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The Most Versatile VoIP Provider: FREE PORTING

The Next Best Thing to (formerly free) Google Voice

Today we want to once again shine the spotlight on LocalPhone, an oft-overlooked VoIP service that’s been around forever. You can call to and be called from any LocalPhone user at no cost. They also offer phone numbers (DIDs) of your choice almost anywhere in the world with free or almost free incoming calls. For those wanting a U.S. DID, the cost is 99¢ a month with a $3 setup fee. That gets you up to 100 free incoming calls a day to your PBX or any SIP phone. Additional calls are a penny per call. There are no limitations on the duration of the calls. If you prefer to forward the calls to your cellphone number in the contiguous U.S., there’s an additional fee of 0.5¢ per minute. But there’s little reason to do that when sending the calls to a SIP softphone on your Android device or iPhone is free. And now the mobile LocalPhone app supports PUSH Notifications. We’ll show you how.

FYI: Nerd Vittles receives a referral credit to keep the lights on when you sign up for service.

Deciphering Your SIP Credentials with LocalPhone

Once you have signed up for a LocalPhone account, the first thing you’ll want to do is make note of your Internet Phone credentials under My Account. These are what we typically refer to as SIP credentials consisting of a SIP ID, SIP password, and SIP server (localphone.com). That’s all you’ll need to configure an incoming LocalPhone trunk on any Incredible PBX® server. And these are the same settings you’d use to configure any SIP phone running on any Android or iOS device. As we noted, you and any other LocalPhone user can call any Internet Phone number worldwide at no cost without limitation. For world travelers, you’ll want to download the LocalPhone app for your smartphone (Android or iOS) and take advantage of their extremely competitive international calling rates.1

Ordering Incoming Numbers (DIDs) from LocalPhone

Begin by funding your account under My Account -> Add Credit. $10 will last you a long time.

The next step is to order one or more incoming phone numbers from LocalPhone.2 If you have friends in far away places that call you frequently, you can purchase DIDs in those locations to eliminate the cost of incoming calls both to them and to you. If you only want a dirt cheap U.S. DID for your home or small office, then LocalPhone is also a perfect fit. Navigate to My Account -> Incoming Numbers and choose the United States as the desired Country. Next, pick the State and City for the desired DID. For free incoming calls, set Call Forwarding and Caller ID for Internet Phone to your assigned Internet Phone SIP ID. You can also elect to forward calls to a SIP URI, if desired. Agree to the terms of use and make your purchase.

Configuring a LocalPhone Trunk with Incredible PBX

We’ve previously covered the LocalPhone trunk setup with Wazo. Most other releases of Incredible PBX include preconfigured LocalPhone trunks for incoming and outgoing calls. Login to the Incredible PBX GUI as admin using your favorite browser and navigate to Connectivity -> Trunks and edit the LocalPhone-In trunk. Set Disable Trunk to NO. Then click the sip-Settings tab. Insert your LocalPhone SIP ID in the username, fromuser, and authuser fields. Insert your LocalPhone SIP Password in the secret field. Change the context field entry to from-trunk. Click on the Incoming tab, and modify the Register String 9999999:yourpassword@localphone.com/9999999 replacing 9999999 with your LocalPhone SIP ID and yourpassword with your LocalPhone SIP Password. Click the Submit button and reload your dialplan when prompted.

Navigate to Connectivity -> Inbound Routes and create a new Inbound Route for LocalPhone using your SIP ID as the DID Number and choosing a desired Destination for incoming calls from your LocalPhone DID. Save your settings and reload the dialplan when prompted.

Configuring a LocalPhone Trunk with VitalPBX

Login to the VitalPBX GUI as admin using your favorite browser and navigate to PBX -> External -> Trunks. Create a new SIP trunk with the following settings replacing 999999 with your LocalPhone SIP ID and 1234 with the LocalPhone SIP Password. Leave the Device for Incoming Calls (User) section blank. Then click SAVE and reload your dialplan.

  • Description: LocalPhone
  • Codecs: ulaw,alaw
  • Local Username: 999999
  • Remote Host: localphone.com
  • Remote Port: 5060
  • Local Secret: 1234
  • Insecure: Port,Invite
  • Allow Inbound Calls: YES
  • Username: [leave blank]
  • Host: [leave blank]
  • Local Secret: [leave blank]
  • Remote Username: 999999
  • Remote Secret: 1234
  • From User: 999999
  • From Domain: localphone.com
  • Qualify: YES
  • Insecure: [leave blank]
  • IP Authentication: NO
  • Qualify: [leave default]
  • Register String: 999999:1234@localphone.com/999999

Navigate to PBX -> External -> Inbound Routes. Create a new Inbound Route for LocalPhone using your SIP ID as the DID Number and choosing a desired Destination for incoming calls from your LocalPhone DID. Save your settings and reload the dialplan when prompted.

Configuring a LocalPhone Trunk with FreePBX

Login to the FreePBX® GUI as admin using your favorite browser and navigate to Connectivity -> Trunks. Add a new chan_sip trunk named localphone. Then click on the sipSettings tab and enter the following replacing 999999 with your LocalPhone SIP ID and 1234 with the LocalPhone SIP Password.

  • username=9999999
  • type=friend
  • secret=1234
  • nat=no
  • insecure=port,invite
  • host=localphone.com
  • fromuser=9999999
  • fromdomain=localphone.com
  • dtmfmode=rfc2833
  • disallow=all
  • context=from-trunk
  • canreinvite=no
  • authuser=9999999
  • allow=ulaw&alaw

Next, click on the Incoming tab and enter the following Register String replacing 999999 with your LocalPhone SIP ID and 1234 with the LocalPhone SIP Password:

9999999:1234@localphone.com/9999999

Then click SUBMIT and reload your dialplan.

Navigate to Connectivity -> Inbound Routes and create a new Inbound Route for LocalPhone using your SIP ID as the DID Number and choosing a desired Destination for incoming calls from your LocalPhone DID. Save your settings and reload the dialplan when prompted.

Using Local Numbers for International Calls

LocalPhone has a unique feature that lets you dial a local number from a phone number you have whitelisted in your country and reach almost anyone in the world that you’ve added to your Contacts List. You only pay LocalPhone’s discounted international calling rate for the calls. For example, to call a landline in the U.K. from the U.S. using a LocalPhone-provided U.S. phone number, the calling rate is less than a penny a minute. A call to Cyprus by dialing a U.S. number assigned to your account for your whitelisted phone numbers is 4.5 cents per minute. To get started setting up your whitelisted phone numbers and contacts list, navigate to My Account -> Local Numbers in your LocalPhone account. In your Local Numbers list, first add and verify phone numbers you want to authorize to make calls on your nickel. Next, add the names and phone numbers of international destinations you wish to reach by dialing a local number. LocalPhone will immediately assign a local number for each destination. Simply add these local numbers to the contacts list on your smartphone, and you can call from anywhere in your country at the discounted LocalPhone international calling rates. There are no double-dialing or call menus to navigate. Dialing the assigned local number transparently connects you directly to your destination with no intermediate hurdles.

Using LocalPhone with Other Trunk Providers

So long as your PBX doesn’t have more than two incoming calls to a single DID at the same time, the most economical PBX design is to use LocalPhone DIDs as your published DIDs. This reduces the cost of incoming calls to less than a dollar a month per DID for up to 3,000 incoming calls of unlimited duration. Then use one of our Platinum Sponsors, Skyetel or our soon-to-be-available ClearlyIP SIP trunking service for outbound calls and spoof the outbound CallerID on those other trunks using your LocalPhone DID.

Enjoying the Best of All Worlds with LocalPhone

If you have an iPhone or Android smartphone in addition to a PBX, you can take advantage of LocalPhone’s ability to send incoming calls to multiple destinations. Just make sure your PBX isn’t routing the incoming calls to a destination that is automatically answered, e.g. an IVR. On your Android phone, download the VitalPBX Communicator from the Google Play Store and configure a SIP connection using your LocalPhone SIP credentials. Incoming calls from your LocalPhone DIDs and Internet Phone Number now will be sent to both destinations.

If you have followed one of our previous tutorials that document making SIP URI calls from either a PBX or a SIP client such as LinPhone on your smartphone, then you can take advantage of LocalPhone’s incoming SIP URI feature.3 Just dial 9999999@localphone.com where 9999999 is any LocalPhone SIP ID. You also can add Custom Extensions in Incredible PBX much like the Lenny extension using a Dial string of SIP/9999999@localphone.com to reach worldwide LocalPhone destinations from any PBX extension at no cost. Enjoy!

Originally published: Monday, December 9, 2019



Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info 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.
 


  1. Rates are based on the lowest pay as you go per-minute price to call a landline or a mobile. Skype is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. []
  2. LocalPhone advises that DID fulfillment can take up to 14 days although our orders always have been completed in less than an hour. []
  3. LocalPhone offers call filtering for your Internet Phone number using either a blacklist or whitelist in addition to offering the option of blocking anonymous calls. []

Interconnect Incredible PBX 16-15 to the Asterisk Mothership

The Holy Grail for a mobile VoIP solution is a simple way to connect back to your primary Asterisk® PBX via Wi-Fi from anywhere in the world to make and receive calls as if you never left. Let’s tick off the potential problems. First, many home-based PBXs are sitting behind NAT-based routers. Second, almost all remote Wi-Fi connections are made through a NAT-based router. Third, chances are the remote hosting platform blocks outgoing email from downstream servers such as a mobile PBX. Fourth, deciphering the IP address of your remote connection can be problematic. Fifth, the chances of experiencing one-way audio or no audio on your VoIP calls is high because of NAT-based routers at both ends of your connection.

For those that travel regularly and want to avoid the complexity of configuring OpenVPN, here is a quick thumbnail of the setup we recommend as your mobile companion. You’ll never have a one-way audio problem again. In terms of hardware, you’ll need a Raspberry Pi 4B or 3B+ with its native WiFi support plus a Windows or Mac notebook computer for traveling. You’ll also need a NeoRouter VPN server to make this process seamless. If you’ve already set up an OpenVPN server platform, it will work equally well. One advantage of NeoRouter is that clients can be added from the client side without having to create a config file on the VPN server. All you need is a username and password. But the choice of VPN platform is totally a matter of preference. The objective using either OpenVPN or NeoRouter is secure communications to your home base. We don’t want to have to reconfigure either your home PBX or your traveling Raspberry Pi or your notebook PC based upon changes in your public and private IP addresses.

Today we’ll walk you through the easiest way to set up a (free) NeoRouter server on the Internet. It can be used to connect up to 254 devices on an encrypted private LAN. We’re delighted to have finally found a perfect use for the (free) Google Cloud instance.


Using a Raspberry Pi, build an Incredible PBX 16-15 platform by following our previous tutorial. We’ll set this up on your home WiFi network so that you only have to throw the Raspberry Pi and its power supply in your suitcase when you travel. As part of the setup, we’ll download NeoRouter and activate private IP addresses for your notebook computer as well as both of your PBXs (using nrclientcmd). Next, we’ll interconnect the two PBXs using SIP trunks and the NeoRouter private LAN IP addresses. We’ll take advantage of a neat little Raspberry Pi trick by storing a wpa_supplicant.conf template on your PC for the remote WiFi setup even though we don’t yet know anything about the remote LAN. Once we know the SSID and password at the remote destination, we’ll use your notebook computer to edit the template and transfer the file to the /boot folder of your RasPi’s microSD card. When the card then is inserted and the RasPi is booted, it will automatically move the template to the proper /etc/wpa_supplicant folder to successfully activate your WiFi connection. We’ll also load links, a fast text-based browser, just in case you encounter a hotel that requires some sort of acknowledgement or password before establishing your WiFi connection to the Internet.

Setting Up a (free) NeoRouter Server in the Cloud

Because NeoRouter uses a star-based VPN architecture, that means the NeoRouter Server must always be available at the same IP address for all of the NeoRouter Clients (aka Nodes) to talk to. If you already have a cloud-based server that has a static IP address and can handle the traffic cop duties of NeoRouter Server, then that’s an ideal place to install NeoRouter Server. Simply download the Free flavor of NeoRouter Server that matches your existing platform and install it. Add an FQDN for your server’s IP address, and you’re all set. A detailed summary of available management options is included in our previous NeoRouter v2 article.

We devoted a couple weeks to Google Cloud instances, and it turned out to be a pretty awful platform for hosting Asterisk. But the free offering looks to be a perfect fit as a hosting platform for NeoRouter Server. You also won’t have to worry about Google going out of business anytime soon. So let us walk you through an abbreviated setup process on the Google Cloud platform. If you’re just getting started with Google Cloud, read our previous article to take advantage of Google’s generous $300 offer to get you started and to generally familiarize yourself with the mechanics of setting up an instance in the Google Cloud.

For NeoRouter Server, navigate to https://console.cloud.google.com. Click the 3-bar image in the upper left corner of your Dashboard. This exposes the Navigation Menu. In the COMPUTE section of the Dashboard, click Compute Engine -> VM Instances. Then click CREATE PROJECT and name it. Now click CREATE INSTANCE and Name it nrserver. The instance name becomes the hostname for your virtual machine. If you want to remain in the Free Tier, choose f1-micro instance as the Machine Type and choose a U.S. Region (us-central1, us-east1 or us-west1). For the Boot Disk, choose CentOS 6 and expand the disk storage to at least 20GB (30GB is available with the Free Tier). For the Firewall setting, leave HTTP and HTTPS disabled. Check your entries carefully and then click the Create button.

When your virtual machine instance comes on line, jot down the assigned public IP address. We’ll need it in a minute. Now click on the SSH pull-down tab and choose Open in a Browser Window. Now we need to set a root password and adjust the SSH settings so that you can login from your desktop computer using SSH or Putty:

sudo passwd root
su root
nano -w /etc/ssh/sshd_config

When the editor opens the SSH config file, add the following entries. Then save the file and restart SSH: service sshd restart

PermitRootLogin yes
PasswordAuthentication yes

You now should be able to log in to your instance as root from your desktop computer using SSH or Putty. Test it to be sure: ssh root@server-IP-address

Before we leave the Google Cloud Dashboard, let’s make the assigned public IP address permanent so that it doesn’t get changed down the road. Keep in mind that, if you ever delete your instance, you also need to remove the assigned static IP address so you don’t continue to get billed for it. From Home on the Dashboard, scroll down to the NETWORKING section and choose VPS Network -> External IP Addresses. Change the Type of your existing address to Static and Name it staticip. Next, choose Firewall Rules in the VPS Network section and click CREATE FIREWALL RULE. Fill in the template like the following leaving the other fields with their default entries. Then click CREATE.

  1. Name: neorouter
  2. Target Tags: neorouter
  3. Source IP Range: 0.0.0.0/0
  4. Protocols/Ports: check tcp: 32976

CAUTION: Before this firewall rule will be activated for your instance, it also must be specified in the Network Tags section for your instance. Shut down your instance and add the neorouter tag by editing your instance. Then restart your instance.

Now we’re ready to install NeoRouter Free v2 Server on your instance. Be sure to choose the Free v2 variety. Log back into your server as root using SSH/Putty and issue these commands:

yum -y update
yum -y install nano
wget http://download.neorouter.com/Downloads/NRFree/Update_2.3.1.4360/Linux/CentOS/nrserver-2.3.1.4360-free-centos-x86_64.rpm
rpm -Uvh nrserver-2.3.1.4360-free-centos-x86_64.rpm
/etc/rc.d/init.d/nrserver.sh restart
nrserver -setdomain <DOMAINNAME> <DOMAINPASSWORD>
nrserver -adduser <USERNAME> <PASSWORD> admin
nrserver -enableuser <USERNAME>
nrserver -showsettings

Finally, add the following command to /etc/rc.local so that NeoRouter Server gets started whenever your instance is rebooted:

echo "/etc/rc.d/init.d/nrserver.sh start" >> /etc/rc.local

Installing Incredible PBX 16-15 on a Raspberry Pi

We won’t regurgitate our Raspberry Pi tutorial. Simply follow the steps outlined there to acquire the necessary components and to get Incredible PBX 16-15 installed. We do want to stress the importance of getting WiFi working, configuring Exim to use your Gmail credentials as a smarthost, and making sure you added the email addition to /etc/rc.local so that you receive IP address information about your PBX whenever it is rebooted. If you skipped any of these steps, stop here and revisit the RasPi tutorial to complete those items.

