s new text synthesis engine. There are 5 Simple Steps to put all the pieces in place for this. Begin by (1) installing Issabel 4 on your favorite platform. Next, (2) install Incredible PBX for Issabel by following our tutorial. Now (3) log into your Issabel PBX as root using SSH or Putty and issue the following commands:

cd /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/ibmtts-issabel.tar.gz
tar zxvf ibmtts-issabel.tar.gz
nano -w /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/ibmtts.php

When the installation finishes, (4) an editor will open to let you insert your IBM Bluemix TTS credentials. Do so and then press Ctrl-X, Y, and Enter to save your entries. For new deployments, your API Username will be apikey, and your API Password will be your actual APIkey. Finally, while still in the agi-bin directory, (5) run the following script to update your Asterisk dialplan: ./install-ibmtts-dialplan.sh.

Now you’re ready to take IBM’s Bluemix TTS for a test drive. Pick up any phone connected to your PBX and dial 951 for the latest Yahoo news. Then dial 947 and enter a 5-digit zip code to retrieve the latest weather conditions and weather forecast for your zip code. Enjoy!

If you’d like to try out the News application with IBM Bluemix, feel free call our Demo PBX and choose option 5:

Published: Monday, July 31, 2017  


Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a difficult place to address support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forum. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, the PIAF Forum is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.



Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

The Perfect Pair: Flawless VoIP with Issabel 4 and 3CX


We continue our Issabel 4 adventure today with a VoIP match made in heaven. Today, we’ll take advantage of the Nerd Vittles free 3CX server offering and interconnect it with an Issabel 4 PBX to enjoy the best of both worlds. From Issabel extensions, you can call your 3CX Clients by dialing 4 digits. From 3CX Clients, you can call Issabel extensions as well as your Asterisk® applications in the same way with the added bonus of being able to make outbound calls through your Issabel trunks by dialing any number with a 9 prefix. Once you have both of your PBXs running, the setup time to interconnect them is under 5 minutes.

Why would you want to maintain two PBXs? The simple answer is the added flexibility you achieve coupled with a 99% reduction in VoIP headaches. If you haven’t yet used 3CX Clients on a PC or Mac desktop or on an iOS or Android device, you have missed perhaps the greatest VoIP advancement of the last decade. As the name suggests 3CX Clients connect to a 3CX server with less than a one-minute setup. They work flawlessly from anywhere using WiFi or cellular. As an added bonus, you can kiss all of your Asterisk NAT woes goodbye! If you ever travel or if you need remote phone access to your PBX infrastructure, you owe it to yourself to try a 3CX Client. We promise. You’ll never again use a traditional SIP client.



Building Your Issabel and 3CX Server Platforms

The prerequisite for interconnecting Issabel and 3CX servers is, of course, to install the two PBXs on platforms of your choice. Our preference is cloud-based servers because it avoids many of the stumbling blocks with NAT-based routers. If you know what you’re doing, you obviously can deploy the PBXs in any way you like. For the Issabel 4 PBX, start with our introductory tutorial to install Issabel 4. Then follow the Incredible PBX for Issabel tutorial to add security and the Asterisk bells and whistles. For 3CX, start with our introductory tutorial which includes a link to obtain a free perpetual license supporting 4 simultaneous calls and unlimited trunks. Then secure your server by adding the Travelin’ Man 3 firewall for 3CX. Once both servers are up and running, whitelist the IP address or FQDN of the Issabel PBX on the 3CX server and vice versa. You’ll find the add-ip and add-fqdn utilities in /root of each server.

Overview of Interconnection Methodology

If you’re new to all of this, suffice it to say that 3CX is a powerful, commercial PBX while Issabel relies upon Asterisk and FreePBX® for its basic telephony operation. The two systems are quite different in terms of their approaches to interconnectivity. While you can transparently interconnect one 3CX server to another one, you cannot accomplish the same thing when the second PBX is Asterisk-based. Instead, the Issabel PBX is configured as a SIP trunk on the 3CX platform. The limitation this causes is that extensions on the Issabel PBX can only direct dial extensions on the 3CX platform. Issabel-based extensions cannot utilize 3CX trunks to place outbound calls. There’s more flexibility on the 3CX side of things. 3CX extensions can place direct calls to Issabel extensions. They also can take advantage of Issabel-based trunks to place outbound calls. Additionally, as we noted above, 3CX extensions can take advantage of every Asterisk application hosted on the Issabel platform including all of the Incredible PBX® enhancements. This actually works out perfectly because you can deploy 3CX Clients for your end-users, and they can take advantage of all the extension and trunk resources on both the 3CX and Issabel platforms. It also greatly simplifies remote deployment by removing NAT one-way audio hassles while allowing almost instantaneous setup of remote 3CX Clients, even by end-users.

