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Introducing Digium’s Awesome SIP Phones for Asterisk



If you’ve been waiting for a low-cost, feature-rich SIP phone that meshes perfectly with your Asterisk® PBX, your prayers have been answered. Digium has just released not one, but four, new SIP phones with prices starting at $59. No, that’s not a typo. Digium gave us a couple of early models to play with, and today we’ll walk you through the incredibly simple setup. We would begin by noting that, despite the pricing, these phones are configured with nothing resembling a bargain basement feature set. All four models have color displays, HD Voice, POE for use without the $15 power adapter, and at least two lines. The phones can be configured using the phones themselves, or through a slick web interface, or with auto-provisioning by MAC address. Beginning with the $89 A22, the top three models support gigabit Ethernet. With the $119 A25, you get four line registrations as well as a second LCD supporting six Rapid Dial keys or up to 30 BLF entries. The top-of-the-line $169 A30 supports six line registrations and an LED setup that closely matches our previous VoIP Phone of the Year, Yealink’s T46G. While the phones were not designed for use with Switchvox®, we found them to be plug-and-play with 3CX® which is probably also true with Switchvox even though we have not tested them on that platform. We have been using our A22 phone with one line connected to Incredible PBX® for the Raspberry Pi and the second connected to VitalBox. We’ve had zero issues with the phone, and sound quality is excellent.



Connecting Digium’s A-Series IP Phone

To get started, you’ll need a power source for the phone which can be either a POE network connection or a power adapter. You’ll also need to connect to a network that can provide DHCP or VLAN configuration data. Once the phone boots up, press the checkmark button (✓) twice to display the IP address assigned to the phone. Using a desktop browser, navigate to that IP address and enter admin:789 as the default login credentials.

Configuring a SIP Extension on Your IP Phone

Once you’re logged in, click on the Line tab and fill in the blanks for the SIP1 account using the desired extension number, extension password, and IP address of your Asterisk server. Be sure Activate is checked. It should look something like the following. Then click Apply.

This one-minute setup is all that’s required to put your new phone into production with Asterisk. You’re ready to make and receive calls. The L1 button on the A20 or A22 phone (pictured above) should now be lit. To light up the L2 button, add a second SIP connection by repeating the drill after choosing the SIP2 Line from the pull-down menu. If you have redundant PBXs, fill in the IP address of the Backup server, and the phone will automatically failover when the primary PBX goes down. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

With 3CX extensions, the setup is virtually identical except the phone’s Authentication Name field should reflect the Authentication Name chosen when setting up the 3CX extension.

Customizing Your SIP Phone Settings

VoiceMail Setup. The voicemail button can be activated for one or both SIP lines in the Advanced Settings tab under each of the SIP connections. Check the Subscribe to Voice Message box and enter the Voice Message Number to retrieve your voicemails, e.g. *98701 for extension 701 on an Asterisk PBX or 999 for a 3CX extension’s voicemail.

Customizing Phone Display. If you’d like to customize the branding and background image on your phone, navigate to Phone Settings and click the Advanced tab. Here’s a link to download one of our favorite beach scenes (pictured above), or you can use your own 320×240 BMP image on the A20 and A22. The high end phones use a 480×272 BMP image. The Asterisk label at the top of the phone’s display can also be adjusted in the Greeting Words field. We’re Enchilada fans personally. 🙂

Changing Passwords and PINs. You also can adjust the passwords and PINs for the phone device itself under the Phone Settings:Advanced tab. The default is 789. To modify the admin credentials for the browser interface or to add new accounts, go to System and click on the Account tab. Because the phone can be configured using either the phone itself or the browser interface, you’ll need to change both sets of passwords to secure your phone.

Adjusting Codecs. Depending upon your PBX setup, you may need to adjust or reorder the codecs for one or both of your SIP lines. Simply navigate to Line:SIP1:Codec Settings and make any necessary changes. HINT: You’ll rarely have a problem if you make G.711U (U.S.) or G.711A (elsewhere) your primary codec although G.722 is what you’ll want for HD Voice. This is especially important if you’re using Google Voice trunks or 3CX client software.

Auto-Provisioning Your A20, A22, and A25 Phones

Let’s get to the fun stuff now. Everything we’ve covered (and much more) can be scripted with these new phones. You can read all about it here. For today, let’s get your Phonebook Contacts populated using your AsteriDex database entries. And then you can press the Down button on the phone to retrieve your Contacts.

Setting Up Phone Provisioning. Before you can auto-provision your phone, both your phone and your Asterisk server need a little navigation information. Let’s start with the phone so login as admin:789 to get started. Click on the System option and then the Auto Provision tab. Write down the last 12 digits of your phone’s MAC address (CPE Serial Number highlighted above). Check the DownloadDeviceConfig option (as shown). Disable the DHCP Option and the SIP Plug and Play options by clicking on the respective tabs. Then open the Static Provisioning Server option (as shown). Enter the local IP address of your server assuming your phone and server are both behind a firewall. For the Protocol Type, choose HTTP. For the Update Mode, choose Update After Reboot. Then click the Apply button.

Next, let’s configure the phone so that you can press the Down arrow button to access your Phonebook Contacts. Click on the Function Key option in the left margin. Then look in the Programmable Keys section and locate the row with the settings for the Down button. Change the entry in the Desktop column to Phonebook. Then click the Apply button.

Configuring Asterisk for Phone Provisioning. Now we need to get your server set up to support phone provisioning. The way provisioning works is we will set up a provisioning profile for each phone which will be processed by your web server whenever a phone is rebooted. This profile will also tell the phone where to find your Phonebook Contacts XML file. To get started, navigate to /var/www/html and create a new .cfg file for each of your phones using the 12-character MAC address of the phone, e.g. 000123456789.cfg. The file should look like the following with the exception of the Auto Pbook Url entry which should reflect the local IP address of your server:

<<VOIP CONFIG FILE>>Version:2.0.0.0

<PHONE CONFIG MODULE>
LCD Title          :IncredblePBX

<AUTOUPDATE CONFIG MODULE>
Download CommonConf:0
Download DeviceConf:1
Check FailTimes    :5
update PB Interval :720
Clr PB B4 Import   :1
Trust Certification:0
Enable Auto Upgrade:0
Upgrade Server 1   :
Upgrade Server 2   :
Auto Upgrade intval:24
Auto Pbook Url     :http://192.168.0.108/phonebook.xml

<<END OF FILE>>

Populating Phonebook Contacts with AsteriDex. Now we’re ready to build the Phonebook Contacts file (phonebook.xml) using the AsteriDex 4 database. Just issue the following commands and then reboot each of your phones (Menu+8+Yes):

cd /var/www/html/asteridex4
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/asterisk-phonebook.tar.gz
tar zxvf asterisk-phonebook.tar.gz
rm -f asterisk-phonebook.tar.gz
php asterisk-phonebook.php

Digium A-Series IP Phone User Guide

Last but not least, take a look at Digium’s A-Series IP Phone User Guide (PDF) for more tips.

Final Thoughts on A-Series IP Phones

If you couldn’t already tell, we’re quite impressed with the new A-Series phones from Digium. If you’re on a budget, the $59 model is one terrific bargain for home or SOHO use. The only thing you’re really forfeiting with this phone is the gigabit Ethernet port which will have zero impact on small and medium-sized network implementations of a VoIP server. Rather than buying power adapters for your phones, drop by your favorite WalMart and purchase a network switch that includes POE support. They start at about $30. Then pick one of these phones up from your favorite provider and let us know what you think. You’ll also be helping to fund Digium’s open source Asterisk project. Enjoy!

Originally published: Friday, April 13, 2018





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VitalPBX in the Cloud: Providers, Backups, & Airtight Security

Last month we introduced VitalPBX, a terrific new (free) VoIP platform that’s about as intuitive as software can get. We followed up with a dozen Incredible PBX applications that really showed off the flexibility of this new Asterisk® platform. And today we’re pleased to introduce two new cloud solutions that offer our whitelist firewall design for security plus automatic backups. Both Digital Ocean and Vultr offer terrific performance coupled with a $5/month price point that is easy on your wallet. Our tip of the hat goes to Digital Ocean this month because they are again offering a $10 credit on new accounts while also generously supporting Nerd Vittles. That translates into two free months of VitalPBX in the Cloud service for you to kick the tires. If you like what you see, you can spring for the extra $1 a month and add automatic backups to your $5/mo. bill going forward. With a $10 credit, what’s to lose?

To get started, set up an account with one of these cloud providers and create a $5 a month server with 64-bit CentOS 7 in your choice of cities. Once you have your root password, log into your new server as root using SSH or Putty. On Digital Ocean, you will be prompted to change your password the first time you login. On Vultr, you have to manually do it by issuing the command: passwd. Then you’re ready to begin the VitalPBX install. Just issue the following commands and then grab a cup of coffee.

cd /root
yum -y install wget nano tar
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wardmundy/VPS/master/vps.sh
chmod +x vps.sh
./vps.sh

The base install takes less than 15 minutes to complete. When it’s finished, use a web browser from your desktop PC and log into the IP address of your new VitalPBX server. You’ll be prompted to set up an admin password for GUI access and then you register your server with Telesoft. Should you ever forget your admin password, here’s how to force a reset on your next login from a browser:

mysql ombutel -e 'update ombu_settings set value = "yes" where name = "reset_pwd"'

After logging in, you’ll be presented with the VitalPBX Dashboard:



From here, the drill is pretty much the same as what was outlined in our original VitalPBX tutorial. So jump over there to complete your set up and configure extensions, trunks, routes, and a few other settings for your new PBX. Then pick back up here to secure your server!