Configuring NeoRouter Client on Your Computers

All flavors of Incredible PBX come with the NeoRouter client preinstalled. If your Asterisk-based home PBX is of another variety, you can install the NeoRouter Client matching the architecture of your server from here. Be sure to click on the NeoRouter Free v2 tab before making your selection. The other varieties are incompatible with the Free NeoRouter v2 Server installed above and are not free. Also be sure you match both the operating system and architecture of your server platform. Finally, make certain that TCP 32976 is whitelisted in your firewalls.

On Linux-based (non-GUI) platforms, setting up the NeoRouter Client is done by issuing the command: nrclientcmd. You’ll be prompted for your NeoRouter Server FQDN as well as your username and password credentials. Perform this procedure on both your home PBX and the Raspberry Pi.

To add your Windows or Mac notebook to the NeoRouter VPN, download the appropriate client and run the application which will prompt for your NeoRouter Server FQDN as well as your NeoRouter credentials. Once completed, you should see all three machines in your NeoRouter Free Client Dashboard: your PC as well as your home PBX and Raspberry Pi-based Incredible PBX. Make note of the private VPN addresses (10.0.0.X) of both your home PBX and your Raspberry Pi. These VPN addresses never change, and we’ll need them to interconnect your PBXs and to set up a softphone on your notebook computer.

Admininistrative Tools to Manage NeoRouter

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

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

For a complete list of commands: nrserver –help


Interconnecting Your Raspberry Pi and Home PBX

To keep things simple, our setup examples below assume the following NeoRouter VPN addresses: Home PBX (10.0.0.1) and Raspberry Pi (10.0.0.2). Using a browser, you’ll need to login to the GUI of your Home PBX and Raspberry Pi and add a Trunk to each PBX. Be sure to use the same secret on BOTH trunk setups. We don’t recommend forwarding incoming calls from your Home PBX to your Raspberry Pi because most folks won’t be sitting in their hotel room all day to answer incoming calls. Instead, add the number of your smartphone to a Ring Group on the Home PBX and don’t forget the # symbol at the end of the number. On the Raspberry Pi side, we are assuming that whenever a call is dialed from a registered softphone with the 9 prefix, the call will be sent to the Home PBX for call processing (without the 9). For example, 98005551212 would send 800-555-1212 to the Home PBX for outbound routing and 9701 would send 701 to the Home PBX for routing to the 701 extension. You can obviously adjust your dialplan to meet your own local requirements.

On the Home PBX, the chan_sip trunk entries should look like this:

Trunk Name: raspi-remote

PEER DETAILS

host=10.0.0.2
type=friend
context=from-internal
username=home-pbx
fromuser=home-pbx
secret=some-password
canreinvite=no
insecure=port,invite
qualify=yes
nat=yes

On the Raspberry Pi, the chan_sip trunk entries should look like this:

Trunk Name: home-pbx

PEER DETAILS

host=10.0.0.1
type=friend
context=from-internal
username=raspi-remote
fromuser=raspi-remote
secret=some-password
canreinvite=no
insecure=port,invite
qualify=yes
nat=yes

On the Raspberry Pi, add an Outbound Route named Out9-home-pbx pointed to home-pbx Trunk with the following Dial Patterns. For each Dial Pattern, prepend=blank and prefix=9:

dial string: 1NXXNXXXXXX  
dial string: NXXNXXXXXX  
dial string: *98X.
dial string: XXX
dial string: XXXX
dial string: XXXXX
  

Tweaking Your Raspberry Pi for WiFi Mobility

Typically, you don’t know the WiFi SSID or password of your destination location before you travel. Because you won’t be traveling with a monitor and keyboard for your Raspberry Pi, we needed some way to adjust the WiFi credentials on the microSD card to accommodate the destination WiFi network when you arrive. Luckily, the Raspberry Pi folks thought of a clever way to handle this. You can simply plug your microSD card into your notebook PC (Mac ALERT: Don’t forget your SD card dongle!) and add a wpa_supplicant.conf config file to the /boot directory on the card once you arrive at your destination and know the SSID and password of the local WiFi network. When the Raspberry Pi is subsequently booted, the operating system will move the config file to the /etc/wpa_supplicant directory so that your WiFi network will come on line. Here’s what a typical wpa_supplicant.conf file should look like using your actual credentials. The last network section handles open WiFi network connections (think: McDonald’s) if you want to enable them:

country=US
update_config=1

network={
 ssid="your-SSID"
 psk="your-SSID-password"
 key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
 scan_ssid=1
 priority=5
}

network={
 key_mgmt=NONE
 priority=1
}

The other gotcha is that some public WiFi networks require some type of web login procedure before you can actually access the Internet even though an IP address may have been assigned to your Raspberry Pi. To handle this situation, you’ll need a text-based web browser on the Raspberry Pi that can be accessed through your notebook PC using SSH and your Raspberry Pi’s VPN address. Our favorite is links which can be installed on your Raspberry Pi before you pack up.

apt-get install links -y

Once you arrive at your destination, connect both your notebook PC and Raspberry Pi to the same WiFi network, login to the RasPi with SSH at the VPN address assigned to your RasPi, and run links to start the browser. Press <esc> to access the links menu options. If you can’t access your RasPi at the VPN IP address, try its WiFi-assigned local IP address.

Adding a Softphone to Your Notebook PC

Last, but not least, you obviously need a way to make and receive calls once your Raspberry Pi is up and running at the remote site. We recommend installing a softphone on your Mac or PC notebook that connects to an extension on your Raspberry Pi using the VPN IP address of the Raspberry Pi. Using the VPN address assures that the connection will always be available regardless of the WiFi network’s local IP addresses. Everyone has their own favorite softphone, but here are some suggestions.

For Windows PCs, we recommend VitalPBX Communicator. It’s a free download from here.



Another good choice is YateClient which also is free. Download it from here. Run YateClient once you’ve installed it and enter the credentials for an extension on your Raspberry Pi. Then enter the VPN IP address of your server plus your extension’s password. Click OK to save your entries.

If you are a Mac user, another great no-frills softphone is Telephone. Just download and install it from the Mac App Store.

Adding a Softphone to Your Smartphone

We actually prefer adding a free softphone app to our smartphone. There are a number of alternatives on both the iOS and Android platforms. With iPhones and iPads, we’ve had great success with Acrobits Softphone, Grandstream Wave, Linphone, and Zoiper Lite. All are available in the App Store. For Android devices, our current favorite is the VitalPBX Communicator. Acrobits Groundwire is another good choice. But Grandstream Wave, Linphone, and Zoiper Lite also are available. Keep in mind that Zoiper also supports IAX connections to simplify NAT connections. And, on both platforms, don’t forget that Google now lets you make and receive calls using the new Google Voice app using your old Google Voice numbers that no longer work directly with Asterisk.

Enjoy your pain-free traveling!

Originally published: Monday, September 9, 2019



Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info 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.
 



Virtual Paradise: It’s Incredible PBX 13-13.10 for VMware

Let’s face it. Virtual Machines are the future of server administration. Whether you prefer your own dedicated hardware or cloud-based resources managed by you or someone else, virtual platforms are the way to go. You get more bang for the buck out of your hardware by pooling resources for multiple tasks. VMware® and VirtualBox® make it easy. Today we’re pleased to introduce our latest build for VMware. It provides the latest Asterisk® 13 and FreePBX® 13 GPL components from source in about 15 minutes.

Just download the VMware .zip image from SourceForge to your desktop and unzip it. Fire up your browser and login to your VMware Web Console. With a few mouse clicks, you’ll have a CentOS 6.10 platform in place with Incredible PBX® just a single keystroke away. It doesn’t get much easier. And, you get the very latest release of Asterisk 13 compiled from source code that you can actually examine, enhance, and share… just like the GPL license says.

Choosing a Virtual Machine Platform

Making the right deployment choice for your virtual machine platform depends upon a number of factors. We initially started out with Proxmox 4 which looked promising. After all, we had used and recommended earlier releases of Proxmox for many years until some security vulnerabilities caused us to look elsewhere. Those kernel issues are now a thing of the past, but Proxmox 4 introduced some new wrinkles. First, to stay current with software fixes and updates, you have to pay the piper by signing up for the annual support license. This turned out to be a deal breaker for a couple of reasons. It was expensive since it’s based upon the number of CPUs in your platform. In the case of the hardware shown below, that turned out to be 4 CPUs (by Proxmox’s calculation) which meant the annual support license would run nearly $400 per year. That buys an enormous number of cloud-based virtual machines without having to babysit hardware at all. So we’ve reluctantly concluded that Proxmox 4 isn’t a particularly good fit for development or production use.

We’ve already sung the praises of VirtualBox so we wont’ repeat it here. VMware also is rock-solid and has been for more than fifteen years. VMware typically runs on dedicated hardware. If you don’t have the funds for a hardware purchase to support your virtualization requirements, then VirtualBox on your desktop machine is a no-brainer. For many, however, some separation of the virtualization environment from your desktop computing environment is desirable. That choice is equally easy. VMware wins, hands down. Better yet, you can make snapshot backups of your virtual machines in seconds with a single button click. If you’ve wrestled with backups on standalone hardware with Linux, you’ll quickly appreciate the difference.

Getting Started with VMware ESXi

Many of you have VMware platforms already in place at work. For you, installing Incredible PBX 13-13.10 is as simple as downloading the image to your desktop and importing it into your existing platform. Better yet, your system administrator can do it for you. If you’re new to VMware, here’s an easy way to get started, and the software won’t cost you a dime. VMware offers a couple of free products that will give you everything you need to run a robust VMware platform on relatively inexpensive hardware. The choice is up to you.

A Free VMware Platform for SOHO Apps

Before you can download the components for the free VMware ESXi platform, you’ll need to sign up for a free account at my.vmware.com. Once you’re signed up, log in and follow these simple steps to sign up for a free ESXi license key and download the ESXi version 6 software:

  1. Write down your assigned License Key
  2. Manually download the VMware vSphere Hypervisor 6.5 ISO
  3. Manually download the VMware vSphere Client 6.5

Next, burn the ISO to a CD/DVD and boot your dedicated VM hardware platform with it. Follow the instructions to complete the install. Next install the vSphere Client on a Windows computer. Don’t forget to add your ESXi License Key when you complete the installation. Once the ESXi server is up and running, you can stick the hardware on a shelf somewhere out of the way. You will rarely interact with it. That’s all handled using either the VMware vSphere Client on your Windows Desktop or the VMware Web Console. Don’t forget to apply your License Key once VMware ESXi is up: Virtual Machines -> Licensing -> Apply License.

Deploy VMware Template with vSphere Client

Deploying an Incredible PBX template takes about two minutes, but first you need to download the Incredible PBX 13-13.10 template from SourceForge onto your Windows Desktop and unzip it.

Once the Incredible PBX template components are on your desktop, here are the deployment steps:

1. Login to the vSphere Client on your Windows Desktop using the root account you set up when you installed ESXi. Choose File, Deploy OVF Template.

2. Select the two Incredible PBX components from your desktop PC.

3. Click Next.

4. Give the new Virtual Machine a name.

5. IMPORTANT: Choose Thin Provision option and click Next.

6. Review your entries and click Next to create the new Virtual Machine.

7. It only takes a couple minutes to create the new Virtual Machine.

8. The Main Client window will redisplay and your new VM should now be shown in the left panel. (1) Click on it. (2) Then click the Green start icon. (3) Then click the Console Window icon.

9. When the VM’s Console Window opens, click in the window in the black area. Log into your virtual machine as root using the default password: password.

10. To complete the Incredible PBX setup, you will automatically be walked through the short installation procedure when you start the virtual machine. Following the automatic reboot, just log in a second time as root and the install will complete.

11. To add Incredible Fax support with HylaFax and AvantFax, run: /root/incrediblefax13.sh.

12. Set up the proper time zone for your server: /root/timezone-setup.

13. Next, reset your root password and make it very secure: passwd.

14. Finally reset your admin password for web access to your server: /root/admin-pw-change.

15. Reset Enchilada passwords at any time by running: /root/update-passwords.

Press Ctrl-Alt to get your mouse and keyboard out of the console window.

Installing the vSphere Web Client

If you’re lucky, you may not have a Windows machine. The downside is that the vSphere Client described above only works on the Windows platform. After a good bit of searching, we finally uncovered a simple way to install the latest vSphere Web Client. It is pure HTML5 with no Flash code! While still under development, VMware has made progress, and it shows. Most of the feature set of vSphere Client now is available from the convenience of your browser. Just point it to the IP address of your VMware server like this: https://ip-address/ui/.

Here’s how to install the vSphere Web Client:

1. Log into the console of your ESXi server as root using your root password.

2. Press F2 to Customized System.

3. Choose Troubleshooting Options.

4. Choose Enable SSH.

5. Using a Terminal window on a Mac or Linux machine or using Putty with Windows, log into the IP address of your ESXi server as root.

6. Issue the following commands to install the latest vSphere Web Client vib and disable http firewall blockage:

esxcli software vib install -v http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmw-tools/esxui/esxui-signed-latest.vib
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient

7. Using a web browser, login to the web client as root at https://ESXi-server-IP-address/ui/

8. Should you ever wish to remove the web client from your server:

esxcli software vib remove -n esx-ui

9. You may wish to disable SSH access when you’re finished. Just repeat steps 1-4 above.

Here’s what a typical Incredible PBX Virtual Machine looks like in the web client once you’ve added the VMware Tools to your virtual machine as documented below. There’s even a Console window.

Under the Virtual Machines tab, you now can manage and add new VMs directly.

Installing VMware Tools in a Virtual Machine

If you plan to manage your virtual machines using the vSphere Web Client and a browser, then you definitely will want to install the VMware Tools in each of your virtual machines.

For ESXi 6.0, your only choice is VMwareTools. Here’s how to install:

1. Start up your VM and login as root.

2. From the Windows vSphere Client, right click on virtual machine you started.

3. Choose Guest:Install VMware Tools.

4. Return to the Linux CLI of your virtual machine and issue the following commands. Accept all of the defaults in the installation script when it is run in the final step below:

mkdir /mnt/cdrom
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
ls /mnt/cdrom
cd /tmp
tar -zxvf /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools*
umount /mnt/cdrom
cd vmware-tools-distrib
./vmware-install.pl

For ESXi 6.5, we prefer the new GPL VMware open-vm-tools. Here’s how to install:

1. Start up your VM and login to the VM as root using SSH or Putty.

2. From the Linux CLI, issue the following commands:

yum -y install --enablerepo=epel open-vm-tools
reboot

Special thanks to John Borhek (@unsichtbarre on the PIAF Forum) for the VMware lessons. 🙂

That should be enough tutorial for today. Enjoy your new VMware platform.

Continue Reading: Configuring Extensions, Trunks & Routes

Don’t Miss: Incredible PBX Application User’s Guide covering the 31 Whole Enchilada apps

Originally published: Monday, December 18, 2017  Updated: Monday, June 17, 2019



Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info 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.
 



A Better Way to Deploy Incredible PBX in the Google Cloud

Last week we introduced you to Incredible PBX 13-13.10 for the Google Cloud. This week we’ll take off the training wheels and show you how to deploy Incredible PBX in the Google Cloud in exactly 3 minutes using Google Cloud’s Image repository. And you can repeat the drill to deploy as many PBXs as you like at 3 minutes a pop. If you’re still cruising along on your $300 credit from Google, then your PBX should be cost-free for the entire first year. After that, you can decide which Google Cloud Machine Type best meets your requirements and those of your wallet. The free tier is an option, but don’t expect much more performance-wise than what you’d get with the original Raspberry Pi. As the saying goes, "It ain’t pretty, but it works." We would encourage you to move up to the Standard machine type for consistent performance.