For our setup today, we’re assuming you have elected to use 3-digit extensions on both the Issabel and 3CX platforms. To call extensions connected directly to the alternate server, we will simply dial 9 + the extension number on the remote PBX. To make external calls from 3CX extensions using Issabel trunks, we will dial 9 + a 10-digit number. For international users, you can adjust the dialplan on both PBXs accordingly.

By default, SIP trunks are associated with a DID on the 3CX platform. We will register the 3CX DID trunk with Issabel to maintain connectivity; however, we will not register the corresponding trunk on the Issabel side with the 3CX server. Keep in mind that you can only route a 3CX DID to a single destination, i.e. an extension, a ring group, or an IVR. But we can use 3CX’s CallerID routing feature to send calls to specific 3CX extensions from Issabel extensions even using a single 3CX trunk. For each 3CX extension, we’ll create an Outbound Route on the Issabel side with a CallerID number that matches the 3CX extension number we wish to reach. On the 3CX side, we’ll create an Inbound CID Rule that specifies the extension number to which each matching CallerID number should be routed. This sounds harder than it actually is. So keep reading, and it’ll all make sense momentarily. Once you’ve set all of this up, we think you’ll agree that it makes sense to create the bulk of your extensions exclusively on the 3CX side.

Configuring Issabel PBX for Interconnection to 3CX

Let’s begin by creating a Trunk on the Issabel PBX to connect to your 3CX server. In the Issabel GUI, choose PBX:PBX Config:Trunks and Add a SIP Trunk. Fill in the blanks as shown below. Make up a very secure secret for your Trunk and be sure to leave the Outbound CallerID field blank. Click on the image below if you need to enlarge it.



Because we set up the 3CX trunk with a from-internal destination context, we don’t need an Incoming Route for the 3CX Trunk. The calls will be processed exactly as if they were dialed from a local extension on the Issabel PBX, i.e. local calls will be routed to extensions and outgoing calls through trunks will be routed using your existing Outbound Routes.

Finally, we need to create the Outbound Routes for calls originating from Issabel extensions that should be directed to specific extensions on the 3CX platform. You’ll need a list of the 3CX extension numbers you wish to enable on the Issabel platform, and we’ll need to create a separate Outbound Route for each 3CX extension to be enabled. Create the Outbound Routes using the template below. We recommend including the 3CX extension in the Route Name. The Route CID and Route Pattern should be a 9 followed by the 3CX extension number for each Outbound Route you create. In the template below, we’re telling Issabel to route a call dialed as 9003 to extension 003 on the 3CX PBX. The Dial Manipulation Rule in the 3CX Trunk settings tells Issabel to strip off the 9 before sending the call to the 3CX PBX.



Configuring 3CX for Interconnection to Issabel PBX

Now we’re ready to set up the 3CX side to interconnect with your Issabel PBX. Start by creating a SIP Trunk and fill out the template as shown below using one of the phone numbers associated with your Issabel PBX as the Main Trunk No.



Fill in the Trunk Details using the example below. Be sure to specify the actual IP address or FQDN of your Issabel server as well as the SIP credentials of 3CX for username and the actual password you set up on the Issabel side of things. The Main Trunk No will be the same as you entered in the previous step. Choose a Default Destination for the Trunk.



When the SIP Trunks listing redisplays, highlight your new Asterisk trunk and click Refresh Registration. The icon beside the Trunk should turn green. If not, be sure your IP address and password match the settings on the Issabel side. Don’t proceed until you get a green light!

Now we need two Outbound Routes for calls placed from 3CX extensions. One will handle calls destined for Local Extensions on the Issabel side. Our design is to place calls to Issabel extensions by dialing 9 + the 3-digit extension number. Adjust this to meet your own requirements. Be sure to set the Route as Asterisk with a value of 1 for Strip Digits.