Security Methodology. What is different on the cloud platform is you don’t have a hardware-based firewall to protect your server. So we’ll need to configure VitalPBX using its built-in firewalld and Fail2Ban applications. Our preference is to use a whitelist of IP addresses to access your server and its resources. In that way, the Bad Guys never even see your server on the Internet. Our security philosophy is simple. If you can’t see it, you can’t hack it.

In addition to a WhiteList of public IP addresses, we also will enable a secure NeoRouter VPN front door to your server as well as a PortKnocker backdoor thereby providing three separate and secure ways to gain server access without publicly exposing VitalPBX to the Internet. If you have a better way, by all means go for it. After all, it’s your phone bill.

Firewall and Fail2Ban Setup. To begin, login to the VitalPBX GUI with a browser using your admin credentials. Then do the following:

(1.) Add NeoRouter VPN Protocol TCP Port 32976 in Admin:Security:Firewall:Services.

(2.) Add NeoRouter VPN Action ACCEPT rule in Admin:Security:Firewall:Rules.

(3.a.) WhiteList your client and server IP addresses in Admin:Security:Firewall:WhiteList.
(3.b.) WhiteList 127.0.0.1 (for localhost) and 10.0.0.0/24 (for NeoRouter VPN).
(3.c.) WhiteList the IP addresses of any potential unregistered trunk providers.
(3.d.) WhiteList the public IP addresses of any extensions you plan to install.

(4.) Enable Fail2Ban in Admin:Security:Intrusion Detection.

(5.a.) WhiteList your client IP address(es) in Admin:Security:Intrusion Detection:Whitelist.
(5.b.) WhiteList the NeoRouter VPN subnet, 10.0.0.0/24, as well.

(6.) Remove the following rules from Admin:Security:Firewall:Rules

SIP
HTTP
HTTPS
SSH
IAX2
PJSIP

(7.) Reload the VitalPBX dialplan by clicking the Red indicator (upper right of the GUI).

(8.) Verify IPtables WhiteList: iptables -nL | grep ACCEPT

(9.) Verify Fail2Ban WhiteList: grep -r ignoreip /etc/fail2ban/jail.d/*

Travelin’ Man 3 Addition. One of the major shortcomings in the firewalld implementation of IPtables is the lack of any support for fully-qualified domain names in their WhiteList. For those that want to use dynamic DNS updating services with custom FQDNs to manage remote user access to your server, this is a serious limitation even though PortKnocker alleviates some of the misery. So here’s our solution. We have reworked the Travelin’ Man 3 toolkit for VitalPBX so that you can use command line scripts to add (add-ip and add-fqdn), remove (del-acct), and manage (ipchecker) your WhiteList using either IP addresses (add-ip) or FQDNs (add-fqdn). The automatic update utility (ipchecker) will keep your FQDNs synchronized with your dynamic IP address service by updating the WhiteList every 10 minutes between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m. daily. Keep in mind that this is a supplement to the existing VitalPBX firewall setup documented above. And we only recommend that you add it if you plan to implement automatic management of dynamic IP addresses with FQDNs for your extensions and remote users.

If you plan to use the TM3 addition, you are strongly urged to not make further firewall changes using the VitalPBX GUI unless (1) you can also remember to keep your desktop PC’s IP address whitelisted in VitalPBX and (2) you remember to restart IPtables (iptables-restart) in the CLI after having made firewall changes in the VitalPBX GUI. Otherwise, you will lose your Travelin’ Man 3 WhiteList entries which means folks will get locked out of your server until the TM3 WhiteList is updated by running iptables-restart. All TM3 WhiteListed entries are stored and managed in individual text files in /root with a file extension of .iptables. Do not manually delete them!

To install the TM3 addition, issue the following commands:

cd /
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/tm3-vitalpbx.tar.gz
tar zxvf tm3-vitalpbx.tar.gz
rm -f tm3-vitalpbx.tar.gz
echo "/usr/local/sbin/iptables-boot" >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local
chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.local
systemctl enable rc-local
echo "*/10 5-22 * * * root /usr/local/sbin/ipchecker > /dev/null 2>&1" >> /etc/crontab

Using DynDNS to Manage FQDNs. The key ingredient with Travelin’ Man 3 is automatic management of dynamic IP addresses. When a user or even the administrator moves to a different location or IP address, we don’t want to have to manually adjust anything. So what you’ll first need is a DynDNS account. Other free providers are available but are less flexible. For $40 a year, DynDNS lets you set up 30 FQDNs and keep the IP addresses for those hostnames current. That’s more than ample for almost any small business but, if you need more horsepower, DynDNS.com can handle it. What we recommend is setting up a separate FQDN for each phone on your system that uses a dynamic IP address. This can include the administrator account if desired because it works in exactly the same way. When the administrator extension drops off the radar, a refresh of IPtables will bring all FQDNs back to life including the administrator’s account. Sounds simple? It is.

Getting Started with Travelin’ Man 3. Here are the 5 tools that are included in the TM3 suite for VitalPBX:

  • add-ip some-label ip-address – Allows you to add an IP address to the WhiteList
  • add-fqdn some-label FQDN – Allows you to add an FQDN to the WhiteList
  • del-acct some-label.iptables – Deletes an IP address or FQDN from WhiteList
  • ipchecker – Runs every 10 minutes to synchronize FQDNs; do NOT run manually
  • iptables-restart – Restarts IPtables and adds TM3 WhiteListed IPs and FQDNs
  • iptables-boot – Loads TM3 WhiteListed IPs and FQDNs on boot only
  • show-whitelist – Displays contents of both VitalPBX and TM3 WhiteLists

Using Email to Manage Your WhiteList. We have one new addition to Travelin’ Man 3 for the VitalPBX platform. Now your authorized users can send an email to the VitalPBX server to whitelist an IP address and gain access. Two different passwords are supported and can be handed out to different classes of PBX users, e.g. administrators and ordinary users. Using the "permanent" password lets someone add an IP address to the VitalPBX whitelist permanently. Using the "temporary" password lets a user add an IP address to the whitelist until the next reboot or firewall restart. In both cases, the administrator gets an immediate email showing the whitelisted IP address, who requested it, and the type of whitelist entry that was requested. The syntax for the email request is straight-forward. Just send an email to the special email account set up to handle these requests and include a Subject for the message that looks exactly like this where 8.8.8.8 is the IP address to be whitelisted and some-password is one of the two passwords: WhiteList 8.8.8.8 PW some-password

As most of you know, we’re sticklers for security, and there’s plenty of it here. First, we recommend you use an obscure FQDN for your server so that it is not easily guessed by someone wanting to do harm. Second, we assume your IP address also won’t be published. Third, the email account name also should be obscure. Think of it as another password. For example, martin432 would be a good choice while whitelist would be pretty lousy. Keep in mind that the only people sending mail to this account will be folks that need immediate access to your PBX. Finally, BOTH of the passwords to use the email feature need to be long and difficult to decipher. A mix of alphanumeric characters and upper and lowercase letters is strongly recommended because it makes successful penetration nearly impossible.

To begin, we need to reconfigure your VitalPBX Firewall to accept incoming email on TCP port 25. In Admin:Security:Firewall:Services, Add a new service that looks like the following: Name: SMTP    Protocol: TCP    Port: 25. Then SAVE your entry.

Next, we need to add a VitalPBX Firewall Rule that allows incoming SMTP traffic. In Admin:Security:Firewall:Rules, Add a new rule: Service: SMTP    Action: Accept. Then SAVE.