Before we get started, let us just offer a little constructive criticism regarding Google’s methodology. If a developer builds an application as we have and wants to make it publicly available at no cost, wouldn’t it make sense to allow the developer to host the image in the Google Cloud (for a fee) so that other users could quickly deploy it on their own Google Cloud platforms? That apparently makes too much sense so Google requires you to jump through all sorts of hoops to use free software unless we’re willing to type in the Google email address of every user authorized to deploy the software. Sorry but we’ve got better ways to waste our time. This is the corporate mentality run amuck. Don’t Be Evil, Google. Remember?

So here’s the drill to get you to the place that Google already should have provided. Download the 3GB tarball image to your desktop from SourceForge. After you’ve created your Google Cloud account, create a Bucket (storage locker) on the platform to house your files and upload the tarball into your own Bucket. Next, transform the tarball into what Google calls an Image that can be used to quickly build VM Instances (5 minutes). Finally, start up the instance. The Incredible PBX installer will work its magic letting you set your passwords, and then your PBX platform is ready for use (3 minutes). The real install time is under 10 minutes, but Google has managed to turn it into a project of an hour or more depending upon the speed of your Internet connection. Our apologies, but it beats the tedium of last week’s methodology.

Downloading Incredible PBX for the Google Cloud

Unlike Google and to its eternal credit, SourceForge still hosts open source projects with tarballs of enormous size which can be downloaded at no cost other than what your Internet service provider may charge for bandwidth. Begin your Incredible PBX adventure by downloading the tarball image (3GB) which was designed specifically for the Google Cloud. Depending upon the speed of your Internet connection, this takes some time. Here’s the link.

Creating a Google Cloud Account

If you haven’t already done so, hop over to https://cloud.google.com/free and claim your $300 credit by signing up for a Google Cloud account.

Creating a Bucket in the Google Cloud

To begin, log in to your Google Cloud Console using your Google credentials. If you haven’t already done so, Create a Project from your Dashboard. This Project will house your Compute Engine VM Instances. In Plain English, a Google Cloud VM Instance is nothing more than an application that happens to run in the Google Cloud.

Next, click on the 3-bar image in the upper left corner of your Dashboard. This exposes the Navigation Menu. Scroll down to the STORAGE section and choose Storage -> Browser.

Click on the CREATE BUCKET button. When the dialog window opens, Name your bucket something unique and creative in lower case letters. Fill in the rest of the form as shown and choose the Region in which you want to store your stuff. Then click Create.

Uploading Incredible PBX into Google Cloud Bucket

Once you have created your Bucket, the Bucket Details dialog will open. Click on the Upload Files tab and choose the Incredible PBX tarball that you downloaded from SourceForge. Or you can simply drag the file to the area reserved for uploads in the dialog window.

Once the file upload completes, the Browser window will appear displaying your Bucket. You can click on the Bucket name to display the files in your Bucket which should now include the uploaded Incredible PBX tarball:

Transforming Incredible PBX Tarball into an Image

Google Cloud can create Instances from Images, but not from tarballs in your Bucket. So the next step is to create an Image from the Incredible PBX tarball. Once that is done, you can delete the tarball and bucket from your Google Cloud platform so you don’t have to pay monthly storage fees. Up to this step is where Google could have handled setup transparently by simply allowing us to share our bucket with anonymous users without this knuckle drill, but…

So now we need to create an Image which will transform the Incredible PBX tarball into a format that can be used to create Instances.

Click on the Navigation Menu (the 3-bar image in the upper left corner of your Dashboard). Navigate to COMPUTE -> Compute Engine -> Images. Click CREATE IMAGE.

When the Create Image dialog opens, fill in the form as shown below and click on the Browse button to choose the Incredible PBX tarball from your Bucket. Then click Create.

Creating an Instance from a Cloud Image

It takes about 5 minutes for Google Cloud to transmogrify the Incredible PBX tarball into an Image that can actually be used to create Instances. So be patient. Once your image has been created, it will appear at the top of the Images listing.

Click on the checkbox to the left of the Image to select it as shown above. Then click CREATE INSTANCE at the top of the form.

The Create Instance dialog window will appear. Fill in the form as shown above using a unique Name for your Instance. Adjust the Region to match your closest location. This choice may also affect the performance of your instance so picking the default is not a good idea if you want to stick with the freebie platform. Note that the Standard Machine Type (1vCPU) is selected by default. If you still have remaining credits, this won’t be a problem. Otherwise, you’ll have to pay about $25/month for this Machine Type level once your credits expire. We’ve had fair to good results using the Small Machine Type which costs under $15/month.

HINT #1: Never use the default zone for your PBX if you plan to use one of the shared vCPU machine types (micro or small). If you prefer the freebie which we strongly discourage because of performance issues, change the Machine Type to micro in the pull-down. Also note that the Boot Disk defaults to 10GB in size. This won’t work for long, and we’d recommend upping it to at least 20GB. Up to 30GB is provided at no cost using the micro Machine Type. Simply click the Change button to adjust the disk size. Once you’ve made your desired changes, click Create to build the Incredible PBX instance and bring it on line.

HINT #2: If you’re not going to move up to at least the small Machine Type, we would strongly urge you try one of our recommended $1/month VPS providers, all of whom offer considerably better performance at much less cost. In fact, you can bring up a redundant platform with a second VPS provider and still spend about the same money for a year that you would spend with a Google Cloud Standard VPS for one month.

While your Instance is being created and activated, navigate to COMPUTE -> Compute Engine -> VM Instances to display the status of your instances and to decipher the public IP address of your server. After you complete the next section, we’ll make a couple additional modifications using the Google Cloud Console by changing your public IP address from ephemeral (dynamic) to static and and adjusting the Google Cloud firewall. Delay making these changes at this time for the reason covered in the Word of Caution which follows.

A Word of Caution: Incredible PBX for the Google Cloud installs with a default root password of That obviously makes your running instance susceptible to compromise if someone else reads this article. So IMMEDIATELY after creating and activating a new Incredible PBX instance, make sure you complete the setup process in the next step during which you will be prompted to reset all of your passwords including the root password.

Completing the Incredible PBX Setup Process

Login to Incredible PBX as root using the default password at the public IP address of your instance using SSH or Putty. The Incredible PBX license agreement should display. If not, your server may have already been compromised. Accept the license agreement and enter very secure passwords for your server when prompted. Once the setup process finishes, reboot your server and wait about a minute for the reboot process to finish. Then log back into your server and allow the Automatic Update Utility to bring your server up to current specs. Once the pbxstatus screen displays, make sure everything is up and running. If not, wait another minute and rerun pbxstatus. Now issue the command user and make certain that you are the only root user on your server. If not, or if you didn’t see the license agreement when you first logged in, or if you couldn’t log in with the default root password, immediately shut down and destroy your instance and create a new one from your Google Cloud Image as documented in the previous section. TIP: If you see connection refused when you first attempt to log in, don’t be alarmed. Just count to 60 and try to log in again. The instance has to have time to boot up after activation before you can log in.

Finalizing Your Google Cloud Setup

Now that you’ve completed the Incredible PBX setup process, here are a couple of changes that need to be made using the Google Cloud GUI. First, you’ll need to permanently assign your IP address to your instance so that you don’t risk having Google change it when your server is rebooted. We also need to make a couple adjustments in the Google Cloud Firewall. Login again to the Google Cloud Console using your Google credentials.

From the Navigation Menu scroll down to the NETWORKING section and choose VPS Network -> External IP Addresses. Change the Type of your existing address to Static and Name it staticip. Next, choose Firewall Rules in the VPS Network section and click CREATE FIREWALL RULE. Fill in the template like the following leaving the other fields with their default entries. Then click CREATE.

Name: incrediblepbx-udp
Target Tags: udp-in
Source IP Range: 0.0.0.0/0
Protocols/Ports: udp: all

If you plan to use HTTPS with your server, you’ll also need to add another firewall rule similar to the existing default-allow-http rule. Simply change the Port to tcp:443 and Name it default-allow-https with a Target Tag of https-in.

CAUTION: Before these firewall rules will be activated for your instance, they also must be specified in the Network Tags section for your instance by adding the udp-in and https-in tags and restarting your instance.

It should be noted that Incredible PBX includes its own Travelin’ Man 3 firewall that manages a whitelist of IP addresses that are allowed ANY access to your server. So we will primarily use the firewall component of the Google Cloud instance to allow sufficient access to Incredible PBX to allow it to actually control server access.

Once you’ve verified that your instance is functioning properly, it’s safe to go back to your Bucket and delete it together with its contents. This will save you having to pay monthly storage fees even though they are quite reasonable.

Getting Started with Incredible PBX

Most of the configuration of your PBX will be performed using the web-based Incredible PBX GUI with its FreePBX® 13 GPL modules. Use a browser pointed to the IP address of your server and choose Incredible PBX Admin. Log in as admin with the password you configured above. HINT: You can always change it if you happen to forget it: /root/admin-pw-change

Configuring Trunks with Incredible PBX

Before you can actually make and receive calls, you’ll need to add one or more VoIP trunks with providers, create extensions for your phones, and add inbound and outbound routes that link your extensions to your trunks. Here’s how a PBX works. Phones connect to extensions. Extensions connect to outbound routes that direct calls to specific trunks, a.k.a. commercial providers that complete your outbound calls to any phone in the world. Coming the other way, incoming calls are directed to your phone number, otherwise known as a DID. DIDs are assigned by providers. Some require trunk registration using credentials handed out by these providers. Others including Skyetel use the IP address of your PBX to make connections. Incoming calls are routed to your DIDs which use inbound routes telling the PBX how to direct the calls internally. A call could go to an extension to ring a phone, or it could go to a group of extensions known as a ring group to ring a group of phones. It could also go to a conference that joins multiple people into a single call. Finally, it could be routed to an IVR or AutoAttendant providing a list of options from which callers could choose by pressing various keys on their phone.

We’ve done most of the prep work for you with Incredible PBX. We’ve set up an Extension to which you can connect a SIP phone or softphone. We’ve set up an Inbound Route that, by default, sends all incoming calls from registered trunks to a Demo IVR. And we’ve built dozens of trunks for some of the best providers in the business. Sign up with the ones you prefer, plug in your credentials, and you’re done.

Unlike traditional telephone service, you need not and probably should not put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to telephone providers. In order to connect to Plain Old Telephones, you still need at least one provider. But there is nothing wrong with having several. And a provider that handles an outbound call (termination) need not be the same one that handles an incoming call (origination) and provides your phone number (DID). Keep in mind that you only pay for the calls you make with each provider so you have little to lose by choosing several. The PIAF Forum also has dozens of recommendations on VoIP providers.

With the preconfigured trunks in Incredible PBX, all you need are your credentials for each provider and the domain name of their server. Log into Incredible PBX GUI Administration as admin using a browser. From the System Status menu, click Connectivity -> Trunks. Click on each provider you have chosen and fill in your credentials including the host entry. Be sure to uncheck the Disable Trunk checkbox! Fill in the appropriate information for the Register String. Save your settings by clicking Submit Changes. Then click the red Apply Config button.

Introducing Skyetel SIP Trunking for Incredible PBX

As frequent visitors already know, Skyetel is a Platinum Sponsor of Nerd Vittles and our open source projects including Incredible PBX. Their financial support keeps the lights on while all of our software remains free for the taking. Today we’re pleased to introduce a special new Skyetel offering for Nerd Vittles readers. If you loved BOGO deals at your favorite grocery store, then you’re going to love this new Skyetel offer which starts today. By signing up through this Nerd Vittles link, Skyetel will match any deposit originally made to your new account up to $250. For example, if you deposit $50, you’ll get $100 of SIP trunking service credit. Deposit $250, and you’ll get $500 of SIP trunking service credit. Basically, it’s half price service, and you get to choose how much you’d like. Skyetel also offers free porting of your DIDs for the first 60 days after you open your account plus a 10% reduction in your current origination rate and DID costs by presenting your last month’s bill.1 Complete details and configuration instructions on the Skyetel service are available in this tutorial. It only takes a minute or two to get up and running. Effective 10/1/2023, $25/month minimum spend at Skyetel is required.

Adding Skyetel Trunks to Incredible PBX

The Skyetel trunks were configured as part of the default install of Incredible PBX. All that’s required on your part is to sign up for Skyetel service to take advantage of the Nerd Vittles special offer. First, complete the Prequalification Form here. You then will be provided a link to the Skyetel site to complete your registration. Once you have registered on the Skyetel site and your account has been activated, open a support ticket and request the BOGO credit for your account by referencing the Nerd Vittles special offer. Greed will get you nowhere. Credit is limited to one per person/company/address/location. If you want to take advantage of the 10% discount on your current service, open another ticket and attach a copy of your last month’s bill. See footnote 1 for the fine print. If you have high call volume requirements, document these in your Prequalification Form, and we will be in touch. Easy Peasy!

Unlike many VoIP providers, Skyetel does not use SIP registrations to make connections to your PBX. Instead, Skyetel utilizes Endpoint Groups to identify which servers can communicate with the Skyetel service. An Endpoint Group consists of a Name, an IP address, a UDP or TCP port for the connection, and a numerical Priority for the group. For incoming calls destined to your PBX, DIDs are associated with an Endpoint Group to route the calls to your PBX. For outgoing calls from your PBX, a matching Endpoint Group is required to authorize outbound calls through the Skyetel network. Thus, the first step in configuring the Skyetel side for use with your PBX is to set up an Endpoint Group. A typical setup for use with Incredible PBX®, Asterisk®, or FreePBX® would look like the following:

  • Name: MyPBX
  • Priority: 1
  • IP Address: PBX-Public-IP-Address
  • Port: 5060
  • Protocol: UDP
  • Description: server1.incrediblepbx.com

To receive incoming PSTN calls, you’ll need at least one DID. On the Skyetel site, you acquire DIDs under the Phone Numbers tab. You have the option of Porting in Existing Numbers (free for the first 60 days after you sign up for service) or purchasing new ones under the Buy Phone Numbers menu option.

Once you have acquired one or more DIDs, navigate to the Local Numbers or Toll Free Numbers tab and specify the desired SIP Format and Endpoint Group for each DID. Add SMS/MMS and E911 support, if desired. Call Forwarding and Failover are also supported. That completes the VoIP setup on the Skyetel side. System Status is always available here.

Configuring a Skyetel Inbound Route

Because there is no SIP registration with Skyetel, incoming calls to Skyetel trunks will NOT be sent to the Default Inbound Route configured on your PBX because FreePBX treats the calls as blocked anonymous calls without an Inbound Route pointing to the 11-digit number of each Skyetel DID. From the GUI, choose Connectivity -> Inbound Routes -> Add Inbound Route. For both the Description and DID fields, enter the 11-digit phone number beginning with a 1. Set the Destination for the incoming DID as desired and click Submit. Reload the Dialplan when prompted. Place a test call to each of your DIDs after configuring the Inbound Routes.

With the included Incredible Fax add-on, you can enable Fax Detection under the Fax tab. And, if you’d like CallerID Name lookups using CallerID Superfecta, you can enable it under the Other tab before saving your setup and reloading your dialplan.

Configuring a Skyetel Outbound Route

If Skyetel will be your primary provider, you can use both 10-digit and 11-digit dialing to process outbound calls through your Skyetel account. It’s preconfigured to support Skyetel in Connectivity -> Outbound Routes -> Add Outbound Route. The recommended setup is shown below. Just add the CallerID Number you wish to associate with your outbound calls through Skyetel:

Under the Dial Patterns tab, you’ll find the default rules as shown below. Adjust them to meet your own requirements.

There are a million ways to design outbound calling schemes on PBXs with multiple trunks. One of the simplest ways is to use no dial prefix for the primary trunk and then use dialing prefixes for the remaining trunks.

Another outbound calling scheme would be to assign specific DIDs to individual extensions on your PBX. Here you could use NXXNXXXXXX with the 1 Prepend as the Dial Pattern with every Outbound Route and change the Extension Number in the CallerID field of the Dial Pattern. With this setup, you’d need a separate Outbound Route for each group of extensions using a specific trunk on your PBX. Additional dial patterns can be added for each extension designated for a particular trunk. A lower priority Outbound Route then could be added without a CallerID entry to cover extensions that weren’t restricted or specified.