The other Outbound Route will handle calls destined for external calling with an Issabel trunk using a similar methodology. 3CX users will dial 9 + 10-digit number for calls to be processed by Trunks on the Issabel server.



Finally, we need an Inbound Rule for every 3CX extension that you wish to enable for remote calling from Issabel extensions. Use the Add CID Rule option to create each Inbound Rule using the sample below. In our example, we’re authorizing incoming calls to 3CX extension 003 where the CallerID number of the incoming call is 003.



Test Drive Your Interconnected Servers

Now we’re ready to try things out. From an extension on the 3CX server, dial 9 plus any 3-digit extension that exists on the Issabel server. Next, dial 9 plus a 10-digit number such as your smartphone. The call should be routed out of your Issabel server using the Trunk associated with the NXXNXXXXXX rule in your Issabel Outbound Routes. Finally, from an extension on your Issabel PBX, dial 9 plus 000 which should route the call to extension 000 on your 3CX server. Enjoy!

Published: Wednesday, July 19, 2017  


Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a difficult place to address support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forum. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, the PIAF Forum is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.



Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

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The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

Leap Into Summer: Introducing Incredible PBX for Issabel



NEWS FLASH: A new release of Incredible PBX for Issabel is now available. Tutorial is here.

If you didn’t already know, we’ve always liked free. No strings, no gotchas, no demoware, and no legal shenanigans. That’s why our introduction of Issabel 4 last week was such a breath of fresh air. While there’s now an awesome free version of 3CX, the open source community has had a very long dry spell. So today we celebrate a decade of adding fun to phone systems with the introduction of Incredible PBX® for Issabel 4. It includes our next generation, preconfigured Travelin’ Man 3 firewall, additional text-to-speech engines (FLITE, GoogleTTS, and PicoTTS), voice recognition, turnkey trunk and extension setups with preconfigured tollfree calling, Google Voice support with OAuth 2 or plain text passwords for free calling in the U.S. and Canada, SMS messaging, telephone reminders, turnkey fax support, AsteriDex phone book with both voice and speed dialing, Wolfram Alpha, sample ODBC apps, and a boatload of dialplan code and AGI scripts to help anyone wanting to learn how to develop custom applications with Asterisk®.

Installing Incredible PBX for Issabel 4

Let’s start with the basics and get all of the Incredible PBX components loaded. As with all Incredible PBX builds, running the Incredible PBX installer will erase ALL of your existing Issabel configuration. So begin with a clean, unaltered Issabel 4 platform with no added components or configuration changes. Be sure to use either the June or July ISO for base Issabel install. We will update it from there as part of the Incredible PBX install. Just follow last week’s tutorial to bring up Issabel 4 on a dedicated server or a virtual machine.

JUST RELEASED: A new tutorial to walk you through Getting Started: Issabel in the Cloud.




The Travelin’ Man 3 firewall is installed and configured as part of the install. It whitelists certain IP addresses and blocks everyone else from even seeing your server on the Internet. For this reason, it is critically important that you perform the Incredible PBX install using SSH or Putty from a PC that you will use to manage your Issabel server. Otherwise, you risk locking yourself out of your own server. Whitelisted IP addresses include the Issabel server itself, the public and private IP addresses of your desktop PC, all non-routable, private LAN addresses, and the Nerd Vittles collection of recommended SIP hosting providers. You can add as many additional providers or users to the whitelist using the simple tools provided as part of the install and further documented below. Do NOT activate Issabel’s firewall.

As part of the install process, you’ll be prompted during both passes to create a password for MySQL/MariaDB and an admin password for the Issabel web GUI. The MySQL password MUST be passw0rd (with a zero), or you will get a permanent mess. The admin password can be anything you like. Passwords can be updated by running /root/admin-pw-change. Many of the Incredible PBX apps depend upon this MySQL password so don’t change it. Your MySQL databases remain secure and can only be accessed on localhost or after a successful root login to your server from a whitelisted IP address.