Next, we need to log into the Linux CLI as root to do a couple of things. First, we need to reconfigure Postfix to accept emails from outside our server. Replace 8.8.8.8 with the actual IP address of your server. Replace smtp.myserver.com with the actual FQDN of your server. If you don’t have one, simply remove the FQDN from the command.

yum -y install mailx
postconf -e "mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8, 8.8.8.8"
postconf -e "mydestination = smtp.myserver.com, localhost.localdomain, localhost"
postconf -e "inet_interfaces = all"
postconf -e "recipient_delimiter = +"
service postfix restart

Second, we need to add an email account to process the incoming emails. Replace someuser on each line with that obscure account name you plan to use for incoming emails. Then send yourself a test email and be sure it arrives. The last command cleans out the mail account.

adduser someuser --shell=/bin/false --no-create-home --system -U 
echo "test" | mail -s "Hello World" someuser
mail -u someuser
> /var/mail/someuser

Finally, we need to set up your passwords and admin email address in /root/mailcheck. To begin, insert your actual mail account name in the following command by replacing realuser and then execute the command:

sed -i 's|someuser|realuser|' /root/mailcheck

Now edit /root/mailcheck with nano or your favorite editor and change the TempPW, PermPW, and MyEMail entries. Then save the file and add the following entry to /etc/crontab:

*/3 5-22 * * * root /root/mailcheck > /dev/null 2>&1
 

CAUTION: Because of the bifurcated nature of the integration of TM3’s WhiteList into the VitalPBX firewall setup, be advised that you never want to make a change in the VitalPBX GUI’s firewall configuration without assuring that the desktop machine from which you are making that change is already included in the VitalPBX Whitelist (see #3.a., above). The same applies to issuing an iptables-restart from the Linux CLI. The reason is there are two separate whitelists and either of these actions would temporarily disable the TM3 WhiteList until the iptables-restart procedure was executed AND completed. In both situations, you most probably would be locked out of web and SSH access to your own server. A VitalPBX firewall reload only restarts firewalld with the VitalPBX WhiteList, and an iptables-restart from the CLI first restarts firewalld without the TM3 WhiteList rules and then adds the TM3 WhiteList rules after the firewalld reload is completed. We have added safeguards to some of the TM3 utilities to keep you from shooting yourself in the foot by requiring the VitalPBX WhiteList addition before you can use the TM3 iptables-restart and del-acct utilities; however, this is not the case with ipchecker which typically runs as a cron job from localhost. Because there is no safeguard mechanism, do NOT run it manually unless you’re sure you first have whitelisted your desktop PC’s IP address in the VitalPBX GUI (see #3.a., above). Without getting down in the weeds, we also have no ability to control the internal workings of the VitalPBX firewall. Should you get locked out of your server, there are three remedies. The first is the email solution documented above. The second is to use PortKnocker to regain access. The third is to use the localhost console in the Digital Ocean or Vultr control panel to issue the iptables-restart command. You might want to print this out for a rainy day. 🙂

PortKnocker Installation. You may not know the remote IP addresses of everyone using your PBX, and some of your users may travel to different sites and need a temporary IP address whitelisted while using a WiFi hotspot. And, not that it would happen to you, but once in a while an administrator locks himself out of his own server by changing IP addresses without first whitelisting the new address. The solution to all of these problems is easy with PortKnocker. The user simply sends three sequential pings to ports known only by you and your users using the machine or smartphone that needs access. You can read our original tutorial for more detail. For today, let’s get PortKnocker installed and configured with your three random ports. You can review the assignment at any time by displaying /root/knock.FAQ which also explains how to send the knocks using a desktop machine or a smartphone.

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/knock-vitalpbx.sh
chmod +x knock-vitalpbx.sh
./knock-vitalpbx.sh

As with other Incredible PBX Travelin’ Man 3 implementations, IP addresses whitelisted using PortKnocker only last until the next reboot, or until you issue the following command firewall-cmd --reload (does not reload TM3 WhiteList), or until you execute a firewall update from within the VitalPBX GUI (does not reload TM3 WhiteList), or until you issue the command iptables-restart which restarts the firewall AND loads the TM3 WhiteList entries. To permanently WhiteList IP addresses, follow the procedure in Step #3 above or add the entries using the TM3 utilities documented in the previous section.

NeoRouter Installation. A virtual private network (VPN) is perhaps the safest way to access any server including VitalPBX. All of your communications is securely encrypted and you connect to the server through a network tunnel using a non-routable, private IP address. There are many VPNs from which to choose. Our personal favorite is NeoRouter because up to 256 devices can be interconnected at zero cost, and you can set the whole thing up in minutes with virtually no networking expertise. If you want all of the background on NeoRouter, see our latest tutorial.

NeoRouter uses a star topology which means you must run the NeoRouter Server application on a computer platform that is accessible over the Internet all the time. Then each of the remote devices or servers runs the NeoRouter Client application, connects to the server to obtain a private IP address, and then can communicate with all of the other devices connected to the VPN. If you already have a NeoRouter Server in place, then you can skip the server installation step and skip down to installing the NeoRouter Client on your VitalPBX server.

NeoRouter Server Setup. If you’re just getting started with NeoRouter, the first step is setting up the NeoRouter Server on a platform of your choice. If you’re using the Automatic Backup feature of Digital Ocean or Vultr, then your VitalPBX server is probably as good a site as any. NeoRouter Server uses minimal resources, and outages shouldn’t be a problem except for hurricanes, tornados, and bombs. But, just so you know, if the NeoRouter Server is down, none of the NeoRouter Clients can access the VPN or any other clients so you’d have to resort to public IP addresses for network access.

To install NeoRouter Server on your VitalPBX platform, log into your server as root and issue the following commands:

cd /root
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

Next, create at least one account with administrator privileges and one account with user privileges to your NeoRouter VPN:

nrserver -adduser admin-name admin-password admin
nrserver -adduser user-name user-password user

The commands to manage NeoRouter Server are a little different on the CentOS 7 platform. Here’s what you’ll need:

Start on boot: systemctl enable nrserver.service
Check status: systemctl status nrserver.service
Restart server: systemctl restart nrserver.service
Change settings: nrserver -help

NeoRouter Client Setup. Whether you’re running NeoRouter Server on your VitalPBX platform or not, you’ll still need to install and configure the NeoRouter Client software in order to access the server through the VPN using a remote computer, smartphone, or tablet. NeoRouter Clients for Linux, Windows, Macs, FreeBSD, Mobile, OpenWRT, Tomato, and HTML5 are available here. Be sure to choose the NRFree V2 platform tab before downloading a client, or you’ll get the wrong client software and nothing will work! Ask us how we know.

To install NeoRouter Client on your VitalPBX platform, log into your server as root and issue the following commands:

cd /root
wget http://download.neorouter.com/Downloads/NRFree/Update_2.3.1.4360/Linux/CentOS/nrclient-2.3.1.4360-free-centos-x86_64.rpm
rpm -Uvh nrclient-2.3.1.4360-free-centos-x86_64.rpm

As with NeoRouter Server, the commands to manage NeoRouter Client are a little different on the CentOS 7 platform. Here’s what you’ll need:

Start on boot: systemctl enable nrservice.service
Check status: systemctl status nrservice.service
Restart client: systemctl restart nrservice.service
Login to VPN: nrclientcmd

The main requirement after installing the software is to login to your VPN: nrclientcmd. You’ll be prompted for the FQDN or IP address of your NeoRouter Server and then the admin or user credentials. If successful, you’ll get a display of all the machines logged into the VPN, including the VitalPBX server.

NeoRouter Network Explorer – somebody@vultr.guest

> My Computers
10.0.0.2 vultr.guest

Available Commands: changeview, wakeonlan, setproxy, changepassword, quit
Enter command:

The next step is to download and install NeoRouter Client software on your desktop computer and smartphone. Then you can remotely connect to your VitalPBX server from those platforms. In our example above, you could login to 10.0.0.2 with either SSH or your web browser and never have to worry about whitelisting your remote machines with VitalPBX.

Checking VitalPBX Status. As with other Incredible PBX platforms, we have reworked the pbxstatus utility to support VitalPBX. Running it from the command prompt will display the status of all of the key services on your PBX. Note the addition of the VPN’s IP address which tells you that NeoRouter Client is alive and well:



Configuring Automatic Backups. When you’re ready to enable backups for a Digital Ocean droplet, navigate to the list of droplets for your account. Click the Droplet name for which you’d like to enable backups, and then click the Backups menu item. This will display the cost of backups for the given droplet. Click the Enable Backups button to enable backups.

The Vultr setup is similar. Automatic backup settings are managed through the Vultr control panel. Once you log into your account, visit the server’s management area, click on your server in the dialog, and then click on the "Backups" tab for your VPS. Click Enable Backups. On either platform, the backup option adds a $1 a month to the cost of the $5 server. That’s pretty cheap insurance.

Originally published: Monday, April 2, 2018





Need help with VitalPBX? Visit the VitalPBX 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.
 



Meet the New Kid on the Block: Introducing (free) VitalPBX




If you liked Ombutel, you’re going to love VitalPBX. If you’ve never heard of Ombutel but you live and breathe Asterisk®, you’re still going to love VitalPBX. For everyone else, you’re going to love VitalPBX. In addition to an impressive collection of commercial modules, this month’s release of the VitalPBX 2.0 Unified Communications Platform provides the slickest user interface in the VoIP universe. It includes new support for PJsip, DPMA and Digium phones, XMPP chat, video conferencing, WebRTC, and our favorite, Custom Contexts. What began several years ago as a joint development project between Telesoft and Xorcom is now an independent venture of Telesoft. If you love Features, VitalPBX has no equal:


VitalPBX has many open source and GPL components including Asterisk 13.19.0, however, VitalPBX is a freeware product much like FreePBX® which blends commercial modules and proprietary components into its distribution. It’s not our favorite business model, but we certainly understand the rationale given the disappointing GPL history in the VoIP space. For our testing purposes, Telesoft has generously provided free licenses to commercial modules. We would hasten to add that no features requiring payment were used in this article or in the demo applications accompanying it. We will cover the commercial applications requiring payment at a later date.