HINT: Keep in mind that Outbound Routes are processed by FreePBX in top-down order. The first route with a matching dial pattern is the trunk that is selected to place the outbound call. No other outbound routes are ever used even if the call fails or the trunk is unavailable. To avoid failed calls, consider adding additional trunks to the Trunk Sequence in every outbound route. In summary, if you have multiple routes with the exact same dial pattern, then the match nearest to the top of the Outbound Route list wins. You can rearrange the order of the outbound routes by dragging them into any sequence desired.

Audio Issues with Skyetel

If you experience one-way or no audio on some calls, make sure you have filled in the NAT Settings section in the GUI under Settings -> Asterisk SIP Settings -> General. In addition to adding your external and internal IP addresses there, be sure to add your external IP address in /etc/asterisk/sip_general_custom.conf like the following example and restart Asterisk:

externip=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

If you’re using PJSIP trunks or extensions on your PBX, implement this fix as well.

Receiving SMS Messages Through Skyetel

Most Skyetel DIDs support SMS messaging. Once you have purchased one or more DIDs, you can edit each number and, under the SMS & MMS tab, you can redirect incoming SMS messages to an email or SMS destination of your choice using the following example:



Sending SMS Messages Through Skyetel

We’ve created a simple script that will let you send SMS messages from the Linux CLI using your Skyetel DIDs. In order to send SMS messages, you first will need to create an SID key and password in the Skyetel portal. From the Settings icon, choose API Keys -> Create. Once the credentials appear, copy both your SID and Password. Then click SAVE.

Next, from the Linux CLI, issue the following commands to download the sms-skyetel script into your /root folder. Then edit the file and insert your SID, secret, and DID credentials in the fields at the top of the script. Save the file, and you’re all set.

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/sms-skyetel
chmod +x sms-skyetel
nano -w sms-skyetel

To send an SMS message, use the following syntax where 18005551212 is the 11-digit SMS destination: sms-skyetel 18005551212 "Some message"

Configuring a Softphone for Incredible PBX

We’re in the home stretch now. You can connect virtually any kind of telephone to your new PBX. Plain Old Phones require an analog telephone adapter (ATA). With a cloud-based PBX, you need a standalone SIP device such as ObiHai’s OBi100 or OBi110 (if you have a phone line from Ma Bell to hook up as well). SIP phones can be connected directly so long as they have an IP address. These could be hardware devices or software devices such as the YateClient softphone. We’ll start with a free one today so you can begin making calls. You can find dozens of recommendations for hardware-based SIP phones both on Nerd Vittles and the PIAF Forum when you’re ready to get serious about VoIP telephony.

We recommend YateClient which is free. Download it from here. Run YateClient once you’ve installed it and enter the credentials for the 701 extension on Incredible PBX. You’ll need the IP address of your server plus your extension 701 password. Choose Applications _> Extensions -> 701 and write down your SIP/IAX Password. You can also find it in /root/passwords.FAQ. Fill in the blanks using the IP address of your Server, 701 for your Username, and whatever Password you assigned to the extension when you installed Incredible PBX. Click OK to save your entries.

Once you are registered to extension 701, close the Account window. Then click on YATE’s Telephony Tab and place some test calls to the numerous apps that are preconfigured on Incredible PBX. Dial a few of these to get started:

DEMO - Apps Demo
123 - Reminders
947 - Weather by ZIP Code
951 - Yahoo News
*61 - Time of Day
TODAY - Today in History

If you are a Mac user, another great no-frills softphone is Telephone. Just download and install it from the Mac App Store.

One cautionary note if you have multiple SIP softphones behind the same NAT-based router. Getting SIP packets routed back to the appropriate desktop machine can be problematic and typically results in missing audio on calls. The easy workaround is to set up the NeoRouter VPN on both your instance and each of your desktop computers. Then register the softphones to the NeoRouter private IP address of your instance. The NeoRouter client already is installed on your server, but you’ll need to set up a NeoRouter server somewhere and connect to it by running nrclientcmd.

Introducing the Incredible PBX Security Model

Incredible PBX includes one of the most secure turnkey PBX implementations on the planet. As configured, it is protected by both Fail2Ban and a hardened configuration of the IPtables Linux firewall. This release also includes Port Knocker for simple, secure access from any remote computer or smartphone. You can get up to speed on how the technology works by reading the Nerd Vittles tutorial. Your Port Knocker credentials are stored in /root/knock.FAQ together with activation instructions for your server and mobile devices. The NeoRouter VPN client also is included for rock-solid, secure connectivity to remote users. Read our previous tutorial for setup instructions. As configured, nobody can access your PBX without your credentials AND an IP address that matches the IP address of your server or the PC from which you installed Incredible PBX. You can whitelist additional IP addresses by running the command-line utility /root/add-ip. You can remove whitelisted IP addresses by running /root/del-acct. Incredible PBX is preconfigured to let you connect to many of the leading SIP hosting providers without additional firewall tweaking. The Google Cloud firewall adds an extra layer of protection.

The IPtables firewall is a complex piece of software. If you need assistance with configuring it, visit the PIAF Forum for some friendly assistance.

Incredible Backup and Restore

We’re pleased to introduce our latest backup and restore utilities for Incredible PBX. Running /root/incrediblebackup13 will create a backup image of your server in /tmp. This backup image then can be copied to any other medium desired for storage. To restore it to another Incredible PBX server, simply copy the image to a server running Asterisk 13 and the same version of the Incredible PBX GUI. Then run /root/incrediblerestore13. Doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Incredible PBX Automatic Update Utility

Every time you log into your server as root, Incredible PBX will ping the IncrediblePBX.com web site to determine whether one or more updates are available to bring your server up to current specs. We recommend you log in at least once a week just in case some new security vulnerability should come along.

In the meantime, we encourage you to sign up for an account on the PIAF Forum and join the discussion. In addition to providing first-class, free support, we think you’ll enjoy the camaraderie.

Upgrading to IBM Speech Engines

If you’ve endured Google’s Death by a Thousand Cuts with text-to-speech (TTS) and voice recognition (STT) over the years, then we don’t have to tell you what a welcome addition IBM’s new speech utilities are. We can’t say enough good things about the new IBM Watson TTS and STT offerings. With IBM’s services, you have a choice of free or commercial tiers. Let’s put the pieces in place so you’ll be ready to play with the Whole Enchilada.

Getting Started with IBM Watson TTS Service

We’ve created a separate tutorial to walk you through obtaining and configuring your IBM Watson credentials. Start there.

Next, login to your Incredible PBX server and issue these commands to update your Asterisk dialplan and edit ibmtts.php:

cd /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin
./install-ibmtts-dialplan.sh
nano -w ibmtts.php

Insert your credentials in $IBM_username and $IBM_password. For new users, your $IBM_username will be apikey. Your $IBM_password will be the TTS APIkey you obtained from IBM. Next, verify that $IBM_url matches the entry provided when you registered with IBM. Then save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then ENTER. Now reload the Asterisk dialplan: asterisk -rx "dialplan reload". Try things out by dialing 951 (news) or 947 (Weather) from an extension registered on your PBX.

Getting Started with IBM Watson STT Service

Now let’s get IBM’s Speech to Text service activated. Log back in to the IBM Cloud. Click on the Speech to Text app. Choose a Region to deploy in, choose your Organization from the pull-down menu, and select STT as your Space. Choose the Standard Pricing Plan. Then click Create. When Speech to Text Portal opens, click the Service Credentials tab. In the Actions column, click View Credentials and copy down your STT username and password.

Finally, login to your Incredible PBX server and issue these commands to edit getnumber.sh:

cd /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin
nano -w getnumber.sh

Insert apikey as your API_USERNAME and your actual STT APIkey API_PASSWORD in the fields provided. Then save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then ENTER. Update your Voice Dialer (411) to use the new IBM STT service:

sed -i '\\:// BEGIN Call by Name:,\\:// END Call by Name:d' /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf
sed -i '/\\[from-internal-custom\]/r ibm-411.txt' /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf
asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"

Now try out the Incredible PBX Voice Dialer with AsteriDex by dialing 411 and saying "Delta Airlines."

Using Gmail as a SmartHost for SendMail

Many Internet service providers including Google block email transmissions from downstream servers (that’s you) to reduce spam. The simple solution is to use your Gmail account as a smarthost for SendMail. Here’s how. Log into your server as root and issue the following commands:

cd /etc/mail
hostname -f > genericsdomain
touch genericstable
makemap -r hash genericstable.db < genericstable
mv sendmail.mc sendmail.mc.original
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/sendmail.mc.gmail
cp sendmail.mc.gmail sendmail.mc
mkdir -p auth
chmod 700 auth
cd auth
echo AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com \\"U:smmsp\\" \\"I:user_id\\" \\"P:password\\" \\"M:PLAIN\\" > client-info
echo AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com:587 \\"U:smmsp\\" \\"I:user_id\\" \\"P:password\\" \\"M:PLAIN\\" >> client-info
echo AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com:465 \\"U:smmsp\\" \\"I:user_id\\" \\"P:password\\" \\"M:PLAIN\\" >> client-info
nano -w client-info

When the nano editor opens the client-info file, change the 3 user_id entries to your Gmail account name without @gmail.com and change the 3 password entries to your actual Gmail password. Save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then ENTER.

Now issue the following commands:

chmod 600 client-info
makemap -r hash client-info.db < client-info
cd ..
make
service sendmail restart

Finally, send yourself a test message. Be sure to check your spam folder!

 echo "test" | mail -s testmessage yourname@yourdomain.com

Check mail success with: tail /var/log/mail.log. If you have trouble getting a successful Gmail registration (especially if you have previously used this Google 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.

Originally published: Monday, April 1, 2019


Continue Reading: Configuring Extensions, Trunks & Routes

Don't Miss: Incredible PBX Application User's Guide covering the 31 Whole Enchilada apps


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 VoIP-info 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.
 



  1. In the unlikely event that Skyetel cannot provide a 10% reduction in your current origination rate and/or DID costs, Skyetel will give you an additional $50 credit to use with the Skyetel service. []

Cell Phone Tips for Spring Break and International Travel

With Spring Break upon us and Summer Vacations just around the corner, we wanted to briefly review some of your cellphone and data options for those that might be planning a trip outside the United States. If you’re only going as far as Mexico, Canada, or the U.S. Virgin Islands, then your existing cellular provider in the U.S. may have you covered at no additional cost. If your provider is not AT&T, then check with your carrier. And speaking of AT&T, if you’ll only be outside these covered areas for a brief time, then you may wish to consider enabling AT&T’s International Day Pass which costs you nothing until you use it. On days that you use it in over 100 countries, it’s $10/day with the same talk, text, and data options you currently have in the U.S. No, it’s not a bargain for a 60-day vacation, but it’s a pretty good deal for a week or so when you only need cell service for a few days. No changes in your current AT&T plan are necessary other than enabling the International Day Pass feature. Click on the Get Started Link to enable the service. Be sure to read the fine print.

Once you get past the options in the first paragraph, most of the other economical choices for cell phone and data coverage internationally involve swapping out the SIM card in your phone with a country-specific SIM card from a local provider. The first step is to make absolutely certain that your cell phone is unlocked before you hop on a plane. The procedure varies with different providers so you’ll need to investigate what steps are required. Be sure to also decipher how to verify that your phone is unlocked. Again, with AT&T, it’s a simple matter of visiting their web site and filling out a form. Within 24 hours, you should be good to go.

Now comes the hard part, choosing an alternate provider meeting your travel requirements. This turns on a number of factors such as whether callers in the U.S. need to contact you using a U.S. phone number. If so, then the first paragraph is your best bet if you need to be reached on your existing phone number. If any U.S. phone number will suffice (and you can always forward your cellphone number to this new number), then using an Android phone or iPhone, there’s an easy solution if you have Wi-Fi access or some cellphone data to burn. Simply use a Google Voice phone number and associate it with the new Android or iPhone Google Voice app on your phone. Be sure to enable WiFi/Mobile Data calling in GV Settings, and you’re good to go with almost any smart phone with 4G service. With Wi-Fi, no SIM card is required. Just put your phone in Airplane Mode and enjoy free calling back to the U.S. and Canada.

The next issue to consider is whether you need to make frequent calls or send frequent text messages to those in the U.S. while you are away. If so, then the best choice we’ve found without Wi-Fi access is Orange Holiday Europe.1 Simply buy the $50 card and put it in your cellphone on the day you wish to begin your service. It buys you 10GB of data, 2 hours of calls, and 1000 text messages to almost any phone in the world from 30 European countries including the U.K. Once activated, the card is good for 14 days and includes tethering. It can be renewed for an additional 21.70€ (about $25) which adds another 14 days with an additional 10GB of data, 120 minutes of calls, and another 1,000 SMS messages.

If the phone number of your calls doesn’t matter and you can also take advantage of Google Voice for free calling to and from the U.S., then all you really need is the cheapest SIM card you can find in the country you’re visiting. One word of advice from our frequent traveler friends is don’t buy the SIM card in the airport where they typically are two to five times as expensive. To give you an example, a SIM card with 5GB of data in Madrid can be had for about 10€ per week. For iPhone users, a more flexible SIM card that looked appealing to us was Gigsky which offers regional SIM cards for anywhere in the world. Enjoy your vacation!

Originally published: Monday, March 25, 2019


 

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.
 



  1. Many of our purchase links refer users to Amazon when we find their prices are competitive for the recommended products. Nerd Vittles receives a small referral fee from Amazon to help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate Amazon commissions. However, when pricing is comparable or availability is favorable, we support Amazon because Amazon supports us. []

A Golden Newbie: Incredible PBX 13-13.10 for Ubuntu 18.04.2


If you’re as big a fan of Ubuntu as we are, then you’ll be pleased to know that the month-old update to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is rock-solid. It takes a brave soul to name anything Bionic Beaver, but Ubuntu pulls it off and makes you want to meet one face-to-face, just not in a bar after midnight. Well, St. Paddy would be proud. Today’s new Incredible PBX® 13-13.10 release brings you everything you could want in a PBX, and the icing on the cake is Ubuntu 18.04.2. The only drawback to Ubuntu 18.04 is that none of our $1/month VPS cloud providers support the platform just yet. But have no fear, both Digital Ocean and Vultr already do.1

Introducing 2019 Edition of Incredible PBX

This is our third major release of our flagship Incredible PBX 13-13 platform. In addition to today’s release for Ubuntu 18.04.2, it’s also available for Raspbian 8 as well as CentOS 6 and 7. It features 70+ new FreePBX® GPL modules plus all the latest components for OSS Endpoint Manager making SIP phone deployment with Asterisk® 13 a breeze. There also are terrific new backup and restore utilities which make migration and restoration of Incredible PBX platforms a snap. Finally, we’ve incorporated Skyetel SIP trunking in the build. It literally makes configuration of outbound and incoming calling a one-minute process. On the Skyetel side, create an Endpoint Group pointing to the IP address of your PBX, order one or more DIDs and point them to the new EndPoint Group. Done. On the Incredible PBX side, add Inbound Routes specifying the 11-digit numbers of your Skyetel DIDs and point each of them to the desired destination for incoming calls. Done. Outbound calls are automatically configured to use your Skyetel account. Our complete Skyetel tutorial is available here and includes up to a $250 usage credit with Skyetel’s new BOGO deposit match.2 Effective 10/1/2023, $25/month minimum spend required.

Creating an Ubuntu 18.04.2 Platform

If you plan to install Incredible PBX 13-13.10 using a cloud provider that supports Ubuntu 18.04.2, then creation of the Ubuntu 18.04.2 platform is as simple as clicking on the 64-bit OS as part of the creation of your 1GB RAM virtual machine. If you plan to use your own hardware, then any modern desktop computer will suffice. Begin by downloading the Ubuntu 18.04.2 ISO from here. Then create a bootable USB stick or assign the ISO as the boot device on your virtual machine platform. Here are steps for Ubuntu install using the server console:

  • Preferred language: English
  • Keyboard: English (US)
  • Install Ubuntu
  • Network interface (eth or wlan) from DHCP
  • Proxy (leave blank)
  • Ubuntu mirror (accept default entry)
  • Partitioning: Use Entire Disk
  • Choose Disk for Install (accept default usually)
  • File System Setup (choose Done)
  • Confirm Disk Install (Continue)
  • Profile Setup (create a username and password)
  • Install OpenSSH server (press Space Bar then Done)
  • Featured Server Snaps (leave blank)
  • Reboot Now (when prompted)
  • Remove installation media
  • Login using username created above
  • sudo passwd root
  • exit
  • Login as root with new root password
  • userdel username (that you created above)
  • nano -w /etc/ssh/sshd_config
  • Add: PermitRootLogin yes
  • save file
  • exit
  • Login as root using SSH or Putty

CAUTION: Don’t make any "improvements" to Ubuntu 18.04.2 after the initial install, or the Incredible PBX install may fail. It is designed for a base platform only!