Begin the Incredible PBX install by logging into your Issabel server as root from a desktop PC using SSH or Putty and execute the following commands:

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/IncrediblePBX11-Issabel4.sh
chmod +x IncrediblePBX11-Issabel4.sh
./IncrediblePBX11-Issabel4.sh


Introducing the (new) Travelin’ Man 3 Firewall

Issabel 4 includes an IPtables firewall component. Do NOT activate it because Incredible PBX includes its own preconfigured IPtables firewall, better known as Travelin’ Man 3. With the Issabel 4 firewall, the administrator is responsible for setting all of the firewall rules. With Travelin’ Man 3, all the heavy lifting is done for you. The design is also markedly different. Issabel 4 opens ports which you define, but it gives worldwide access to those ports by any user. Travelin’ Man 3 employs a WhiteList rather than opening ports for everyone. If you’re on the WhiteList, you get access to the limited collection of ports assigned to that IP address. If you’re not on the WhiteList, you cannot even see the Issabel PBX from the Internet. For those without remote telephones or traveling employees, this provides total protection of your server with virtually no further firewall management.

If you have remote users of your PBX or if you wish to deploy softphones on mobile devices and rely upon WiFi facilities at random locations, Travelin’ Man 3 provides several utilities to assist. If the remote users have static IP addresses, then those IP addresses can be added to the WhiteList by running /root/add-ip. Better yet, a NeoRouter VPN is provided that lets remote users access Issabel using NeoRouter private LAN addresses that already are WhiteListed as part of the installation process. These require little to no configuration with static or dynamic IP addresses even when switching between WiFi networks. For those with dynamic IP addresses and no VPN, FQDNs can be assigned using a service such as dyn.com and a dynamic DNS client can be loaded on the smartphone to keep the current IP address synchronized with the FQDN. On the Incredible PBX side, these FQDNs can be added using /root/add-fqdn, and the IP addresses will be updated automatically every 10 minutes. The final option to provide remote users the 3-digit PortKnocker codes from knock.FAQ and let them automatically whitelist their own IP addresses by running the PortKnocker client from any smartphone or Linux server. When the Issabel server detects a successful knock sequence, the source IP of the knock sequence is whitelisted until the next reload of the firewall. If an administrator prefers to allow permanent additions to the WhiteList that survive a reboot or restart of the firewall, the administrator need only run the following command one time: iptables-knock activate. WhiteListed entries can be removed using the /root/del-acct utility. Further details on the new Travelin’ Man 3 design are available here.

Update: The July Issabel ISO introduced a quirk into our Travelin’ Man 3 setup. For a reason that we have not yet tracked down, it is no longer possible to whitelist an IP address and use that address to access the Issabel GUI with a browser. Until we can track down the problem, we have modified the security methodology to access the Issabel web GUI. While we have opened port 443 for public access, we have added another layer of security by requiring Apache htaccess credentials before you can access any web site on your Issabel server. As the last step of the Incredible PBX installation procedure, you will be prompted to enter your admin password again. The username admin and the admin password are used BOTH for Apache authentication AND Issabel GUI authentication. Should you ever need to change your Issabel GUI admin password using /root/admin-pw-change, you also will need to execute the following command to change the admin password for Apache authentication: htpasswd -c /etc/pbx/wwwpasswd admin.


Setting Up a Softphone with Issabel 4

If you’re a Mac user, you’re lucky (and smart). Download and install Telephone from the Mac App Store. Start up the application and choose Telephone:Preference:Accounts. Click on the + icon to add a new account. To set up your softphone, you need 3 pieces of information: the IP address of your server (Domain), and your Username and Password. You can decipher your server’s IP address by running pbxstatus. If you wish to use one of the preconfigured extensions (701 and 702), you’ll find the randomized passwords in /root/passwords.FAQ. Now copy or cut-and-paste your Username and Password into the Accounts dialog of the Telephone app. Click Done when you’re finished, and your new softphone will come to life and should show Available. Dial the IVR (D-E-M-O) to try things out. With Telephone, you can use over two dozen soft phones simultaneously.

For everyone else, we recommend the YateClient softphone which is free. Download it from here. Run YateClient once you’ve installed it and enter the credentials for the Issabel extension. You’ll need the IP address of your server plus your extension number and password associated with either the 701 or 702 extension.


Configuring Google Voice Natively or Using Simonics

Everybody likes free calling, and nobody does it better than Google. Will it last? Well, the naysayers (including me) have been predicting its demise for over 5 years. Yet it keeps on ticking. If you live in the U.S. and want to take advantage of free calls in the U.S. and Canada, you’d be crazy not to deploy a Google Voice trunk on your PBX. Voice quality is near perfect. And the price is right.