Incidentally, when you get around to exploring the commercial offerings, keep in mind that all of them come with a free tier to let you try things out:

  • Custom Contexts – 1 free context
  • IVR Stats – 1 free IVR
  • Sonata Switchboard – 1 free layout for 15 extensions
  • Sonata Billing – free for 8 extensions
  • Sonata Recordings – free for 8 extensions
  • Domotic – completely free
  • Phone Books – completely free
  • Bulk Extensions – completely free

Today we want to walk you through getting a VitalPBX server set up so that you can kick the tires for yourself. Down the road, we’ll demonstrate the ease with which you can add your own components including Incredible PBX® to the mix. If you are accustomed to setting up FreePBX-based Asterisk servers, then installation and configuration of VitalPBX will be a walk in the park. Currently, you install VitalPBX from an ISO so you have a choice of platforms: dedicated hardware, VMware ESXi, VirtualBox, or a limited number of cloud platforms such as Vultr that support custom ISO installs. Be sure to read our security warnings below before choosing a cloud-based platform without a hardware-based firewall.

A Word About Security. VitalPBX includes both an IPtables firewall configurator for firewalld and a Fail2Ban intrusion detection setup that is impressive. Having said that, the IPtables firewall is activated but allows unrestricted SIP and web access with no rules to thwart SipVicious-style attacks. Unless you’re an expert in firewall design, we strongly recommend deployment of VitalPBX on a private LAN behind a hardware-based firewall or home router with no port forwarding. That will block intrusion attempts without encountering NAT problems which VitalPBX and Asterisk 13 now handle with ease.

Getting Started. Begin by downloading the VitalPBX 2.0 ISO to your desktop. The ISO installation process is a traditional CentOS® 7 procedure so you can follow one of our existing VoIP tutorials to get things set up on the platform of your choice. Once the install finishes, use a web browser to access the IP address of your VitalPBX server. You’ll be prompted to set up an admin password for GUI access and then you register your server with Telesoft. Should you ever forget your admin password, here’s how to force a reset on your next login from a browser:

mysql ombutel -e 'update ombu_settings set value = "yes" where name = "reset_pwd"'

After logging in, you’ll be presented with the VitalPBX Dashboard:





Navigation Tips. The GUI is incredibly intuitive, but there’s always a learning curve with something new. We’ll save you a little stumbling around looking for things or wondering why your settings in the UI didn’t take. Here’s a quick cheat sheet. All of the UI features are housed under menus in the left column. When you choose an option, it opens a submenu. And, when you click + beside an item on the submenu, it exposes additional choices. For example, to work on Outbound Routes, you’d choose PBX, External +, Outbound Routes:


Two other important icons are housed in the upper right corner of the GUI. Whenever you add or make changes to settings in the GUI, you need to reload the Asterisk dialplan by clicking on (1) the flashing icon. Otherwise, your settings will not be available. Ask us how we know. 🙂

After you add a new extension, trunk, or route, you’ll see (2) the four-bar icon which you click to access existing settings which you’ve already entered. Otherwise, you’ll be staring at a blank screen without your new entries. There’s nothing more disconcerting than adding a few extensions only to have them disappear the next time you navigate to PBX:Extensions. 🙂



Finally, at the top of the center panel of the GUI, VitalPBX (literally) keeps tabs on items you’ve recently worked on. It makes it extremely convenient to return to the item without having to once again drill down through the menus:



Initial Setup. As with most PBXs, the initial setup involves creating some Extensions, connecting some Trunks, and setting up Outbound and Inbound Routes to process calls to and from your PBX. The other hundreds of features are pure gravy which you can explore at your leisure. If we covered them all, you’d be reading a book instead of an article.

Extension Setup looks like this using VitalPBX to generate the extension password:



Trunk Setup. You can use Google Voice with the Simonics GV/SIP Gateway for free calling in the U.S. and Canada. There is a one-time setup charge of $4.99 if you follow this Nerd Vittles link. We recommend using Google Voice for outbound calls where possible. Then, for inbound calls and redundancy, add a separate trunk with a customized DID from a provider such as our platinum sponsor, Vitelity. See the end of this article for a deal you can’t refuse. The VitalPBX Trunk setup in PBX:External:Trunks:SIP would look like the following for the Simonics GV/SIP gateway:



Outbound Route Setup is virtually identical to the FreePBX format. Here’s a typical Google Voice route to let users dial 10-digit numbers while letting Google discard expensive NANPA calls to problematic area codes in the Caribbean and elsewhere. We actually recommend adding a second Dial Pattern for 1NXXNXXXXXX so that calls dialed with both 10 and 11-digits are supported. This will also facilitate implementation of some of the Incredible PBX add-ons down the road.



Inbound Route Setup also is similar to FreePBX. A default route can be configured by simply defining the Route Description as Default and specifying a Destination for all incoming calls that don’t otherwise have a matching inbound route.

Email Configuration. One of the other things you’ll want to get working is email delivery for Voicemails. The VitalPBX solution is the best in the business. It supports Gmail as a RelayHost out of the box. For residential users where your ISP blocks downstream SMTP mail servers, this is a godsend. Setup couldn’t be easier. Navigate to Admin:System Settings:Email Settings. For Server, click Use External Mail Server. For Provider, click Gmail and enter your full Gmail account name and password. Click Save and Reload your Dialplan. Then send yourself a test message by entering an email address and clicking the Envelope icon.

Updating Time Zone. If the date command incorrectly displays the time on your server, you can change it with the following commands using your correct zone in the second command:

timedatectl list-timezones
timedatectl set-timezone America/New_York

What’s Next? You now have a perfectly functioning PBX. Connect one or more softphones or SIP phones, and you’re ready to go. As we mentioned at the outset, the next step is to explore all of the menu options and review the VitalPBX Reference Guide. It really is a book!

The Fun Stuff. The icing on the VitalPBX cake is the add-on applications. Some are free, some are limited in some way, and some are commercial. You can review what’s available here. Then load the currently available listing into the GUI by choosing Admin:Add-ons:Add-ons:Check Online. To get started, install Bulk Extensions (free), Custom Contexts (one free context or $50 for unlimited), and Phone Books (free). Once you’ve installed all three, refresh your browser and go to PBX:Applications:Custom Contexts.

Step #1. Set up a Custom Context like this. Then click Save/Update and Reload Dialplan.



Step #2. Adjust Destination of Inbound Route to point to Incredible PBX Custom Context.

Step #3. From the Linux CLI while logged in as root, use nano to create the following file: /etc/asterisk/ombutel/extensions__80-1-incrediblepbx.conf:

[incrediblepbx]
exten => s,1,Answer
exten => s,n,NoOp(My custom context)
exten => s,n,Dial(SIP/701,30)
exten => s,n,return()

Step #4. Reload your Asterisk dialplan: asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"

Step #5. Place a call to an incoming trunk on your PBX while watching the Asterisk CLI. The tail of the incoming call should look something like the following which shows the incoming call directed to the Custom Context and from there to extension 701.



Now that you understand the VitalPBX theory behind Custom Contexts, you’ll be ready to dive into Incredible PBX applications which will be coming soon to a VitalPBX platform near you.

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

Homework. Yes. Everyone needs a little homework once in a while. Before our next chapter in the VitalPBX saga, you’re going to need an IBM Cloud account with access to Watson TTS and Watson STT. It’s free. These services will be used for the Incredible PBX TTS and Voice Recognition apps for Asterisk including News and Weather reports as well as Voice Dialing with AsteriDex. This Nerd Vittles tutorial will walk you through getting your IBM account set up. Don’t install any of the scripts in that tutorial. We’ll have fresh ones in coming weeks customized for VitalPBX. For home and SOHO use, both IBM access and our scripts are FREE.

Coming Attractions. We’ve set up a VitalPBX demo server with VMware ESXi running on our private LAN. Most of the Incredible PBX demo applications already are operational, and you’re more than welcome to try them out by calling the IVR at 1-843-606-0555. Many of these apps make use of the IBM Cloud services for voice recognition and text-to-speech content rendering so you can preview what you’ll be getting in our next VitalPBX chapter.

  • 0. Chat with Operator — connects to extension 701
  • 1. AsteriDex Voice Dialer – say "Delta Airlines" or "American Airlines" to connect
  • 2. Conferencing – log in using 1234 as the conference PIN
  • 3. Wolfram Alpha Almanac – say "What planes are flying overhead"
  • 4. Lenny – The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare
  • 5. Today’s News Headlines — courtesy of Yahoo! News
  • 6. Weather by ZIP Code – enter any 5-digit ZIP code for today’s weather
  • 7. Today in History — courtesy of OnThisDay.com
  • 8. Chat with Nerd Uno — courtesy of SIP URI connection to 3CX iPhone Client
  • 9. DISA Voice Dialer — say any 10-digit number to be connected
  • *. Current Date and Time — courtesy of VitalPBX

Continue Reading:

Introducing the Incredible PBX Custom Context for VitalPBX
VitalPBX in the Cloud: Two $6/month Providers with Backups
VitalPBX Security: Firewall, PortKnocker, & NeoRouter VPN
VitalPBX on the Desktop: Introducing VitalPBX for VirtualBox

Originally published: Monday, March 19, 2018





Need help with VitalPBX? Visit the VitalPBX 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.
 