Installing Incredible PBX 13-13.10

If you haven’t already done so, log into your Ubuntu 18.04.2 server as root using SSH or Putty. It’s important to log in from a desktop computer that you will be using to make changes on your server since this IP address will be whitelisted in the firewall as part of the installation process. Do NOT use the server console to install Incredible PBX, or you may not be able to log in from your desktop computer thereafter.

Before we begin the install procedure, let’s determine whether a swap file exists on your platform. If not, you’ll need to create one below as one of the first steps after downloading the Incredible PBX installer. Issue this command to determine if you have swap space: free -h

Now let’s download and install Incredible PBX 13-13.10. There are two flavors: the base install with the 70+ FreePBX GPL modules that comprise the web-based GUI to manage your PBX and the Whole Enchilada which adds 30+ Asterisk applications to the base install to provide TTS support, voice recognition, news and weather TTS apps, AsteriDex, telephone reminders, and much more. Here are the steps. Be sure to uncomment the create-swapfile-DO entry if you are lacking a swapfile.

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx-13-13.10U-LEAN.tar.gz
tar zxvf incrediblepbx-13-13.10U-LEAN.tar.gz
rm -f incrediblepbx-13-13.10U-LEAN.tar.gz
#./create-swapfile-DO
./Incredible*

There are two phases to the base install. You’ve just completed Phase #1. After your server reboots, log back in and kick off the Incredible PBX installer a second time. Don’t disappear immediately. On some cloud platforms, you may be asked whether to preserve your existing SSH setup. Choose the Keep Local Version default. On all platforms, you’ll be prompted for two additional responses in the first few minutes. At the first prompt, simply press ENTER to continue. At the second prompt, enter the country code to associate with your PBX. For those in the United States, the code is 1. We assume others are more familiar with their country code than Americans are. 😉

cd /root
./Incredible*

Make some careful notes when the install finishes. Then press ENTER to reboot your server.

If you don’t plan to use the Incredible PBX applications, then your install is complete after the reboot. Each time you log in to your server, the Automatic Update Utility will run to provide late-breaking updates that may affect the security of your server. So make sure you log in to the Linux CLI at least once a week to stay safe!

Assuming you’ve already created a very secure root password (update it by running passwd), perform the following 5 Steps to get everything locked down:

  1. Create an admin password for GUI access: /root/admin-pw-change
  2. Create an admin password for Apache web access: htpasswd /etc/pbx/wwwpasswd admin
  3. Configure the correct timezone for your server: /root/timezone-setup
  4. Retrieve your PortKnocker setup like this: cat /root/knock.FAQ
  5. Add IPtables WhiteList entries for remote access: /root/add-ip or /root/add-fqdn

Most of the configuration of your PBX will be performed using the web-based Incredible PBX GUI with its FreePBX 13 GPL modules. Use a browser pointed to the IP address of your server and choose Incredible PBX Admin. Log in as admin with the password you configured in the first step above. HINT: You can always change it if you happen to forget it.

To get a basic system set up so that you can make and receive calls, you’ll need to add a VoIP trunk, create one or more extensions, set up an inbound route to send incoming calls to an extension, and set up an outbound route to send calls placed from your extension to a VoIP trunk that connects to telephones in the real world. You’ll also need a SIP phone or softphone to use as an extension on your PBX.

Continue Reading: Configuring Extensions, Trunks & Routes

Installing Incredible PBX 13-13 Whole Enchilada

There now are two more pieces to put in place. The sequence matters! Be sure to upgrade to the Whole Enchilada before you install Incredible Fax. If you perform the steps backwards, you may irreparably damage your fax setup by overwriting parts of it.

The Whole Enchilada upgrade script now is included in the Incredible PBX LEAN tarball. To run it, issue the following commands:

cd /root
./Enchilada*

If you accidentally installed Incredible Fax before upgrading to the Whole Enchilada, you may be able to recover your Incredible Fax setup by executing the following commands. It’s worth a try anyway.

amportal a ma install avantfax
amportal a r



Installing Incredible Fax with HylaFax/AvantFax

You don’t need to upgrade to the Whole Enchilada in order to use Incredible Fax; however, you may forfeit the opportunity to later upgrade to the Whole Enchilada if you install Incredible Fax first. But the choice is completely up to you. To install Incredible Fax, log into your server as root and issue the following commands:

cd /root
./incrediblefax13_ubuntu18.sh

After entering your email address to receive incoming faxes, you’ll be prompted several times to choose options as part of the install. Simply press the ENTER key at each prompt and accept all of the defaults. When the install finishes, make certain that you reboot your server to bring Incredible Fax on line. There will be a new AvantFax option in the Incredible PBX GUI. The default credentials for AvantFax GUI are admin:password. Be advised that there remain a couple of quirks on the Ubuntu 18.04 platform. First, after entering your credentials, you may get a timeout error with your browser. Simply press the Reload/Refresh icon in your browser, and the default AvantFax menu will appear. Second, you will need to set your email delivery address and a new password for AvantFax manually. Click on the Settings option in the upper right corner of the dialog. When you save your settings, you may again experience a timeout event. Click the Reload/Refresh button on your browser again, and AvantFax will come back to life.

NAT-Based Router and Dynamic IP Wrinkles

If your PBX is sitting behind a NAT-based router, you’ll need to redirect incoming UDP 5060 traffic to the private IP address of your PBX. While this isn’t technically necessary to complete calls with registered trunk providers, there are others such as Skyetel that don’t use SIP registrations where failure to redirect UDP 5060 would cause inbound calls to fail.

The Incredible PBX GUI is accessed using a web browser pointed to the IP address of your server. As part of the password setup, you created an admin password for the Incredible PBX GUI, a.k.a. FreePBX GUI. Login now using your favorite browser. If you have forgotten your admin password, you can reset it by logging into your server as root using SSH: /root/admin-pw-change. Once you’ve logged into the GUI, your first task is to record the public and private IP addresses for your server. This eliminates 99% of the problems with one-way audio on calls where your server is sitting behind a NAT-based router. Navigate to Settings -> SIP Settings and click on Detect Network Settings in the NAT Settings section of the template. Verify that the entries shown are correct and then click Submit followed by Apply Config.

Many Internet service providers assign dynamic IP addresses to customers. This poses issues with a PBX because SIP phones positioned outside your LAN need to be able to connect to the PBX. It also complicates SIP routing which needs both the public IP address and the private IP address of the PBX in order to route calls properly. In the previous section, you configured your PBX with these two IP addresses. The problem, of course, is that this public IP address may change when your ISP assigns dynamic IP addresses. Luckily, many ISPs rarely update dynamic IP addresses of their customers. For example, our home network has had the same dynamic IP address for more than four years. If this is your situation, then you have little to worry about. If the IP address ever changes, you can simply repeat the steps in the previous section. However, if your ISP regularly changes your public IP address, then you need an automatic way to keep your PBX configured properly. Otherwise you will start experiencing calls with one-way audio or no audio, and remote phones will no longer be able to connect to the PBX. We’ve developed a script to update the public IP address of your PBX. Depending upon your situation, all you need to do is run it hourly or daily to keep your PBX configured properly. To begin, first download the updater script after logging into your server as root:

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/update-externip.tar.gz
tar zxvf update-externip.tar.gz
rm -f update-externip.tar.gz

Try running the script once to make sure it correctly identifies the public IP address of your server: /root/update-externip. Then add an entry to the end of /etc/crontab that schedules the script to run at 12:30 a.m. each night:

30 0 * * * root /root/update-externip > /dev/null 2>&1

Configuring Trunks with Incredible PBX

Before you can actually make and receive calls, you’ll need to add one or more VoIP trunks with providers, create extensions for your phones, and add inbound and outbound routes that link your extensions to your trunks. Here’s how a PBX works. Phones connect to extensions. Extensions connect to outbound routes that direct calls to specific trunks, a.k.a. commercial providers that complete your outbound calls to any phone in the world. Coming the other way, incoming calls are directed to your phone number, otherwise known as a DID. DIDs are assigned by providers. Some require trunk registration using credentials handed out by these providers. Others including Skyetel use the IP address of your PBX to make connections. Incoming calls are routed to your DIDs which use inbound routes telling the PBX how to direct the calls internally. A call could go to an extension to ring a phone, or it could go to a group of extensions known as a ring group to ring a group of phones. It could also go to a conference that joins multiple people into a single call. Finally, it could be routed to an IVR or AutoAttendant providing a list of options from which callers could choose by pressing various keys on their phone.

We’ve done most of the prep work for you with Incredible PBX. We’ve set up an Extension to which you can connect a SIP phone or softphone. We’ve set up an Inbound Route that, by default, sends all incoming calls from registered trunks to a Demo IVR. And we’ve built dozens of trunks for some of the best providers in the business. Sign up with the ones you prefer, plug in your credentials, and you’re done. The next section of this tutorial will show you the easier way, using Skyetel.

Unlike traditional telephone service, you need not and probably should not put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to telephone providers. In order to connect to Plain Old Telephones, you still need at least one provider. But there is nothing wrong with having several. And a provider that handles an outbound call (termination) need not be the same one that handles an incoming call (origination) and provides your phone number (DID). Keep in mind that you only pay for the calls you make with each provider so you have little to lose by choosing several. The PIAF Forum also has dozens of recommendations on VoIP providers.

With the preconfigured trunks in Incredible PBX, all you need are your credentials for each provider and the domain name of their server. Log into Incredible PBX GUI Administration as admin using a browser. From the System Status menu, click Connectivity -> Trunks. Click on each provider you have chosen and fill in your credentials including the host entry. Be sure to uncheck the Disable Trunk checkbox! Fill in the appropriate information for the Register String. Save your settings by clicking Submit Changes. Then click the red Apply Config button.

Using Skyetel with Incredible PBX

On the Raspberry Pi platform, all of the Skyetel trunks are preconfigured. All you need to do is sign up for Skyetel service in March to take advantage of the $50 Nerd Vittles special offer. First, complete the Prequalification Form here. You then will be provided a link to the Skyetel site to complete your registration. Once you have registered on the Skyetel site and your account has been activated, open a support ticket and request a $50 credit for your account by referencing the Nerd Vittles special offer. Greed will get you nowhere. Credit is limited to one per person/company/address/location. You can also take advantage of a 10% discount on your current service. Just open another ticket and attach a copy of your last month’s bill. See footnote 3 for the fine print.3 If you have high call volume requirements, document these in your Prequalification Form, and we will be in touch.

Unlike many VoIP providers, Skyetel does not use SIP registrations to make connections to your PBX. Instead, Skyetel utilizes Endpoint Groups to identify which servers can communicate with the Skyetel service. An Endpoint Group consists of a Name, an IP address, a UDP or TCP port for the connection, and a numerical Priority for the group. For incoming calls destined to your PBX, DIDs are associated with an Endpoint Group to route the calls to your PBX. For outgoing calls from your PBX, a matching Endpoint Group is required to authorize outbound calls through the Skyetel network. Thus, the first step in configuring the Skyetel side for use with your PBX is to set up an Endpoint Group. A typical setup for use with Incredible PBX®, Asterisk®, or FreePBX® would look like the following:

  • Name: MyPBX
  • Priority: 1
  • IP Address: PBX-Public-IP-Address
  • Port: 5060
  • Protocol: UDP
  • Description: server1.incrediblepbx.com

To receive incoming PSTN calls, you’ll need at least one DID. On the Skyetel site, you acquire DIDs under the Phone Numbers tab. You have the option of Porting in Existing Numbers (free for the first 60 days after you sign up for service) or purchasing new ones under the Buy Phone Numbers menu option.

Once you have acquired one or more DIDs, navigate to the Local Numbers or Toll Free Numbers tab and specify the desired SIP Format and Endpoint Group for each DID. Add SMS/MMS and E911 support, if desired. Call Forwarding and Failover are also supported. That completes the VoIP setup on the Skyetel side. System Status is always available here.

Configuring a Skyetel Inbound Route

Because there is no SIP registration with Skyetel, incoming calls to Skyetel trunks will NOT be sent to the Default Inbound Route configured on your PBX because FreePBX treats the calls as blocked anonymous calls without an Inbound Route pointing to the 11-digit number of each Skyetel DID. From the GUI, choose Connectivity -> Inbound Routes. You will note that we already have configured a Skyetel template for you. Simply edit the existing entry and plug in the 11-digit phone number (beginning with a 1) of your Skyetel DID . Set the Destination for the incoming DID as desired and click Submit. It defaults to extension 701.

If your PBX is sitting behind a NAT-based router, you’ll need to redirect incoming UDP 5060 traffic to the private IP address of your PBX. Then place a test call to each of your DIDs after configuring the Inbound Routes.

If you have installed the Incredible Fax add-on, you can enable Fax Detection under the Fax tab. And, if you’d like CallerID Name lookups using CallerID Superfecta, you can enable it under the Other tab before saving your setup and reloading your dialplan.

Configuring a Skyetel Outbound Route

If Skyetel will be your primary provider, it is preconfigured by default on the Raspberry Pi platform so you can use both 10-digit and 11-digit dialing to process outbound calls through your Skyetel account. If you prefer another setup, choose Connectivity -> Outbound Routes.

There are a million ways to design outbound calling schemes on PBXs with multiple trunks. One of the simplest ways is to use no dial prefix for the primary trunk and then use dialing prefixes for the remaining trunks.

Another outbound calling scheme would be to assign specific DIDs to individual extensions on your PBX. Here you could use NXXNXXXXXX with the 1 Prepend as the Dial Pattern with every Outbound Route and change the Extension Number in the CallerID field of the Dial Pattern. With this setup, you’d need a separate Outbound Route for each group of extensions using a specific trunk on your PBX. Additional dial patterns can be added for each extension designated for a particular trunk. A lower priority Outbound Route then could be added without a CallerID entry to cover extensions that weren’t restricted or specified.

HINT: Keep in mind that Outbound Routes are processed by FreePBX in top-down order. The first route with a matching dial pattern is the trunk that is selected to place the outbound call. No other outbound routes are ever used even if the call fails or the trunk is unavailable. To avoid failed calls, consider adding additional trunks to the Trunk Sequence in every outbound route. In summary, if you have multiple routes with the exact same dial pattern, then the match nearest to the top of the Outbound Route list wins. You can rearrange the order of the outbound routes by dragging them into any sequence desired.

Audio Issues with Skyetel

If you experience one-way or no audio on some calls, make sure you have filled in the NAT Settings section in the GUI under Settings -> Asterisk SIP Settings -> General. In addition to adding your external and internal IP addresses there, be sure to add your external IP address in /etc/asterisk/sip_general_custom.conf like the following example and restart Asterisk:

externip=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

If you’re using PJSIP trunks or extensions on your PBX, implement this fix as well.

Receiving SMS Messages Through Skyetel

Most Skyetel DIDs support SMS messaging. Once you have purchased one or more DIDs, you can edit each number and, under the SMS & MMS tab, you can redirect incoming SMS messages to an email or SMS destination of your choice using the following example:



Sending SMS Messages Through Skyetel

We’ve created a simple script that will let you send SMS messages from the Linux CLI using your Skyetel DIDs. In order to send SMS messages, you first will need to create an SID key and password in the Skyetel portal. From the Settings icon, choose API Keys -> Create. Once the credentials appear, copy both your SID and Password. Then click SAVE.

Next, from the Linux CLI, issue the following commands to download the sms-skyetel script into your /root folder. Then edit the file and insert your SID, secret, and DID credentials in the fields at the top of the script. Save the file, and you’re all set.