The original release of Incredible PBX for Issabel did not support Google Voice trunks so we suggested an intermediary to provide the functionality through a SIP gateway. It works flawlessly using OAuth 2 password authentication, but it’ll set you back $5. If you prefer free, we’ve added the original Google Voice plain-text password solution from the FreePBX® 2.11 days in the latest Incredible PBX release using the July Issabel ISO. It is far from perfect. While you can make and receive calls and faxes to and from Issabel extensions, you cannot direct incoming calls to an IVR because of an old NAT quirk in Asterisk 11. If this isn’t a problem for you, keep reading. Otherwise, skip down to the Simonics tutorial below after completing the initial Google Voice setup which follows.


Here are the initial setup steps on the Google side:

1. Set up a dedicated Gmail and Google Voice account to use exclusively for this new SIP gateway. Head over to the Google Voice site and register. You’ll need to provide a U.S. phone number to verify your account by either text message or phone call.



2. Once you have verified your account by entering your verification code, you’ll get a welcome message from Mr. Google. Click Continue to Google Voice.



3. Provide an existing U.S. phone number for verification. It can be the same one you used to set up your Google account in step #1.



4. Once your phone number has been verified, choose a DID in the area code of your choice.



5. When your DID has been assigned, click the More icon at the bottom of the left column of the Google Voice desktop. Click Legacy Google Voice. Now click the Settings icon on your legacy Google Voice desktop. Make certain that Forward Calls to Google chat is checked and disable calls to your forwarding number. Click on the Calls tab and select Call Screening:OFF, CallerID (Incoming):Display Caller’s Number, and Global Spam Filtering:checked. The remaining entries should be blank.

6. Google Voice configuration is now complete. Sign out of your Google Voice account.


The Native Google Voice Solution using FreePBX Motif Module. Here’s a quick thumbnail of the steps to put all the pieces in place using the FreePBX Google Voice/Motif module. First, we set up a Google Voice account at Google as documented above. Next, we’ll set up the Google Voice account in the Issabel GUI to activate the Google Voice trunk. Next, we’ll add an Incoming Route to tell Issabel how to process Google Voice calls. Then we need to tell Google to relax the rules on use of plain text passwords. And, finally, we’ll restart Asterisk from the Linux CLI.

1. Login to the Issabel web interface with your admin password and choose PBX:PBX Config:Google Voice. Enter your Google Voice account name, password, and 10-digit phone number. Be sure to check all three boxes to Add a Trunk, Add an Outbound Route, and Send Unanswered Calls to Google Voicemail. Click Submit and then reload your dialplan when prompted.

2. Configure an Inbound Route for your incoming Google Voice calls. Click Inbound Routes in the PBX Configuration Menu. Then click Add Incoming Route and enter a Description for the route and enter the DID Number using your 10-digit Google Voice number. If you want to activate CNAM (CallerID Name) lookups, choose OpenCNAM from the Source list. Choose an appropriate Destination for the calls from the pull-down menu of choices. Use only an extension or a ring group. Then SAVE your settings and reload dialplan. To activate fax detection, change Detect Faxes to YES, Detection type to SIP, Detection time to 4, and Destination to Extension 329 (F-A-X). Click Submit and then reload your dialplan again.

3. On the Google site, login into your Google Voice account again. Then follow this link to Enable Less Secure Apps. Then follow this link to activate the Google Voice Reset Procedure. Now log out of your Google Voice account.

4. Login to your Issabel server with SSH/Putty as root and restart Asterisk: amportal restart

5. Now connect a SIP phone to extension 701 and place a call to any number in the U.S. or Canada.

6. Once you have placed an outbound call, incoming calls should work by dialing your Google Voice number from any phone. If you have trouble getting Google to answer the call, this is fairly typical. Try adjusting the NAT settings for your extension from YES to NEVER and place another call. Then change then back to NAT = yes, and you should be good to go.

7. For additional Google Voice trunks, rinse and repeat.


The Simonics GV-SIP Gateway Solution. Here’s the quick thumbnail of the steps to put all the pieces in place. First, we set up a Google Voice account at Google as documented above. Next, we’ll set up an account at the Simonics site to link our Google Voice account to the Simonics SIP Gateway. Then we’ll plug our Simonics SIP credentials into the preconfigured Simonics trunk on Incredible PBX. Finally, we’ll add Incoming and Outgoing Routes to tell Issabel how to process Google Voice calls.