300 New Wholesale Providers Make Asterisk Shine


For many years, we’ve offered Vitelity’s $3.99 Unlimited DID special with a DID, 4 channels, unlimited inbound calling, and free text messaging. It’s a deal no VoIP user should pass up. And today we have another revolutionary development for Asterisk® deployments. Once in a while we feature a carrier with great calling rates. Today we’re introducing a service providing access to 300+ wholesale carriers, all under one roof. Almost 30 BILLION billed minutes already have been logged through TCXC so you’re in good hands!1 You can choose from any or all of their 300 wholesale VoIP carriers worldwide to make outbound calls at the same wholesale rates offered to the very largest resellers. Simply pay a 13% surcharge in lieu of the $650 annual fee, and TelecomsXchange (TCXC) will provide you access to their entire suite of wholesale carriers together with state-of-the-art tools to manage all of the services.2 You’ll never have to haggle with individual carriers or provide funds on a piecemeal basis to use any of the services. TCXC already has done the negotiating for you and TCXC handles financial reimbursements to carriers based upon the services you use. There’s more good news. When compared to commercial providers, TCXC’s one-second billing increment on most routes will recoup a healthy portion of the 13% wholesale surcharge. Here are a few sample per minute wholesale rates (all with one-second billing) to whet your appetite:

  • $.0000 – U.S. TollFree
  • $.0009 – U.S.
  • $.0010 – Cyprus
  • $.0011 – Canada
  • $.0019 – Germany
  • $.0021 – U.K. (London)
  • $.0042 – China

What does a penny buy? 11-minute call to U.S., 10-minute call to Cyprus, 9-minute call to Canada, 5-minute call to Germany, 5 minute call to England, or 2½-minute call to China.

 
If you’re new to wholesale terminations, be advised that carriers change their rates regularly and, from time to time, every carrier experiences outages. Not to worry. For a modest additional charge, TelecomsXchange will manage rates and provide automatic failover for carrier outages. Simply choose TelecomsXchange as your preferred provider to the outbound destinations desired.

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of configuring Asterisk to use TCXC carriers for wholesale call terminations, let’s spend a minute discussing the architecture of the FreePBX® trunk and outbound routes model. In this design which you will find in most Incredible PBX® implementations including Issabel 4, Incredible PBX for CentOS and Ubuntu, and Incredible PBX for the Raspberry Pi as well as in other Asterisk distributions including AsteriskNOW® and the FreePBX Distro®, the administrator specifies Trunks for each provider and then assigns Outbound Routes for calls using those providers. When calls are placed, FreePBX chooses an Outbound Route based upon the dial string match specified in the route. If you have a dozen outbound routes, dialed numbers are analyzed against dial strings specified in each Outbound Route, and the routes are examined from the top to the bottom of the list. Once FreePBX chooses an Outbound Route to process a call, that ends the Outbound Route selection process. No other Outbound Route is ever considered whether it has a matching dial string or not. And it doesn’t matter whether the call fails or not, no other Outbound Route is attempted. The good news is that, within every Outbound Route, you can specify multiple Trunks which will be used in the order you’ve chosen to complete the call. If the ninth trunk happens to be the first trunk that doesn’t experience congestion, then the call will be routed to carrier #9. Keep in mind that calls to the previous eight carriers have to be attempted before we ever get to carrier #9. For this reason, it is important to create a Trunk for every carrier and specify multiple Trunks in every Outbound Route to avoid failed calls. Or, as noted above, you can specify TelecomsXchange as your final Trunk in every Outbound Route and leave it to TCXC to identify a working carrier to complete your call. In this way, you never have to worry about failed calls even though some may cost a little more depending upon carrier outages. So that’s how VoIP terminations work. You’re now an expert!

Getting Started with TelecomsXchange

The first step in your wholesale VoIP adventure is to sign up for an account with TelecomsXchange. Unless you’re chomping at the bit to pay the $650 annual fee, use our referral link. Your PBX will need a public IP address but, if it happens to be a dynamic IP address assigned by your provider, don’t worry. It’s easy to change it down the road, and we’ll show you how. Obviously, a cloud-based PBX makes this easier since you get a dedicated IP address, and this Nerd Vittles article provides several options.

Once you receive your credentials, simply login to the TelecomsXchange web site. Just a few words about how the site is organized. Dashboard is where you’ll land when you login. Accounts let you specify more than one account to be associated with your credentials. If you manage multiple PBXs, this is where you set things up. Each account must have a unique IP address. This is also where you can change the IP address associated with your primary account if the need ever arises. My Interconnections displays each of your accounts and all of the carriers you’ve chosen to associate with each account. Market View is where you search for prices and choose carriers to associate with your account(s). We’ll cover this one in more detail a little later. Payment History tracks all of your payments to TelecomsXchange by date. Call Statistics lets you download CDR and Stats data by the day, week, or month. CDR gives you an instant snapshot of your calling history and the price of the calls based upon criteria you specify. It’s very similar to the same feature in the Incredible PBX or FreePBX GUI. Preferences let you change settings for your account.

The item you’ll need to use first is the plus sign (+) at the top of the form. This is how you fund your account. As noted previously, there is a 13% wholesale surcharge and this will be deducted from whatever amount you choose to add to your account. For example, if you add $100 using PayPal, the PayPal fee plus 13% will be deducted from the $100. So your account would show an available balance of approximately $84. Cash or bank wires also are accepted.

Finally, here’s a link to the TelecomsXchange Knowledge Base and Help Center. There’s lot of helpful information there to get you started.

Choosing a Carrier with TelecomsXchange

Let’s walk through the procedure to add new carriers to your account. This is the first thing you’ll want to do after you get your credentials and fund your account. Begin by making yourself a list of the countries or dialing prefixes you’d like to call using TCXC wholesale carriers. The easiest way to perform searches and find carriers is to decipher the dialing prefix for the calls you wish to make. For example, to call London, the Prefix would be the U.K. country code (44) plus the London city code (20).

Now open the Market View tab to get started. Here’s how we’d fill in the form to find London carriers and to order the first hundred matches from least costly to most expensive: Prefix (4420), Results (100), Order By (PRICE), and Route Type (CLI) which means you can specify your own CallerID for the outgoing calls. Click Search to proceed. The results look like this:

To add a carrier to your account, simply click on the plus sign (+) on the right side of the Action column beside the carrier of your choice. You then can choose whether to add it to all of your accounts, or you specify the account to which the carrier should be added. If you want to review the carrier’s history and ratings with TCXC, click on the Information icon in the Action column beside the carrier of your choice.

For NANPA call destinations, specify 1 plus the area code in the Prefix field. You can add the first 3 digits of the exchange to drill down further. Be advised that adding the 3-digit exchange may eliminate a number of carriers that only specify rates for an entire area code. For example, if a carrier specifies an area code rate for 1212 and no exchange limitations, then searching for 1212652 would not return that carrier.

If you already know which carriers you’d like to add, just search for them by specifying the carrier name in the Seller field and leaving the Prefix field blank. To get started, here are a few favorites for U.S./Int’l routes: IDT, LEXICO, TATA, VOXBEAM, and TELECOMSXCHANGE.

Placing Carrier-Specific Calls with TelecomsXchange

To set up the FreePBX Trunks and Outbound Routes, you first need to understand how calls are placed through TelecomsXchange carriers. In lieu of traditional trunk registrations on your PBX, TelecomsXchange uses the IP address that you registered for your account to determine whether SIP calls arriving at TCXC for routing to a carrier are authorized. Thus, it’s important that you keep your IP addresses updated whenever they change. Assuming your call passes the IP address check, the next hurdle is for TCXC to decipher which carrier should be used to route the call to its destination. This is handled by dialing prefixes which are unique to each TCXC carrier. For example, TATA has a dialing prefix of 32270#. To dial a U.S. call using the TATA carrier, the dial string would look like this: 32270#16785551212. A carrier must be assigned to your account before you can place calls from your PBX using that carrier’s dialing prefix. So there are two layers of protection on the TCXC side to prevent fraudulent calls. There must be both an IP address match and a carrier prefix match on your account before a call will be forwarded to a carrier.

Before we begin setting up your Trunks and Outbound Routes for Incredible PBX or one of the other Asterisk platforms, write down the names of each of the carriers you have chosen as well as their Dialing Prefixes. You’ll need them in the next steps. You can decipher carrier’s dialing prefixes assigned to your account under the My Interconnections tab in your TCXC Dashboard.

Setting Up TCXC Carrier Trunks in FreePBX

To begin, make certain that chan_SIP is assigned to UDP 5060 on your PBX. Particularly for trunks, there were just too many issues with PJsip in some releases of Asterisk so steer clear. With every TCXC carrier, the good news is the chan_SIP Trunk setup is virtually identical except for the carrier name and the carrier’s dialing prefix. For each carrier, start by adding a new chan_SIP Trunk in the Incredible PBX or FreePBX GUI. In the General tab, insert the carrier name in the Trunk Name field, e.g. TCXC. Leave the other default settings as they are.

Switch to the Dialed Number Manipulation Rules tab. Leave the Dialing Rules empty and insert the carrier’s dialing prefix in the Outbound Dial Prefix field, e.g. 77379#.