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/sms-skyetel
chmod +x sms-skyetel
nano -w sms-skyetel

To send an SMS message, use the following syntax where 18005551212 is the 11-digit SMS destination: sms-skyetel 18005551212 "Some message"

Configuring a Softphone for Incredible PBX

We’re in the home stretch now. You can connect virtually any kind of telephone to your new PBX. Plain Old Phones require an analog telephone adapter (ATA) which can be a separate board in your computer from a company such as Digium. Or it can be a standalone SIP device such as ObiHai’s OBi100 or OBi110 (if you have a phone line from Ma Bell to hook up as well). SIP phones can be connected directly so long as they have an IP address. These could be hardware devices or software devices such as the YateClient softphone. We’ll start with a free one today so you can begin making calls. You can find dozens of recommendations for hardware-based SIP phones both on Nerd Vittles and the PIAF Forum when you’re ready to get serious about VoIP telephony.

We recommend YateClient which is free. Download it from here. Run YateClient once you’ve installed it and enter the credentials for the 701 extension on Incredible PBX. You’ll need the IP address of your server plus your extension 701 password. Choose Applications _> Extensions -> 701 and write down your SIP/IAX Password. You can also reset it by running /root/update-passwords. Fill in the blanks using the IP address of your Server, 701 for your Username, and whatever Password you assigned to the extension when you installed Incredible PBX. Click OK to save your entries.

Once you are registered to extension 701, close the Account window. Then click on YATE’s Telephony Tab and place some test calls to the numerous apps that are preconfigured on Incredible PBX. Dial a few of these to get started:

DEMO - Apps Demo
123 - Reminders
947 - Weather by ZIP Code
951 - Yahoo News
*61 - Time of Day
TODAY - Today in History

If you are a Mac user, another great no-frills softphone is Telephone. Just download and install it from the Mac App Store.

Upgrading to IBM Speech Engines

If you’ve endured Google’s Death by a Thousand Cuts with text-to-speech (TTS) and voice recognition (STT) over the years, then we don’t have to tell you what a welcome addition IBM’s new speech utilities are. We can’t say enough good things about the new IBM Watson TTS and STT offerings. With IBM’s services, you have a choice of free or commercial tiers. Let’s put the pieces in place so you’ll be ready to play with the Whole Enchilada.

Getting Started with IBM Watson TTS Service

We’ve created a separate tutorial to walk you through obtaining and configuring your IBM Watson credentials. Start there.

Next, login to your Incredible PBX server and issue these commands to update your Asterisk dialplan and edit ibmtts.php:

cd /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin
./install-ibmtts-dialplan.sh
nano -w ibmtts.php

Insert your credentials in $IBM_username and $IBM_password. For new users, your $IBM_username will be apikey. Your $IBM_password will be the TTS APIkey you obtained from IBM. Next, verify that $IBM_url matches the entry provided when you registered with IBM. Then save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then ENTER. Now reload the Asterisk dialplan: asterisk -rx "dialplan reload". Try things out by dialing 951 (news) or 947 (Weather) from an extension registered on your PBX.

Getting Started with IBM Watson STT Service

Now let’s get IBM’s Speech to Text service activated. Log back in to the IBM Cloud. Click on the Speech to Text app. Choose a Region to deploy in, choose your Organization from the pull-down menu, and select STT as your Space. Choose the Standard Pricing Plan. Then click Create. When Speech to Text Portal opens, click the Service Credentials tab. In the Actions column, click View Credentials and copy down your STT username and password.

Finally, login to your Incredible PBX server and issue these commands to edit getnumber.sh:

cd /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin
nano -w getnumber.sh

Insert apikey as your API_USERNAME and your actual STT APIkey API_PASSWORD in the fields provided. Then save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then ENTER. Update your Voice Dialer (411) to use the new IBM STT service:

sed -i '\\:// BEGIN Call by Name:,\\:// END Call by Name:d' /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf
sed -i '/\\[from-internal-custom\]/r ibm-411.txt' /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf
asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"

Now try out the Incredible PBX Voice Dialer with AsteriDex by dialing 411 and saying "Delta Airlines."

Transcribing Voicemails with IBM Watson STT Service

We’ve included the necessary script to transcribe your incoming voicemails using IBM’s STT service. Navigate to the /usr/local/sbin folder and edit sendmailmp3.ibm. Insert your APIKEY in the password field and save the file. Now copy the file to sendmailmp3 and make the file executable: chmod +x sendmailmp3.

Using Gmail as a SmartHost for SendMail

Many Internet service providers block email transmissions from downstream servers (that’s you) to reduce spam. The simple solution is to use your Gmail account as a smarthost for SendMail. Here’s how. Log into your server as root and issue the following commands:

cd /etc/mail
hostname -f > genericsdomain
touch genericstable
makemap -r hash genericstable.db < genericstable
mv sendmail.mc sendmail.mc.original
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/sendmail.mc.gmail
cp sendmail.mc.gmail sendmail.mc
mkdir -p auth
chmod 700 auth
cd auth
echo AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com \\"U:smmsp\\" \\"I:user_id\\" \\"P:password\\" \\"M:PLAIN\\" > client-info
echo AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com:587 \\"U:smmsp\\" \\"I:user_id\\" \\"P:password\\" \\"M:PLAIN\\" >> client-info
echo AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com:465 \\"U:smmsp\\" \\"I:user_id\\" \\"P:password\\" \\"M:PLAIN\\" >> client-info
nano -w client-info

When the nano editor opens the client-info file, change the 3 user_id entries to your Gmail account name without @gmail.com and change the 3 password entries to your actual Gmail password. Save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then ENTER.

Now issue the following commands. In the last step, press ENTER to accept all of the default prompts:

chmod 600 client-info
makemap -r hash client-info.db < client-info
cd ..
sed -i 's|sendmail-cf|sendmail\/cf|' /etc/mail/sendmail.mc
sed -i 's|sendmail-cf|sendmail\/cf|' /etc/mail/sendmail.mc
sed -i 's|sendmail-cf|sendmail\/cf|' /etc/mail/Makefile
sed -i 's|sendmail-cf|sendmail\/cf|' /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
sed -i 's|sendmail-cf|sendmail\/cf|' /etc/mail/databases
sed -i 's|sendmail-cf|sendmail\/cf|' /etc/mail/sendmail.mc.gmail
sed -i 's|sendmail-cf|sendmail\/cf|' /etc/mail/sendmail.cf.errors
make
sendmailconfig

Finally, stop and restart SendMail and then send yourself a test message. Be sure to check your spam folder!

/etc/init.d/sendmail stop
/etc/init.d/sendmail start
apt-get install mailutils -y
echo "test" | mail -s testmessage yourname@yourdomain.com

Check mail success with: tail /var/log/mail.log. If you have trouble getting a successful Gmail registration (especially if you have previously used this Google 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.

Configuring a SIP URI Address for Your PBX

Setting up a SIP URI is a simple way to let anyone with a SIP phone call you from anywhere in the world and talk for as long and as often as you like FOR FREE. The drawback of SIP URIs is typically the security risk accompanying the SIP exposure you must provide to receive these calls. Here's the safe way using what we call a hybrid SIP URI. It works like this. Sign up for a VoIP.ms account and create a subaccount that you will register using the VoIPms trunk included in Incredible PBX. As part of the setup in the VoIP.ms portal, assign an Internal Extension Number to your subaccount, e.g. 789123. Make it random so you don't get surprise calls from anonymous sources. The extension can be up to 10 digits long. Next, sign up for a free iNUM DID, e.g. 883510009901234, in your VoIP.ms account. Using Manage DIDs in the portal, link the iNUM DID to your subaccount and assign one of the VoIP.ms POP locations for incoming calls, e.g. atlanta.voip.ms. Next, write down your VoIP.ms account number, e.g. 12345. Once you've completed these three steps and registered the VoIP.ms subaccount on your PBX, you now have two SIP URIs that are protected by your VoIP.ms credentials and don't require you to expose your SIP port to the outside world at all. These SIP URIs can be pointed to different destinations by setting up Inbound Routes using your VoIP.ms account number as one DID and setting up your iNUM number as the second DID. To reach your PBX via SIP URI, callers can use 12345789123@atlanta.voip.ms to reach the DID you set up for your VoIP.ms subaccount where 12345 is your VoIP.ms account number and 789123 is the Internal Extension Number for your subaccount. Or callers can use 8835100099012234@inum.net to reach the DID you set up using your iNUM number that was assigned by VoIP.ms. Don't forget to whitelist the VoIP.ms POP's FQDN for SIP UDP access to your PBX:

/root/add-fqdn voipms atlanta.voip.ms

If you wish to make SIP URI calls yourself, the easiest way is to first set up a free LinPhone SIP Account. You can find dozens of recommendations for hardware-based SIP phones both on Nerd Vittles and the PIAF Forum. For today we'll get you started with one of our favorite (free) softphones, YateClient. It's available for almost all desktop platforms. Download YateClient from here. Run YateClient once you’ve installed it and enter the credentials for your LinPhone account. You’ll need LinPhone's FQDN (sip.linphone.org) plus your LinPhone account name and password. Fill in the Yate Client template and click OK to save your entries. Once the Yate softphone shows that it is registered, try a test call to one of our demo SIP URIs: sip:weather@demo.nerdvittles.com or sip:news@demo.nerdvittles.com.

Adding the NeoRouter Virtual Private Network

We've made it easy to set up a virtual private network between your PBX and your other computers. NeoRouter is a free VPN for up to 256 machines. It requires that you first set up a server for NeoRouter using a static IP address and preferably a fully-qualified domain name. This is covered in this Nerd Vittles tutorial. Once you have your NeoRouter server operational, adding your PBX to the VPN is easy. Simply run nrclientcmd and enter the FQDN of your VPN server together with your credentials. All clients on the VPN have an encrypted tunnel with private LAN addresses in the 10.0.0.x range. HINT: Setting up a NeoRouter VPN provides an easy way to get back into your server if the firewall ever locks you out since the 10.0.0.x subnet is automatically whitelisted as part of the initial install.

Using PortKnocker to Regain Access to Your PBX

And speaking of getting locked out of your server because you've forgotten to whitelist the IP address of your computer, there's another easy way to regain access: PortKnocker. The way the service works is you send sequential pings to 3 randomized TCP ports that are known only by you. They are listed in /etc/knock.FAQ. When your server detects a match, it will whitelist your new IP address allowing you to login using SSH or Putty. There also are PortKnocker utilities for both iOS and Android devices. Complete implementation details are available in this Nerd Vittles tutorial. If your PBX is sitting behind a router or firewall, don't forget to forward the three TCP ports from your router to the private LAN address of your PBX.

Planning Ahead for That Rainy Day

If you haven't already learned the hard way, let us save you from a future shock. Hardware fails. All of it. So spend an extra hour now so that you'll be prepared when (not if) disaster strikes. First, once you have your new PBX configured the way you plan to use it, make a backup of your PBX by running the Incredible Backup script: /root/incrediblebackup13

Copy down the name of the backup file that was created. You'll need it in a few minutes.

Second, build yourself a VirtualBox platform on your desktop PC using the Ubuntu ISO you previously downloaded. Once you complete the identical Incredible PBX install plus the Whole Enchilada upgrade and Incredible Fax (if used on your primary server), fire up the virtual machine and login as root with password as your password.

Next, create a /backup folder on your new VirtualBox PBX and copy the backup file from your main server to your VirtualBox server and restore it while logged into the VirtualBox PBX as root:

mkdir /backup
scp root@main-pbx-ip-address:/backup/backup-file-name.tar.gz /backup/.
/root/incrediblerestore13 /backup/backup-file-name.tar.gz

Verify that everything looks right by using a browser to access and review the settings in your new VirtualBox PBX. At a minimum, verify extensions, trunks, and routes.

Last but not least, if you're running Incredible PBX in the Cloud on Digital Ocean or Vultr, you can set up automatic backups of your server for only an extra dollar a month. It's the cheapest insurance your can buy. Enjoy!

Continue Reading: Configuring Extensions, Trunks & Routes

Don't Miss: Incredible PBX Application User's Guide covering the 31 Whole Enchilada apps

Originally published: Monday, March 18, 2019



Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info 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.
 



  1. With some providers including Digital Ocean and Vultr, Nerd Vittles receives referral credits when you sign up for service. This assists in keeping the Nerd Vittles lights burning brightly. So... thank you. []
  2. Skyetel is a Platinum Sponsor of Nerd Vittles and open source projects of Ward Mundy & Associates, LLC. []
  3. In the unlikely event that Skyetel cannot provide a 10% reduction in your current origination rate and/or DID costs, Skyetel will give you an additional $50 credit to use with the Skyetel service. []

Now Serving: The Incredible PBX 13-13 Whole Enchilada

We’re delighted to introduce the bells and whistles for Incredible PBX® 13-13. We’ve taken a slightly different approach with this release. Instead of getting the Whole Enchilada out of the box, you now have a choice. You start with Incredible PBX 13-13 LEAN on the recommended CentOS® 6.10 platform. This gets you a fully-functioning PBX with the latest Asterisk® 13 and most of the FreePBX® 13 GPL modules. This release includes support for Skyetel SIP trunking from our Platinum Sponsor together with $50 in free service to get you started. You still can customize your PBX in any way you like. Or just upgrade to the Whole Enchilada and take advantage of the entire feature set that Incredible PBX has traditionally offered. Last but not least, you can add Incredible Fax for flawless faxing with HylaFax® and AvantFax® including fax detection on specified inbound routes. So the choice is totally up to you. We have a lot to cover. For today, we’ll get all the Incredible PBX pieces installed.

Just Released: Incredible PBX 16-15 for CentOS 7. Take it for a test drive.

Here’s a sneak peek at what’s included in Incredible PBX 13-13 Whole Enchilada: dozens of preconfigured SIP Trunks from our favorite providers, Voice Dialing (411) with IBM STT or Google, Headline News (951), Weather by ZIP Code (947), Today in History (86329), IBM TTS, ODBC Lookups (222), ODBC Calling with AsteriDex (223), Telephone Reminders (123), AsteriDex (Web GUI), Reminders (Web GUI), PortKnocker, Travelin’ Man 4, Time of Day (*61), SMS Dictator (767), Wolfram Alpha (4747), Hotel-Style Wakeup Calls (*68), Allison’s Demo IVR (3366), Lenny (53669), Call Parking (**70), Call Pickup (71), Blacklist Add (*30), Blacklist Remove (*31), Blacklist Last Caller (*32), Call Forward Activate (*72), Call Forward DeActivate (*73), Conferencing (C-O-N-F), Call Pickup (*8), Dictation (*34), Email Dictation (*35), DND Activate (*78), DND DeActivate (*79), SpeedDial with AsteriDex (000NNN), Email Delivery of Voicemails, NeoRouter VPN, and more. With a little luck, this will light a fire under some of you to roll up your sleeves and participate in the open source development community.

Installing a Base CentOS Operating System

You can install Incredible PBX 13-13 Lean on a dedicated server, on a virtual machine platform such as VirtualBox, or a Cloud-based server. We recommend a minimum 1GB of RAM with a swapfile unless installing on OpenVZ platforms. We’ve provided a script to do it for you. Depending upon the number of users your server will be supporting, we recommend a disk capacity of 10-30 GB. Last but not least, you need a reliable Internet connection.

Before you can install Incredible PBX 13-13 Lean, you’ll need a basic Linux platform. For this build, you can start by deploying a minimal install of CentOS 6. The Incredible PBX installer will load all of the necessary components to support Asterisk and FreePBX as well as upgrading CentOS to 6.10. Better yet, use the new Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO which bundles both the operating system packages and all of the Incredible PBX goodies. Complete Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO tutorial available here.

Begin by installing 64-bit CentOS 6 on your favorite hardware or Desktop. Or you may prefer to use a Cloud provider1 that already offers a preconfigured CentOS or Incredible PBX 13-13 image in the case of HiFormance. If you’re using a Cloud platform, you can skip the rest of this section. Just choose CentOS 6 or Incredible PBX 13-13 on HiFormance as the default operating system for your cloud-based server.