Now you’re ready to set up an account on the Simonics site. With this Nerd Vittles link, there’s a one-time fee of $4.99.

1. Start by registering your new Google account.

2. After paying the $4.99 registration fee via PayPal, proceed through the setup process to link your Google Voice account and 11-digit Google Voice phone number to the Simonics SIP Gateway.

3. You then will be provided your SIP username and password as well as the gateway address, gvgw.simonics.com, to use in building your SIP trunk on your Issabel PBX.



4. If your SIP credentials ever get compromised, regenerate your password by logging back into the Simonics GW site.

Now it’s time to configure your Simonics trunk in Incredible PBX for Issabel. Start by logging into the Issabel web interface as admin with your admin password from above. Next, click PBX:PBX Configuration in the left Issabel menu. Click Trunks:Simonics-GV in the PBX Configuration menu. The Simonics-GV trunk template will display:

1. Untick the Disable Trunk check box.

2. In Outbound CallerID, insert your 10-digit Google Voice number.

3. In username, insert GV1 followed by your 10-digit Google Voice number.

4. In secret, insert your Simonics SIP password.

5. In the Registration String, insert GV1 followed by your 10-digit Google Voice number followed by a colon (:)

6. In the Registration String after the colon, insert your Simonics SIP password.

7. In the tail of the Registration String after the slash (/), insert your 10-digit Google Voice number.

8. Click Submit Changes and then Reload the Dialplan when prompted.

Now you’re ready to configure an Outbound Route for your Google Voice calls. Click Outbound Routes in the PBX Configuration Menu. Then click Add Route and fill out the form as shown below, save your settings, and reload the dialplan.

Finally, let’s configure an Inbound Route for your incoming Google Voice calls. Click Inbound Routes in the PBX Configuration Menu. Then click Add Incoming Route and enter a Description for the route and enter the DID Number using your 10-digit Google Voice number. If you want to activate CNAM (CallerID Name) lookups, choose OpenCNAM from the Source list. Choose an appropriate Destination for the calls from the pull-down menu of choices, e.g. extension, ring group, IVR, etc. Then SAVE your settings and reload dialplan.

Your Google Voice trunk through the Simonics SIP Gateway should now be working. You can verify this by entering sip show registry in the Asterisk CLI. Place a test call from a softphone connected to your Issabel PBX by dialing a 10-digit number. Then place a call to your Google Voice number from a mobile phone or home/office phone. The Asterisk CLI displays progress of calls by activating it from Linux CLI: asterisk -rvvvvvvvvvv

If you have trouble getting Google Voice to work (especially if you have previously used your Google Voice account from a different IP address), try this Google Voice Reset Procedure. It usually fixes connectivity problems. If it still doesn’t work, enable Less Secure Apps using this Google tool.

If you want to display your primary phone number on the pbxstatus dialog, simply enter the number in /etc/pbx/.phone.

Adding Speech Recognition Support to Incredible PBX

To support many of our applications, Incredible PBX has included Google’s speech recognition service. These applications include AsteriDex Voice Dialing by Name (411) and Wolfram Alpha for Asterisk (4747), all of which use Lefteris Zafiris’ terrific speech-recog AGI script. Unfortunately (for some), Google now has tightened up the terms of use for their free speech recognition service. Now you can only use it for "personal and development use." If you meet those criteria, keep reading. Here’s how to activate speech recognition on Incredible PBX. Don’t skip any steps!

If you like Siri, you’ll love Wolfram Alpha. To use Wolfram Alpha by phone, you first must obtain a free Wolfram Alpha APP-ID. Then issue the following command replacing APP-ID with your actual ID. Don’t change the yourID portion of the command:

sed -i "s|yourID|APP-ID|" /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/4747

Now you’re ready to try out the speech recognition apps. Dial 411 and say "American Airlines" to be connected to American.

To access Wolfram Alpha by phone, dial 4747 and enter your query, e.g. "What planes are overhead now?" Read the Nerd Vittles tutorial for additional examples and tips.