Switch to the SIP Settings tab. In the Outgoing tab, insert the carrier name in the Trunk Name field. Insert the following in the PEER Details field:

type=peer
qualify=yes
progressinband=never
port=5060
nat=yes
insecure=port,invite
ignoresdpversion=yes
host=sip01.telecomsxchange.com
dtmfmode=rfc2833
disallow=all
context=from-trunk
allow=ulaw&alaw

 
While still in SIP Settings, switch to the Incoming tab, and clear out the default User Detail entries. Now click the Submit button and reload your dialplan when prompted.

Repeat this procedure for each of the carriers you set up in your TCXC profile.

Setting Up Outbound Routes for TCXC Calls

Our preferred Outbound Route setup for TCXC carriers is to create a new Outbound Route for each destination (typically a country) to which you wish to enable calling. Be advised that setting up a dialing prefix of just the number 1 authorizes considerably more calls than just those to destinations in the United States. For foreign countries, if all of your calls to the U.K are to destinations in London, then don’t authorize country-wide calling. Narrow it down to the country code and city code for London. Remember, it’s your phone bill.

For international calls, we prefer that callers enter a dialing prefix that specifies that it’s a long distance call plus a two-digit prefix representing the country abbreviation, not the dial code of the country. For example, for the U.K., we use 085 where 0 specifies long distance call and 85 is the phone representation for UK. We’ll then use the Outbound Route to strip off the caller’s dialed prefix and to insert the proper country code to complete the call.

Within each Outbound Route, we recommend you specify one or more low-cost carriers and a final TCXC carrier to catch calls that fail to all of your designated carriers. Otherwise, the caller will get a failed call. And you will get the next call. 🙂

So here’s what our Outbound Route setup for London, England looks like. You only need entries in the Route Settings and Dial Patterns tabs. Be sure to put your desired CallerID in the Route CID field and set the Override Extension option to YES. Then add your preferred Trunks in the order in which you want the calls attempted:

In the Dial Patterns tab, we specify a Prefix of 4420 to tell Asterisk to add a dialing prefix to the call to get it to London. Then we enter 085 in the Prefix field to tell Asterisk to strip off those digits entered by the caller before sending the call to the designated Trunk for processing. The Match Pattern is 8 X’s which represents an 8-digit London telephone number. To get a match on this Outbound Route, Asterisk will be searching for a dial string that looks like this: 085 + XXXXXXXX

Here’s an example of the Asterisk call flow using IDT as the primary trunk with this Outbound Route.

Caller Dials: 085-7499-0888
Outbound Route finds match on 085 Prefix + 8 X's and discards Prefix
Outbound Route sends 4420 (for London) + 74990888 to Trunk #1 (IDT)
IDT Trunk adds IDT Dialing Prefix 10729# before sending call to TCXC
TCXC receives: 10729#442074990888
TCXC strips IDT dialing prefix and sends call to IDT: 4420 + 74990888
IDT connects caller to Four Seasons Hotel in London

Adjustment with NAT-Based Implementations

Keep in mind that TCXC was designed primarily for commercial resellers, not for PBX-level implementations. If your PBX is sitting in the cloud or is directly connected to the Internet rather than sitting behind a NAT-based router, then you’re good to go now. If, on the other hand, your PBX is sitting on a private LAN behind a NAT-based router, make certain that your router forwards all UDP 5060 traffic to the private LAN address of your PBX. Otherwise, you may experience disconnect anomalies where the called party hangs up a call before your callers since there will be no call path for TCXC to return the disconnect alert (BYE) when the call is completed. For Incredible PBX servers, this isn’t really a problem because Incredible PBX will disconnect the call automatically after detecting 30 seconds of RTP traffic inactivity anyway. But we wanted to make you aware of the potential issue. The good news is you won’t be billed for the extra connection time since TCXC already has dropped the call with the carrier and turned off the billing meter.

Adding Trunk Information to Incredible PBX

Some may wish to include Trunk information in the CDR listings of Incredible PBX or FreePBX. This makes it much easier to spot problems when calls aren’t routed to the Trunk destinations you expect. It also makes it easy to generate trunk-specific reports within the GUI. In the FreePBX 12 and 13 implementations, the trunk information can be added painlessly by revising the [macro-dialout-trunk] context. However, you cannot make these changes directly in /etc/asterisk/extensions_additional.conf because your modifications will be overwritten the next time your dialplan is reloaded. Instead, the modified context must be added to extensions_override_freepbx.conf. Here’s how:

cd /tmp
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/cdr-trunk-info.tar.gz
tar zxvf cdr-trunk-info.tar.gz
rm -f cdr-trunk-info.tar.gz
cat cdr-trunk-info.txt >> /etc/asterisk/extensions_override_freepbx.conf
asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"

 
The modified CDR listing will look something like this:

We also developed a handy utility to make it easy to list out all of your trunks and their status. Here’s how:

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/list-trunks.tar.gz
tar zxvf list-trunks.tar.gz
rm -f list-trunks.tar.gz
./list-trunks

 
The listing will look something like this:

Rate Queries Using the TCXC API

For those that want to query the TCXC rate tables locally, we’ve modified a TCXC sample JSON script slightly so that you can use Chrome (with JSONView) or FireFox (with JSON Lite viewer) to view JSON results. Using one of these browsers with the specified add-on, JSON results will be formatted automatically. The query results identity current providers and rates by entering a dialing prefix. The syntax for the web queries looks like the following where 192.168.0.224 is your server’s IP address and 357 is the dialing prefix rate table desired:


http://192.168.0.224/rates.php?prefix=357

 
The first 30 matching results will look something like this:


To use this script, you’ll need to insert your account name and API key (found in your TCXC Profile) into rates.php before first use. To install the script in the root folder of Apache, issue the following commands:


cd /var/www/html
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/TCXC-rates.tar.gz
tar zxvf TCXC-rates.tar.gz
rm -f TCXC-rates.tar.gz

 

Published: Monday, February 12, 2018



NEW YEAR’S TREAT: If you could use one or more free DIDs in the U.S. with unlimited inbound calls and unlimited simultaneous channels, then today’s your lucky day. TelecomsXChange and Bluebird Communications have a few hundred thousand DIDs to give away so you better hurry. You have your choice of DID locations including New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, and Iowa. The DIDs support Voice, Fax, Video, and even Text Messaging (by request). The only requirement at your end is a dedicated IP address for your VoIP server. Once you receive your welcome email with your number, be sure to whitelist the provider’s IP address in your firewall. For Incredible PBX servers, use add-ip to whitelist the UDP SIP port, 5060, using the IP address provided in your welcoming email.

Here’s the link to order your DIDs.

Your DID Trunk Setup in your favorite GUI should look like this:

Trunk Name: IPC
Peer Details:
type=friend
qualify=yes
host={IP address provided in welcome email}
context=from-trunk

Your Inbound Route should specify the 10-digit DID. Enjoy!



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


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


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

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

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

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

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



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

  1. We obviously have not verified TCXC’s billed minutes counter. Don’t rely upon it in deciding whether to use the service. As with all VoIP providers, what matters is the quality and cost of the calls. []
  2. Our special thanks to TelecomsXchange. They have generously offered to contribute a portion of the wholesale surcharge to support the Incredible PBX open source project. []

Revolutionary VoIP: The Best (free) PBX Ever from 3CX

There are evolutions, and then there are revolutions. Today is another revolutionary day for free VoIP. The new 3CX v15.5 Update 3 is revolutionary on so many levels: price, feature set, flexibility, stability, and security for openers. For Nerd Vittles readers that want a free PBX for your home or business, here’s the latest and greatest. You get the 3CX Standard License features listed here with up to 16 simultaneous calls for one year. That setup easily supports about 50 extensions. At the expiration of the year, you can purchase the standard annual license OR your free license will automatically convert to a 4-simultaneous-call perpetual license with unlimited trunks for the duration of the installation, including DNS, email, SSL certs, webmeeting, etc. Nothing else to buy ever!1 This perpetual license includes unlimited SIP trunks and gateways, 25-participant conferencing, G.722 and G.729 support with HD Voice, custom FQDNs, BLF support, Call Parking, Call Queueing, Call Pickup, Call Recordings and Management, Call Reporting, Intercom/Paging, Integrated Fax Server and Office 365 Address Book/Microsoft Outlook integration plus all of the 3CX client software. Better hurry. This offer won’t last forever! Here’s the signup link. 2

Unlimited Trunks, 50 Extensions, 16 Simultaneous Calls… Free!

The 3CX development team not only heard but also heeded our suggestion to expand the number of trunks in the free edition by removing the limitation entirely. With small businesses and home users, the number of times you ever will need to make more than 16 simultaneous calls is probably NEVER. Based upon industry standards, this 16-call, 50-extension PBX with unlimited trunks can easily support several dozen people so it’s perfect for home use and small to medium-sized businesses. And, when your business grows, upgrading to a larger PBX is inexpensive and a one-minute key swap.