For those using a dedicated hardware platform or wishing to install CentOS as a virtual machine, the drill is the same. Start by downloading the 64-bit CentOS 6.10 minimal ISO. Burn the ISO to a DVD unless you’ll be booting from the ISO on a virtual machine platform such as VirtualBox. On virtual platforms, we recommend at least 1GB RAM and a 20GB dedicated drive. For VirtualBox, we’ve provided a one-minute installer. Here are the settings:

Type: Linux
Version: RedHat 64-bit
RAM: 1024MB
Default Drive Options with 20GB space
Create
Settings->System: Enable IO APIC and Disable HW Clock (leave rest alone)
Settings->Audio: Enable
Settings->Network: Enable, Bridged
Settings->Storage: Far right CD icon (choose your ISO)
Start

If you’re booting your server with the CentOS ISO to start the CentOS install, here are the simplest installation steps:

Choose Language and Click Continue
Click: Install Destination (do not change anything!)
Click: Done
Click: Network & Hostname
Click: ON
Click: Done
Click: Begin Installation
Click: Root Password: password, password, Click Done twice
Wait for Minimal Software Install and Setup to finish
Click: Reboot

Installing Incredible PBX 13-13 LEAN

Unless you’re using a virtual machine Incredible PBX image or the Incredible PBX 13-13 image on HiFormance, you’ll need to run the Incredible PBX installer. Once you have CentOS up and running, log into your server as root and issue the following commands to kick off the Incredible PBX install.

passwd
yum -y update
yum -y install net-tools nano wget tar
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx-13-13-LEAN.tar.gz
tar zxvf incrediblepbx-13-13-LEAN.tar.gz
rm -f incrediblepbx-13-13-LEAN.tar.gz
# to add swap file on non-OpenVZ cloud platforms
./create-swapfile-DO
# kick off Phase I install
./IncrediblePBX-13-13.sh
# after reboot, kick off Phase II install
./IncrediblePBX-13-13.sh
# add Full Enchilada apps, if desired
./Enchilada-upgrade.sh
# add HylaFax/AvantFax, if desired
./incrediblefax13.sh
# set passwords
./update-passwords
# set desired timezone
./timezone-setup
# remember to enable TUN/TAP if using VPS Control Panel
# reconfigure PortKnocker if installing on an OpenVZ platform
echo 'OPTIONS="-i venet0:0"' >> /etc/sysconfig/knockd
service knockd restart
# fix pbxstatus for NeoRouter VPN support, if desired
cd /usr/local/sbin
sed -i "s|cat /etc/hostip|cat /etc/hostip \\| cut -f 3 -d ' ' |" pbxstatus
# set up NeoRouter client, if desired
nrclientcmd

WebMin is also installed and configured as part of the base install. The root password for access is the same as your Linux root password. We strongly recommend that you not use WebMin to make configuration changes to your server. You may inadvertently damage the operation of your PBX beyond repair. WebMin is an excellent tool to LOOK at how your server is configured. When used for that purpose, we highly recommend WebMin as a way to become familiar with your Linux configuration.

Using the Incredible PBX 13-13 Web GUI

NOTE: If you plan to upgrade to the Whole Enchilada, you can skip this section. It’s for those that wish to roll their own PBX from the ground up.

Most of the configuration of your PBX will be performed using the web-based Incredible PBX GUI with its FreePBX 13 GPL modules. Use a browser pointed to the IP address of your server and choose Incredible PBX Admin. Log in as admin with the password you configured in the previous step. HINT: You can always change it if you happen to forget it.

To get a basic system set up so that you can make and receive calls, you’ll need to add a VoIP trunk, create one or more extensions, set up an inbound route to send incoming calls to an extension, and set up an outbound route to send calls placed from your extension to a VoIP trunk that connects to telephones in the real world. You’ll also need a SIP phone or softphone to use as an extension on your PBX. Our previous tutorial will walk you through this setup procedure. Over the years, we’ve built a number of command line utilities including a script to preconfigure SIP trunks for more than a dozen providers in seconds. You’ll find links to all of them here.

Continue Reading: Configuring Extensions, Trunks & Routes

Upgrading to Incredible PBX Whole Enchilada

There now are two more pieces to put in place. The sequence matters! Be sure to upgrade to the Whole Enchilada before you install Incredible Fax. If you perform the steps backwards, you may irreparably damage your fax setup by overwriting parts of it.

The Whole Enchilada upgrade script now is included in the Incredible PBX LEAN tarball. If you have an earlier release, you may need to download the Whole Enchilada tarball as documented below. Upgrading to the Whole Enchilada is simple. Log into your server as root and issue the following commands. Try issuing just the last command first to see if the enchilada upgrade script already is in place. Otherwise, execute all of the commands below. Be advised that the upgrade will overwrite all of your existing Incredible PBX setup including any extensions, trunks, and routes you may have created previously. You also will be prompted to reset all of your passwords as part of the upgrade.

cd /root
./Enchilada*

If you accidentally installed Incredible Fax before upgrading to the Whole Enchilada, you may be able to recover your Incredible Fax setup by executing the following commands. It’s worth a try anyway.

amportal a ma install avantfax
amportal a r

Installing Incredible Fax with HylaFax/AvantFax

You don’t need to upgrade to the Whole Enchilada in order to use Incredible Fax; however, you may forfeit the opportunity to later upgrade to the Whole Enchilada if you install Incredible Fax first. But the choice is completely up to you. To install Incredible Fax, log into your server as root and issue the following commands:

cd /root
./incrediblefax13.sh

After entering your email address to receive incoming faxes, you’ll be prompted about two dozen times to choose options as part of the install. Simple press the ENTER key at each prompt and accept all of the defaults. When the install finishes, make certain that you reboot your server to bring Incredible Fax on line. There will be a new AvantFax option in the Incredible PBX GUI. The default credentials for AvantFax GUI are admin:password; however, you first will be prompted for your Apache admin credentials which were set when you installed Incredible PBX 13-13 LEAN or the Whole Enchilada. Then you’ll be asked to change your AvantFax password.

Upgrading to IBM Speech Engines

If you’ve endured Google’s Death by a Thousand Cuts with text-to-speech (TTS) and voice recognition (STT) over the years, then we don’t have to tell you what a welcome addition IBM’s new speech utilities are. We can’t say enough good things about the new IBM Watson TTS and STT offerings. With IBM’s services, you have a choice of free or commercial tiers. Let’s put the pieces in place so you’ll be ready to play with the Whole Enchilada.

Getting Started with IBM Watson TTS Service

We’ve created a separate tutorial to walk you through obtaining and configuring your IBM Watson credentials. Start there.

Next, login to your Incredible PBX server and issue these commands to update your Asterisk dialplan and edit ibmtts.php:

cd /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin
./install-ibmtts-dialplan.sh
nano -w ibmtts.php

Insert your credentials in $IBM_username and $IBM_password. For new users, your $IBM_username will be apikey. Your $IBM_password will be the TTS APIkey you obtained from IBM. Next, verify that $IBM_url matches the entry provided when you registered with IBM. Then save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then ENTER. Now reload the Asterisk dialplan: asterisk -rx "dialplan reload". Try things out by dialing 951 (news) or 947 (Weather) from an extension registered on your PBX.

Getting Started with IBM Watson STT Service

Now let’s get IBM’s Speech to Text service activated. Log back in to the IBM Cloud. Click on the Speech to Text app. Choose a Region to deploy in, choose your Organization from the pull-down menu, and select STT as your Space. Choose the Standard Pricing Plan. Then click Create. When Speech to Text Portal opens, click the Service Credentials tab. In the Actions column, click View Credentials and copy down your STT username and password.

Finally, login to your Incredible PBX server and issue these commands to edit getnumber.sh:

cd /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin
nano -w getnumber.sh

Insert apikey as your API_USERNAME and your actual STT APIkey API_PASSWORD in the fields provided. Then save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then ENTER. Update your Voice Dialer (411) to use the new IBM STT service:

sed -i '\\:// BEGIN Call by Name:,\\:// END Call by Name:d' /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf
sed -i '/\\[from-internal-custom\]/r ibm-411.txt' /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf
asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"

Now try out the Incredible PBX Voice Dialer with AsteriDex by dialing 411 and saying "Delta Airlines." Check back next week for the Whole Enchilada apps tutorial.

Adding Skyetel Trunks to Incredible PBX

Now that you have your Incredible PBX platform in place, it’s time to set up your Skyetel trunks to take advantage of the BOGO calling credit (up to $250). The trunks themselves are added by logging into your server with SSH/Putty as root and issuing the following commands if the trunks aren’t already installed on your server. HINT: Check first!

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/add-skyetel
chmod +x add-skyetel
# uncomment next line if your incoming calls all have 10-digit numbers
# sed -i 's|from-trunk|from-pstn-e164-us|' add-skyetel
./add-skyetel
chmod -x add-skyetel

Next, sign up for Skyetel service and take advantage of the exclusive Nerd Vittles BOGO offer. First, complete the Prequalification Form here. You then will be provided a link to the Skyetel site to complete your registration. Skyetel will match your original deposit up to $250 which means you could enjoy as much as $500 of SIP trunking service for half price. Effective 10/1/2023, $25/month minimum spend required. Once you have registered on the Skyetel site and your account has been activated, open a support ticket and request your BOGO credit by referencing this Nerd Vittles special offer. Greed will get you nowhere. Credit is limited to one per person/company/address/location. If you want to take advantage of the 10% discount on your current service, open another ticket and attach a copy of your last month’s bill. See footnote 1 for the fine print.2 If you have high call volume requirements, document these in your Prequalification Form, and we will be in touch. Easy Peasy!

Unlike many VoIP providers, Skyetel does not use SIP registrations to make connections to your PBX. Instead, Skyetel utilizes Endpoint Groups to identify which servers can communicate with the Skyetel service. An Endpoint Group consists of a Name, an IP address, a UDP or TCP port for the connection, and a numerical Priority for the group. For incoming calls destined to your PBX, DIDs are associated with an Endpoint Group to route the calls to your PBX. For outgoing calls from your PBX, a matching Endpoint Group is required to authorize outbound calls through the Skyetel network. Thus, the first step in configuring the Skyetel side for use with your PBX is to set up an Endpoint Group. A typical setup for use with Incredible PBX®, Asterisk®, or FreePBX® would look like the following:

  • Name: MyPBX
  • Priority: 1
  • IP Address: PBX-Public-IP-Address
  • Port: 5060
  • Protocol: UDP
  • Description: server1.incrediblepbx.com

To receive incoming PSTN calls, you’ll need at least one DID. On the Skyetel site, you acquire DIDs under the Phone Numbers tab. You have the option of Porting in Existing Numbers (free for the first 60 days after you sign up for service) or purchasing new ones under the Buy Phone Numbers menu option.

Once you have acquired one or more DIDs, navigate to the Local Numbers or Toll Free Numbers tab and specify the desired SIP Format and Endpoint Group for each DID. Add SMS/MMS and E911 support, if desired. Call Forwarding and Failover are also supported. That completes the VoIP setup on the Skyetel side. System Status is always available here.

Configuring a Skyetel Inbound Route

Because there is no SIP registration with Skyetel, incoming calls to Skyetel trunks will NOT be sent to the Default Inbound Route configured on your PBX because FreePBX treats the calls as blocked anonymous calls without an Inbound Route pointing to the 11-digit number of each Skyetel DID. From the GUI, choose Connectivity -> Inbound Routes -> Add Inbound Route. For both the Description and DID fields, enter the 11-digit phone number beginning with a 1. Set the Destination for the incoming DID as desired and click Submit. Reload the Dialplan when prompted. Place a test call to each of your DIDs after configuring the Inbound Routes.

If you have installed the Incredible Fax add-on, you can enable Fax Detection under the Fax tab. And, if you’d like CallerID Name lookups using CallerID Superfecta, you can enable it under the Other tab before saving your setup and reloading your dialplan.

Configuring a Skyetel Outbound Route

If Skyetel will be your primary provider, you can use both 10-digit and 11-digit dialing to process outbound calls through your Skyetel account. From the GUI, choose Connectivity -> Outbound Routes -> Add Outbound Route. For the setup, we recommend the following using the CallerID Number you wish to associate with your outbound calls through Skyetel:

Enter the Dial Patterns under the Dial Patterns tab before saving your outbound route. Here’s what you would enter for 10-digit and 11-digit dialing. If you want to require a dialing prefix to use the Skyetel Outbound Route, enter it in the Prefix field for both dial strings.

There are a million ways to design outbound calling schemes on PBXs with multiple trunks. One of the simplest ways is to use no dial prefix for the primary trunk and then use dialing prefixes for the remaining trunks.

Another outbound calling scheme would be to assign specific DIDs to individual extensions on your PBX. Here you could use NXXNXXXXXX with the 1 Prepend as the Dial Pattern with every Outbound Route and change the Extension Number in the CallerID field of the Dial Pattern. With this setup, you’d need a separate Outbound Route for each group of extensions using a specific trunk on your PBX. Additional dial patterns can be added for each extension designated for a particular trunk. A lower priority Outbound Route then could be added without a CallerID entry to cover extensions that weren’t restricted or specified.

HINT: Keep in mind that Outbound Routes are processed by FreePBX in top-down order. The first route with a matching dial pattern is the trunk that is selected to place the outbound call. No other outbound routes are ever used even if the call fails or the trunk is unavailable. To avoid failed calls, consider adding additional trunks to the Trunk Sequence in every outbound route. In summary, if you have multiple routes with the exact same dial pattern, then the match nearest to the top of the Outbound Route list wins. You can rearrange the order of the outbound routes by dragging them into any sequence desired.

Audio Issues with Skyetel

If you experience one-way or no audio on some calls, make sure you have filled in the NAT Settings section in the GUI under Settings -> Asterisk SIP Settings -> General. In addition to adding your external and internal IP addresses there, be sure to add your external IP address in /etc/asterisk/sip_general_custom.conf like the following example and restart Asterisk:

externip=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

If you’re using PJSIP trunks or extensions on your PBX, implement this fix as well.

Receiving SMS Messages Through Skyetel

Most Skyetel DIDs support SMS messaging. Once you have purchased one or more DIDs, you can edit each number and, under the SMS & MMS tab, you can redirect incoming SMS messages to an email or SMS destination of your choice using the following example:



Sending SMS Messages Through Skyetel

We’ve created a simple script that will let you send SMS messages from the Linux CLI using your Skyetel DIDs. In order to send SMS messages, you first will need to create an SID key and password in the Skyetel portal. From the Settings icon, choose API Keys -> Create. Once the credentials appear, copy both your SID and Password. Then click SAVE.

Next, from the Linux CLI, issue the following commands to download the sms-skyetel script into your /root folder. Then edit the file and insert your SID, secret, and DID credentials in the fields at the top of the script. Save the file, and you’re all set.

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/sms-skyetel
chmod +x sms-skyetel
nano -w sms-skyetel

To send an SMS message, use the following syntax where 18005551212 is the 11-digit SMS destination: sms-skyetel 18005551212 "Some message"

Using Gmail as a SmartHost for SendMail

Many Internet service providers block email transmissions from downstream servers (that’s you) to reduce spam. The simple solution is to use your Gmail account as a smarthost for SendMail. Here’s how. Log into your server as root and issue the following commands:

yum -y install sendmail-cf
cd /etc/mail
hostname -f > genericsdomain
touch genericstable
makemap -r hash genericstable.db < genericstable
mv sendmail.mc sendmail.mc.original
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/sendmail.mc.gmail
cp sendmail.mc.gmail sendmail.mc
mkdir -p auth
chmod 700 auth
cd auth
echo AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com \\"U:smmsp\\" \\"I:user_id\\" \\"P:password\\" \\"M:PLAIN\\" > client-info
echo AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com:587 \\"U:smmsp\\" \\"I:user_id\\" \\"P:password\\" \\"M:PLAIN\\" >> client-info
echo AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com:465 \\"U:smmsp\\" \\"I:user_id\\" \\"P:password\\" \\"M:PLAIN\\" >> client-info
nano -w client-info

When the nano editor opens the client-info file, change the 3 user_id entries to your Gmail account name without @gmail.com and change the 3 password entries to your actual Gmail password. Save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then ENTER.