Configuring the Issabel Fax Server

Incredible PBX for Issabel includes turnkey fax support with Issabel. Once you have added a trunk that supports VoIP faxing (HINT: Google Voice trunks work great!), fax configuration with Issabel only takes a minute. Start by logging into the Issabel web interface as admin. First, navigate to PBX:PBX Configuration:Extensions:Fax and obtain your password for extension 329. Next, navigate to Fax:Virtual Fax:New Virtual Fax. Fill in the form as shown below using your actual email address and phone number for receiving faxes as well as your actual extension 329 secret. Then click SAVE. Assuming you typed your secret correctly, you will see a status notification showing virtual fax machine "Running and idle on ttyIAX1."



Assuming you already have set up a Google Voice trunk as outlined above, the next step is to modify the Inbound Route for this trunk to support fax detection. In that way, incoming fax calls will automatically be redirected to extension 329 and the received faxes will be emailed to you in PDF format. Set the email address in Fax:Fax Master. In addition, the faxes can be downloaded and managed from Fax:Virtual Fax:Fax Viewer. Modify your Inbound Route to match the #3 settings shown below. Then save/reload your changes.



To receive the incoming faxes by email, navigate to Fax:Fax Master and enter your email address. Then click SAVE.

The final step is to designate the IP addresses of those authorized to send faxes using Issabel. Navigate to Fax:Fax Clients and specify the public and private IP addresses (one per line) authorized to send faxes. Then click SAVE. Hylafax clients can be used remotely, or you can use the web utility included with Issabel: Fax:Virtual Fax:Send Fax.




The best way to test things out is to send yourself a test fax. FaxZERO lets you send 5 free faxes of up to 3 pages every day. Give it a whirl.

To send a fax out from your server from the Linux CLI using either a text document or PDF file, the syntax looks like the following:

sendfax -n -d 8005551212 smsmsg.txt

Sampling Other Incredible PBX Applications

As installed, Incredible PBX includes dozens of additional applications for Asterisk. Here’s how to sample some of them using a softphone connected to your Issabel PBX. A good place to start is Allison’s Demo IVR (dial D-E-M-O) using any phone connected to your PBX:

Nerd Vittles Demo IVR Options
1 – 411 -Call by Name (say "American Airlines")
2 – 2663 – MeetMe Conference
3 – 4747 – Wolfram Alpha
4 – 53669 – Lenny (The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare)
5 – 951 – Today’s News Headlines
6 – 947 – Weather Forecast (enter a 5-digit ZIP code)
7 – 86329 – Today in History
8 – 701 – Speak to a Real Person

For ODBC demos, dial 222 and enter 12345 for the employee number for a sample database application. Or dial 223 for a sample ODBC dialer using AsteriDex. Enter 263 (first three letters of American Airlines) to place the call. Sample dialplan code is stored in /etc/asterisk/odbc.conf. Dial L-E-N-N-Y (53669) to call or forward telemarketer calls to Lenny. Dial T-I-M-E (8463) for Time of Day. Dial *88HHMM to set an Alarm for HH:MM where HH is the hour of the day in military time. Dial C-O-N-F (2663) for MeetMe conference. Conference credentials are in /root/passwords.FAQ. Voice Dialer (411) works with any database entry in AsteriDex. Access AsteriDex with a browser at https://Issabel-IP-Address/asteridex4. Telephone Reminders can be scheduled by phone (123) or via the web: https://Issabel-IP-Address/reminders. Sample code for the FLITE, GoogleTTS, and PicoTTS engines is in 951 (Yahoo News) context of /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf. All of your FreePBX "old favorites" including blacklists, call transfers and forwarding, dictation, recordings and more are still available as well: PBX:PBX Config:Feature Codes.

Update: We’ve added Allison’s Demo IVR to our own Issabel server at Vultr ($2.50/mo.)1 so you can judge the call quality and feature set for yourself. You can even send us a fax or SMS message if you’d like to try out those features:
For VoIP callers, use this free SIP URI: 1015954772235642@tampa.voip.ms

Published: Monday, July 10, 2017  Updated: Tuesday, July 25, 2017


Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a difficult place to address support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forum. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, the PIAF Forum is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.



Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.


 

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Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



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  1. Some of our links refer users to providers that support Nerd Vittles through referral fees or advertising. These funds help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate revenue. However, when pricing is comparable or particular features warrant our recommendation, we support these vendors and deeply appreciate their financial support of our software development efforts. []