Cost savings, of course, are only part of the VoIP story. There’s a reason 3CX’s business is growing geometrically while others struggle. 3CX provides an unmatched feature set that’s easy to use and deploy. Version 15.5 Update 3 brings the Linux platform to full parity with 3CX’s previous Windows editions plus all-new 3CX clients for every desktop and mobile device. There’s also an awesome new web client providing users easy access to all key 3CX features without installing any software. Desktop call control including Click2Call now is based on uaCSTA technology. Snom, Yealink, and Granstream phones as well as 3CX clients can be controlled from any desktop client even if your phone system is running in the cloud. And we’ve got a whopper deal for you there as well today.

With 3CX’s powerful client software, your office and your PBX can literally be anywhere. Your desktop is always as close as your smartphone or the nearest WiFi hotspot. That’s what unified communications is all about. And, should you ever need support, 3CX has offices in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Hong Kong, South Africa, Russia and Australia. Review the 3CX feature comparison chart and you can judge the feature set for yourself. Whether you’re a homebody or world traveler, we think you’ll agree that 3CX’s new free edition for Nerd Vittles readers offers everything that a home or SOHO user will ever need in a PBX.

Getting Started with 3CX on Dedicated Hardware or a Virtual Machine. If your platform supports ISO installs, here are the simple steps to get 3CX up and running. Just follow this 3CX tutorial to download the ISO and begin your adventure. Boot your server from the ISO image and walk through the Debian 9 setup process. We recommend 2GB of RAM and a 20GB drive for 3CX. When the install is finished, make note of the IP address to access with a web browser to complete the setup. Enter your 3CX license key when prompted. Set up one or more SIP trunks with inbound and outbound call routes. Once you have the ISO and your license key in hand, the installation procedure takes less than 10 minutes.

Getting Started with 3CX in the Cloud. Begin by setting up a 64-bit Debian 9 platform. Obtain a free Nerd Vittles license key for 3CX. Once your Debian install is finished, log in as root using SSH or Putty and issue these commands. NOTE: What appears as the third line below needs to be added to line #2!

wget -O- http://downloads.3cx.com/downloads/3cxpbx/public.key | apt-key add -
echo "deb http://downloads.3cx.com/downloads/debian stretch main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/3cxpbx.list
apt-get update
apt-get install libcurl3=7.38.0-4+deb8u5
apt-get install net-tools
apt-get install 3cxpbx

When the initial setup finishes, choose the Web Interface Wizard and complete the install using your favorite web browser. Enter your 3CX license key when prompted. Set up one or more SIP trunks with inbound and outbound call routes. Done.

Beginning with this release, you have your choice of using a Google Cloud-hosted 3CX server at no cost for a year or many other cloud providers of your choice. The problem with the Google Cloud offering is what to do after the first year. Our personal preference is to set up your own cloud server where things stay the same as you move forward from year to year. At this time, 3CX does not support OpenVZ containers. However, Vultr offers a $2.50/month 512MB RAM plan that works just fine. 50 cents more buys you automatic backups that we highly recommend. And OVH offers quadruple the RAM for $4.49/month on a 12-month plan.

Configuring Gmail as SMTP RelayHost for 3CX. 3CX has a detailed tutorial explaining how to set up your Gmail account as the SMTP relay host for 3CX. Be advised that there is one additional step before Google will authorize access from an IP address it doesn’t already have for your GMail account. In addition to Enabling Less Secure Apps (as covered in the 3CX tutorial), you also will need to activate the Google Reset Procedure while logged into your Gmail account. Otherwise, Google will block access. Once you have configured Gmail as your relay host and performed the two enabling steps above, immediately test email delivery within the 3CX GUI while Google security is relaxed: Settings → Email → TEST.

Free Calling in the U.S. and Canada with 3CX. We know our more frugal U.S. residents are wondering if there’s a way to make free calls even with 3CX. You didn’t really think there would be a release of PBX in a Flash without Google Voice support, did you? It’s easy using the Simonics SIP to Google Voice gateway service. Setup time is about a minute, and the one-time cost is $4.99 using this Nerd Vittles link. Setup instructions for the 3CX side are straight-forward as well, and we’ve documented the procedure on the PIAF Forum.

Free Calling Worldwide with SIP URIs. There’s another free calling option as well. 3CX supports worldwide SIP URI calling at no cost. As part of the 3CX install procedure, 3CX registers an FQDN for you with one of the 3CX domains if you indicate that your server has a dynamic IP address. Unless you really know what you’re doing with DNS, it’s a good idea to tell 3CX you have a dynamic IP address whether you do or not. Here’s why. Once you have an assigned FQDN in the 3CX universe, one very slick feature is the ease with which you can publish a SIP URI address for any or all of your 3CX extensions thereby allowing 3CX users to receive calls from any SIP client worldwide at no cost. Setup takes less than a minute. It’s as easy as 1-2-3. Here’s how:

1. Login to the 3CX GUI and go to Settings → Network → FQDN. Tick "Allow calls from/to external SIP URIs" and make note of your FQDN, e.g. mypiaf5server.3cx.us. Click OK.

2. For an extension to enable (e.g. 001), go to Extensions → Edit 001 → Options → SIP ID and create any desired SIP URI alias for this extension, e.g. billybob. Click OK.

3. If your PBX is sitting behind a router/firewall, be sure the following UDP ports are forwarded to the local IP address of your PBX: 5001, 5060, 5090, and 9000-9255.

4. Anyone with a SIP client anywhere worldwide can now call extension 001 using SIP URI: billybob@mypiaf5server.3cx.us.

Originally published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017  Updated: Thursday, February 8, 2018



Need help with 3CX or VoIP? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


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

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

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

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

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



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

  1. This offering applies to 3CX V15.5 Update 3 released on February 8, 2018. []
  2. Don’t confuse 3CX’s free PBX with Sangoma’s FreePBX® GUI. The former is a truly free PBX provided by a well-respected developer of commercial PBXs and used by many of the world’s largest companies including Boeing, McDonalds, Hugo Boss, Ramada Plaza Antwerp, Harley Davidson, Wilson Sporting Goods, and Pepsi. The latter is a code generator for Asterisk® that commingles free components with commercial NagWare, each of which requires payment of separate licensing and maintenance fees before and during subsequent use. []

Incredible PBX Backup & Restore for Cloud-Based Servers

One of the perplexing realities with VoIP-based servers is how few people actually back up their systems. For anyone who has ventured into the IT world over the past 40 years, there’s one maxim worth remembering: "It’s not a question of whether your server will fail. It’s only a question of when." Incredible PBX® always has provided a backup mechanism in standalone servers to recover from disasters. But then cloud-based computing came along. Two of our favorite providers, Digital Ocean and Vultr, offer a backup snapshot option for 20% of the monthly cost of your platform. But many others do not. And snapshots in the same facility only insulate you from catastrophic failures that don’t take down the entire facility. Think: DNS, bombs, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and disgruntled employees.

We obviously can’t solve all of the world’s problems. But what we can do is provide a generic backup mechanism that will work with most cloud implementations of Incredible PBX. It allows you to make a complete backup of your server, copy the image off site, and restore it at another cloud location or by deploying a virtual machine in your home or office with VirtualBox®. Today we’ll show you how.

Methodology. We’re assuming you are using the latest Incredible PBX 13-13 platform with either CentOS® or Scientific Linux™ 6 or 7 running Asterisk® 13. We’re also assuming your primary server is cloud-based. Your backup server can be cloud-based or a virtual machine running under VirtualBox on a desktop PC. The trick is to build the backup platform at or near the creation time of your primary server so that both are using nearly identical Linux components, the same version of Asterisk, the same version of Incredible PBX, and the same versions of the 1,000+ packages that comprise an Incredible PBX VoIP platform. This is easy at the time you create your primary server. It’s much more difficult 5 or 10 years down the road. So don’t be a procrastinator. Build your backup platform. And do it now! In the case of VirtualBox, you can create the virtual machine and turn it off until that rainy day occurs. It won’t cost you a dime other than a little disk storage space.

Overview. Here are the 5 Steps to put your backup implementation plan into place:

  1. Build & Configure Incredible PBX 13-13 Primary Server in the Cloud
  2. Build Barebones Incredible PBX 13-13 Server at Secondary Site
  3. Make a Backup of Your Primary Server Every Week
  4. Copy Weekly Backup Image to One or More Off-Site Locations
  5. Periodically Test Restoring Backup to Secondary Server

1. Build & Configure Primary Server

We’ve covered the procedure for building an Incredible PBX 13-13 server starting from a CentOS platform or from the Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO. We continue to recommend the CentOS or Scientific Linux 6.9 platform. Whether to create a Lean, Mean implementation or the Whole Enchilada is your call to make. Configure your Extensions, Trunks, and Routes, and you’re ready for business.

2. Build a Barebones Secondary Server

The hardest part of Step #2 is deciding where to build your secondary Incredible PBX 13-13 server. It doesn’t need to be in the cloud unless you prefer that option. Part of this decision may turn on how many servers you actually support. If you have a dozen primary servers, then it probably makes sense to add #13 as your backup server. Then it will be available in case of a failure of any of the other servers. Just make sure it’s in a location 1,000+ miles away from the primary server which should provide ample protection from North Korea’s Rocket Man. You can install the Lean, Mean version of Incredible PBX 13-13 with no additional configuration. Make sure the version of CentOS or Scientific Linux matches your primary server. As noted, VirtualBox is a perfectly adequate backup platform.