Now issue the following commands:

chmod 600 client-info
makemap -r hash client-info.db < client-info
cd ..
make
service sendmail restart

Finally, send yourself a test message. Be sure to check your spam folder!

 echo "test" | mail -s testmessage yourname@yourdomain.com

Check mail success with: tail /var/log/maillog. If you have trouble getting a successful Gmail registration (especially if you have previously used this Google 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.

Originally published: Monday, November 13, 2017  Updated: Saturday, March 23, 2019


News Flash: Turn Incredible PBX into a Fault-Tolerant HA Platform for $1/Month

Continue Reading: Configuring Extensions, Trunks & Routes

Don't Miss: Incredible PBX Application User's Guide covering the 31 Whole Enchilada apps

Check out the new Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO. Complete tutorial available here.


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 VoIP-info 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.
 



  1. Some of our links refer users to Amazon or other service providers when we find their prices are competitive for the recommended products. Nerd Vittles receives a small referral fee from these providers to help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate commissions. However, when pricing is comparable or availability is favorable, we support these providers because they support us. []
  2. In the unlikely event that Skyetel cannot provide a 10% reduction in your current origination rate and/or DID costs, Skyetel will give you an additional $50 credit to use with the Skyetel service. []

Keep On Trunkin’: Free International VoIP Calling Returns



Today we’re taking a fresh look at the international calling marketplace by updating the best VoIP deals available. FreeVoipDeal once again takes the prize with the best selection of "free" international calling destinations at the lowest prices. Below we’ll provide a quick tutorial to transform your Incredible PBX server into an international calling platform at minimal cost.

Here’s How It Works. For every 10 euros ($10.72) you deposit into your account, you’ll get 300 minutes a week of free calls to a specific list of countries for 120 days. After you exhaust your free minutes, calls to the "free" countries revert to their standard VoIP rates. You can also call anywhere else in the world at very reasonable per minute rates that compare favorably with other SIP providers around the world. The beauty of a PBX and SIP trunks is you can mix and match as many providers as you like to take advantage of favorable calling rates to multiple countries. We’ll walk you through the FreeVoipDeal trunk setup below.

Betamax 101. There are a few things you need to know about the so-called Betamax VoIP services up front. Most importantly, they change rates and free countries more frequently than college kids change partners. The calling rate to some country from some Betamax provider changes almost every day because Betamax has dozens of companies offering similar services with differing rates and freebies. Here’s an very old spreadsheet that will give you a good idea of what you’re up against. Don’t depend upon it for the current rates. You’ll need to visit the actual site(s) for their current rate tables or visit this site (not) maintained by Betamax for a country-by-country comparison by provider. That’s another way of saying DON’T BLAME US IF YOUR 3-HOUR CALL TO ANTARCTICA CHANGED FROM 20¢ PER MINUTE TO $1 PER MINUTE OVERNIGHT. IT PROBABLY WON’T, BUT IT MIGHT.

One other word of warning. Some Betamax sites (marked with a red asterisk in the Betamax country table) such as powervoip.com have good calling rates, but they tack on a 3.9¢ connection fee to every call. If you make lengthy calls, it’s not a big deal. If you make numerous short calls, it drives your discount calling rates through the roof. Before making a lengthy call to a remote destination, spend the two minutes it takes to look up the current rate on the actual Betamax web site and take a snapshot of the page for your records. Here’s another tip. If you make frequent calls to Antarctica, spend a little time doing your homework. Review the latest Betamax spreadsheet to track down the cheapest rates. Then double-check the actual sites for the current rates. There’s a $100+ difference in the cost of a 3-hour call at €.20/minute from some Betamax sites versus the €.70/minute rate at some other Betamax sites. THIS OFTEN CHANGES! HINT: Don’t use FreeVoipDeal for Antarctica.

Today we’ll be focusing on the company we’ve tracked for many years, FreeVoipDeal.com. Except for the domain name, the setup with other Betamax providers is similar but not identical. And, of course, you’ll have to kick in another deposit to make free calls from each site. The length of the Freebie period also may vary so read the terms carefully. FreeVoipDeal actually hasn’t changed much since our first visit about five years ago. In fact, we still had most of our ten euro credit so we could play all we wanted even though the calls were no longer free since our four month window has long since expired.

Here’s the February 23, 2019 Freebie list by country. Don’t depend upon it! Check their actual web site or the Betamax country summary for current freebies and current rates. Here’s a great trick to remember. When you visit the FreeVoipDeal Rate Table, click on the Out of Minutes tab for a quick listing of all the Free Calling Countries as well as the rates once you’ve used up your four months or 300 weekly minutes of free calls. With few exceptions, most of the "free countries" still have a rate of 1.1¢ per minute even after you run out of minutes.

 

How Free International Calling Works

Placing international calls through FreeVoipDeal can be done in a number of ways. That’s the real beauty of a PBX. First, you can either load an app to make the calls if your smartphone or PC supports it. With Incredible PBX, you can use a SIP phone to dial a FreeVoipDeal number directly through your PBX, or you can dial a DISA access number or SIP URI from anywhere to connect to your PBX and then enter your DISA password after which you will get a second dial tone to place an international call using your FreeVoipDeal trunk. The beauty of the DISA approach is you can call into your PBX from any telephone to place free or dirt cheap international calls.

Using Incredible PBX 13 and DISA for Calling

On the Incredible PBX platform, you can use the DISA application to provide secondary dialtone for processing international calls. A phone number and trunk will receive incoming calls bound for DISA from your cellphone. An inbound route will only forward incoming calls to DISA that match your cellphone number. A secondary trunk from FreeVoipDeal or other providers will be used to process outgoing international calls that are dialed using DISA. We’ll create an outbound route or rule for every country to which you want to authorize international calling. Each of these outbound routes will point to the least expensive (or free) trunk to complete the call. In the VoIP world, you actually could have dozens of outbound trunks that handle international calls based upon the country codes of each international call. This lets you take advantage of the best calling rates for each country. We will block international calls to country codes not specifically authorized.

Just to restate the obvious, a misconfigured DISA application that allows the world to make international calls on your nickel can get expensive quickly. We’ll protect today’s DISA setup for Incredible PBX with three layers of protection. First, we’ll require that the CallerID of the incoming call match your cellphone number. While this isn’t failsafe since CallerID numbers can be spoofed, it does reduce the risk considerably. Second, to make DISA calls, you’ll have to know the incoming phone number or SIP URI managing DISA on your PBX. And third, you’ll have to enter the correct DISA PIN before being prompted for an international number to dial. Without all three, nobody gets to make an international call on your nickel. Just remember, compromising DISA on your PBX is just as risky as handing out your credit card to a stranger so follow the setup steps below carefully. And then TEST, TEST, TEST to make sure strangers can’t access your DISA setup. We’ll show you how.

Here’s an overview of the DISA setup drill once you have Incredible PBX running. We’ll walk through each of the six steps below. Don’t get frustrated. There are a number of steps, but none of them are difficult. Just pretend you’re baking cookies and don’t skip any steps.

  1. Set Up Your Trunk to Process Incoming DISA Calls
  2. Set Up Your Trunk(s) to Process Outgoing International Calls
  3. Configure DISA with a Very Secure Password
  4. Configure an Inbound Route to Limit Incoming DISA Calls to Your Cellphone #
  5. Configure an Outbound Route for Each International Country Code
  6. Test, Test, Test

1. Setting Up Incoming DISA Call Trunk

Before you can make calls to your PBX, it’ll need a phone number (known affectionately as a DID). As installed, Incredible PBX includes preconfigured SIP trunks from about a dozen SIP providers. All you’ll need is credentials from the company you wish to use. You can obtain a free DID here. To obtain your own SIP URI, read our tutorial.

2. Trunk Setup for International Calling

We’re going to walk you through setting up a trunk with FreeVoipDeal to handle free international calls to certain countries documented above. This may not be the best fit for you depending upon the international destinations you wish to call. Figure that out first! Then adjust the trunk settings below to match each SIP provider trunk you wish to create. There’s no limit to the number you can have. And, with most of these providers, you pay by the minute for international calls anyway so there is no harm in configuring multiple trunks to take advantage of the best rates calling the countries of your choice. The same applies to all-you-can-eat and "free" trunks except there are varying fees for using the services so you’re probably not going to want a dozen of them even if some of the calls are free after making a periodic deposit. Start with the pink and green entries on the old spreadsheet we referenced for the cheapest historical rates and then visit the actual sites and read the fine print.

To add new trunks to Incredible PBX, use a browser to access the IP address of your server. Login with the default username of admin and the password that you set when your install completed. You can change it with the admin-pw-change script in /root. Once the dashboard appears, click the Connectivity tab and choose Trunks -> Add SIP (chan_sip) Trunk.

For Trunk Name, enter FreeVoipDeal. In the Dialed Number Manipulation Rules section, add a rule for each country code you wish to activate. You can decipher the Country Code for any country at this link. For example, for the United Kingdom, you’d enter a rule like this where 44 is the Country Code and each X represents a required digit in the local area code and phone number. The trailing period means the number includes one or more additional digits. NOTE: DISA calls will not have to be prefixed with 011 to place international calls. Just enter the country code and number to be called. And, we are told that only 441, 442, and perhaps 443 calls to the U.K. are free since those are the designated landline prefixes.




If there are other countries, you wish to support with this trunk provider, you’d click Add More Dial Pattern Fields and insert an additional rule for each country following the example above. If you’ll be using this trunk to make calls in the U.S. and Canada as well, the correct Match Pattern is 1NXXNXXXXXX, and calls will need to be dialed with the 1 to avoid conflicts with international dialing.

Next, we need to enter the Outgoing Settings. For the Trunk Name, enter freevoipdeal. Clear out the entries in Peer Details section and enter the following using your actual FreeVoipDeal credentials for yourusername and yourpassword:

authuser=yourusername
username=yourusername
secret=yourpassword
type=peer
qualify=yes
nat=yes
insecure=port,invite
host=sip.freevoipdeal.com
fromdomain=sip.freevoipdeal.com
dtmfmode=auto
disallow=all
canreinvite=no
allow=alaw&ulaw

Finally, clear out the default entries in User Details and click the Submit Changes button and then red Apply Config button to save your new trunk.

Spoofing Your CallerID. When setting up your FreeVoipDeal account, you can set up one or more numbers to use as your CallerID number on FreeVoipDeal calls. You simply verify the number with a code sent by SMS or phone call from their service. Once you’ve gone through the verification procedure, you can spoof the outbound CallerID on FreeVoipDeal calls using your actual cellphone number. Just add the following entries to your Trunk settings replacing 9991234567 with your cellphone number. Special thanks to @hillclimber on the PIAF Forum for the tip.

fromuser=0019991234567
sendrpid=yes

3. Configuring DISA for International Calling

In the Incredible PBX GUI, we’ll set up DISA by clicking the Applications tab and choosing DISA. Add your new DISA configuration by following this sample. Use a VERY secure password. It’s your phone bill. Once you’ve finished, click the Submit Changes button and then the Apply Config button to save your new DISA setup.



4. Inbound Routing of DISA Calls

Here’s where we lock down your setup so that Incredible PBX only accepts DISA calls from your cellphone number. If you want to allow additional people to use your DISA setup or if you have multiple cellphones, then simply create multiple inbound routes with the 10-digit numbers of each phone to be supported.

In the Incredible PBX GUI, we’ll set up a new Inbound Route by clicking the Connectivity tab and choosing Inbound Routes. If you plan to support multiple phones, then create multiple inbound routes and give each of them a unique Description and CallerID Number that matches the phone number of the cellphone to be supported. Be sure to check the CID Priority Route checkbox and set the correct Destination for your incoming calls. Just fill in the blanks appropriately using this template as a guide. Once you’ve finished, click the Submit button and then the Apply Config button to save your new Inbound Route.



5. Outbound Routing by Country Code

The DISA application is going to obtain the phone number to be dialed and will pass that to the Outbound Routes module. The job of the Outbound Routes module is to examine the phone number passed to it from DISA to figure out which trunk to use to make the outbound call. It then will pass the call to the appropriate trunk which sends the outgoing call on its way to the destination.

For each Dialed Number Manipulation Rule in every Trunk that you set up in Step #2 above, you’ll need a matching Outbound Route if your PBX is used to place calls using multiple trunks. If you’re only using one provider for all of your outbound calls, then we can use a more generic Outbound Route. It’s always a good idea to create the one-to-one match between Outbound Routes and Trunks to make certain that outbound calls are sent to the correct Trunk for processing. So let’s do that using the U.K. trunk we created above.

In the Incredible PBX GUI, we’ll set up a new Outbound Route by clicking the Connectivity tab and choosing Outbound Routes. When the template appears, notice in the far right column that there’s a listing of all your existing Outbound Routes. Calls are actually processed sequentially using the order that these Outbound Routes appear in the list. If there’s no number match in the top route, processing drops to the next route in the list until there is a match AND a successful connection. You can adjust the sequence by dragging the Outbound Routes to a different position in the priority list.

It’s important to use specificity in your Outbound Routes (especially with International calling) to make certain that a call isn’t inadvertently processed by some other trunk. The easiest way to do this is to require the Outbound Route Match Pattern for U.K. calls to be at least 11 digits, e.g. 44XXXXXXXX. (the trailing period is important in that it requires at least one more digit for a match). And we can force a Hangup if the FreeVoipDeal trunk is not available for some reason by adjusting the Destination on Congestion setting. This keeps the call routing from dropping down to the next available Outbound Route in the list if FreeVoipDeal happens to be off-line at some point. So our Outbound Route for U.K. calls should look something like this:



The final step is to move the new Outbound Route for U.K. calls to the top of the Outbound Routes listing in the right column to assure that it is processed first. Once you’ve done that, click the Submit Changes button and then the Apply Config button to save your new Outbound Route AND the adjusted Outbound Route Priority List.

Another alternative in creating Outbound Routes is to use a Dial Prefix that never matches a real phone number to direct calls to a particular trunk. For example, you might use *8 as a dial prefix for FreeVoipDeal calls. By placing *8 in the Prefix column of the Dial Pattern, it will get stripped off before the number is actually passed to the FreeVoipDeal trunk for processing. We actually prefer this setup because it adds an additional layer of security for international calls. If someone were to break into your DISA application by knowing your cellphone number AND your DID AND your DISA password, it’s unlikely they’d also know to prefix outgoing international calls with some arbitrary dial prefix. Just don’t use *8 in case they’re a Nerd Vittles reader. 😉

6. Test, Test, Test!

The easiest way to test the new setup is to place a couple of calls and to watch the Asterisk CLI (asterisk -rvvvvvvvvvv) and see how the calls are processed and who answers at the other end. Then you can apologize for reaching the wrong number.

You can make up your own test methodology, but here’s one that works for us. There are several tests you need to make. First, call your Incredible PBX DID from your authorized cellphone and enter a correct DISA password to see if you get dial tone to make an international call. Then repeat the drill with an invalid password and make sure you don’t get a dial tone. Next, call your Incredible PBX DID from a phone other than your authorized cellphone. You should not get a prompt for a DISA password. Finally, we use the first three digits of a U.K. number to identify a matching NANPA area code. Then, we find hotels in the two matching cities. For example, one might attempt to call a hotel in Bath, England (44 1… ……) and a hotel in Bermuda (441-…-….). The U.K. call should go through, and the Bermuda call should fail. If you pass all three tests with flying colors, you’re good to go.

Using FreeVoipDeal’s MobileVoIP App

FreeVoipDeal also offers a MobileVoIP app that can be used directly on your smartphone (Android, iOS, and Windows phone versions available) using any Wi-Fi, UMTS, 4G/LTE, 3G, GPRS or EDGE connection. The drawback is the lack of the three extra layers of security protection that Incredible PBX using DISA offers. MobileVOIP lets you log in with your registered Betamax credentials and offers the option to use your existing VoIP credit from your smartphone. The downside is that anyone with the app and your credentials can call anywhere and talk for as long as they like on your nickel using any of your registered CallerIDs. You’ve been warned. For more information or to download the app for your mobile device, go here. Remember to dial the "+1″ country code prefix for U.S./Canada calls.

Originally published: Monday, April 24, 2017  Updated: Monday, February 25, 2019


Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle 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 Forums. 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, ours 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 VoIP-info 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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