3. Make a Weekly Backup of Primary Server

We’re offering the following script for your use pursuant to the GPL2 license. By using the script at no cost, you agree to assume all risks and absolve us from any liability regarding bugs, performance, or any other failure in the code. If that’s acceptable to you, copy the commands below and create a backup-full script in the /root folder of your primary server. After saving the script, make it executable: chmod +x backup-full.

#!/bin/bash
# backup-full for Incredible PBX, Copyright (c) 2008-2018, Ward Mundy & Associates, LLC
# Licensed pursuant to GPL2. See /root/COPYING on any Incredible PBX server for details
amportal stop
service mysqld stop
service httpd stop
service sendmail stop
cd /
tar -cf /tmp/backup.tar /bin /etc /home /lib /lib64 /media /mnt /opt /root /sbin /usr /var
service sendmail start
service httpd start
service mysqld start
amportal start
tar --delete -f /tmp/backup.tar etc/udev/rules.d
tar --delete -f /tmp/backup.tar etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
tar --delete -f /tmp/backup.tar var/lib/dhclient
tar --delete -f /tmp/backup.tar etc/fstab
tar --delete -f /tmp/backup.tar etc/resolv.conf
tar --delete -f /tmp/backup.tar etc/hosts
tar --delete -f /tmp/backup.tar etc/hostname
gzip /tmp/backup.tar
echo "Your backup is available: /tmp/backup.tar.gz"
echo "Copy it and test it in a safe place OFF SITE"
echo " "


To run the script, execute the following command: /root/backup-full

We recommend running the backup-full script during hours when your PBX is not in active use since Asterisk and other services typically are shut down for 5-10 minutes. Depending upon the size and performance of your server, the backup typically takes 15-20 minutes. Once the backup script finishes, copy /tmp/backup.tar.gz to a safe place away from the primary server every week. You can automate the backup and the copying procedure with a cron job if desired. If your primary PBX doesn’t change regularly, alter the backup schedule.

UPDATE: As many of you appreciate, VMware platforms are a very different beast. The same is true of some cloud platforms which don’t play nicely with full backups from other environments. The telltale sign is abrupt reboots when you attempt to login to the web GUI using a browser. If you will be backing up FROM or restoring TO a VMware virtual machine or some other incompatible platform, here’s a workaround. The backup methodology needs to be adjusted to collect all of your PBX configuration data without messing with the underlying operating system configuration. This is similar to the original Incredible Backup methodology. You may also find it handy whenever you have a backup cloud server that is similarly configured to your main cloud server.

First, you need to assure that your versions of the major components are the same on both your primary and backup server. As noted before, the easiest way to do this is to build the two platforms simultaneously. If you plan to use either the Full Enchilada or Incredible Fax add-ons on your primary server, then they also need to be installed and configured on your backup server. Once the two servers are operational, you can shut down the backup server for the time being. Then make your customizations on the primary server and make a backup. The backup script above will work with the exception of the tar command line which should be replaced with the following (as a single line command):

tar -cf /tmp/backup.tar /var/www /var/lib/mysql /var/lib/asterisk /root /etc/asterisk /etc/crontab /etc/pbx /var/spool/asterisk /etc/freepbx.conf /etc/amportal.conf

The restore scenario outlined below will be the same for VMware-style backups except your passwords on the restored platform will be your original backup server passwords with the exception of your FreePBX® GUI and Apache web passwords which will be inherited from the primary server at the time of the backup image.

4. Copy Backup Image to Off-Site Location(s)

Once the backup script finishes, copy /tmp/backup.tar.gz to a safe place away from the primary server every week. You can automate the backup and the copying procedure with a cron job if desired. If your primary PBX doesn’t change regularly, alter the backup schedule.

5. How to Restore Backup to Secondary Server

Before patting yourself on the back from having made a successful backup, let’s try restoring it to your secondary server to be sure everything still works. Here are a couple of tips before we get started. First, in the event of an actual emergency, you will find recovery is simplified if you use fully-qualified domain names in registering extensions to your primary server. In this way, you can simply alter the IP address of the FQDN in your DNS server to point to the backup server without having to reconfigure every extension on your PBX. Second, trunks that are registered from your primary PBX will automatically be registered from your secondary PBX when you bring it on line. For that reason, test your secondary server during non-working hours and always be sure to shut down Asterisk on the primary server (amportal stop) before bringing up your secondary server. Finally, trunks that are supported by IP address configuration rather than registration will need to be manually reconfigured with the secondary IP address before they will be available for use.

We’re offering the following script for your use pursuant to the GPL2 license. By using the script at no cost, you agree to assume all risks and absolve us from any liability regarding bugs, performance, or any other failure in the code. If that’s acceptable to you, copy the commands below and create a restore-full script in the /root folder of your backup server(s). After saving the script, make it executable: chmod +x restore-full.

#!/bin/bash
# restore-full for Incredible PBX, Copyright (c) 2008-2018, Ward Mundy & Associates, LLC
# Licensed pursuant to GPL2. See /root/COPYING on any Incredible PBX server for details
amportal stop
service mysqld stop
service httpd stop
service sendmail stop
chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf
cd /
tar zxvf /tmp/backup.tar.gz
echo "Shut off Asterisk on primary server now."
read -p "Press any key to continue with reboot..."
reboot

To restore the backup, begin by copying the backup.tar.gz file to /tmp on your backup server. Then run the script you created above: /root/restore-full.

Once the restore is completed, your server will reboot. Log back in using the credentials from your primary server and make sure everything is working.

NOTE: If your primary server is using eth0 for its Ethernet connection and your backup server is using venet0, then you’ll need to modify /etc/sysconfig/knockd and then restart PortKnocker on the backup platform: service knockd restart. The command to add looks like this:

OPTIONS="-i venet0:0"

If you’re backing up from a venet0 platform and restoring to an eth0 platform, then you’d need to reverse the process by removing the above entry from /etc/sysconfig/knockd and restarting PortKnocker. Enjoy!

Published: Tuesday, January 23, 2018



NEW YEAR’S TREAT: If you could use one or more free DIDs in the U.S. with unlimited inbound calls and unlimited simultaneous channels, then today’s your lucky day. TelecomsXChange and Bluebird Communications have a few hundred thousand DIDs to give away so you better hurry. You have your choice of DID locations including New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, and Iowa. The DIDs support Voice, Fax, Video, and even Text Messaging (by request). The only requirement at your end is a dedicated IP address for your VoIP server. Once you receive your welcome email with your number, be sure to whitelist the provider’s IP address in your firewall. For Incredible PBX servers, use add-ip to whitelist the UDP SIP port, 5060, using the IP address provided in your welcoming email.

Here’s the link to order your DIDs.

Your DID Trunk Setup in your favorite GUI should look like this:

Trunk Name: IPC
Peer Details:
type=friend
qualify=yes
host={IP address provided in welcome email}
context=from-trunk

Your Inbound Route should specify the 10-digit DID. Enjoy!



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


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


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

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

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

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

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



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

Happy New ISO: Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO Is Here

We’re pleased to introduce the new, 64-bit Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO featuring the latest release of Asterisk® 13 and your favorite FreePBX® 13 GPL modules. Like its predecessor, it’s 100% open source and GPL code. The new Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO can be burned to either a DVD-ROM or a 1GB or larger USB flash drive using a Mac, a Windows PC, or almost any Linux machine. And, unlike some other distros, you’re more than welcome to share our code and the ISO with all of your friends and business associates. In fact, next week we’re releasing the new Incredible PBX build platform for those of you that want to roll your own ISO. Share your enhancements and tweaks or make a customized ISO for just your company and pass it around. We’d be delighted. And our previous tutorial will even show you how to set up and maintain your own Cloud Repository for Incredible PBX.

July 20 NEWS FLASH: Google now has discontinued support of their XMPP interface to Google Voice so the latest CentOS/SL versions of Incredible PBX 13-13 (including the Incredible PBX ISO) now incorporate NAF’s GVSIP interface to Google Voice. You can read all about it here. What has changed is you now add Google Voice trunks from the command line by running /root/gvsip-naf/install-gvsip. You can delete trunks by running /root/gvsip-naf/del-trunk. Once one or more trunks have been added, they are numbered GVSIP1 through GVSIPn. Using the GUI, you then add an Outbound Route and an Inbound Route for each trunk. You’ll need both your Google Voice 10-digit phone number and a Refresh Token to add a new trunk. This article will be updated in coming days to incorporate all of the latest changes which are documented in the referenced GVSIP tutorial.

Introducing the Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO

Overview. The Incredible PBX installation process couldn’t be easier. Download IncrediblePBX13-13.iso from SourceForge. Burn the ISO to a DVD-ROM or USB thumb drive. Four different methods are outlined below. There’s lots of great hardware for about $200. Or, if you have an old PC lying around, that’ll work, too. Boot up the dedicated machine on which you want to install Incredible PBX. Choose whether you prefer the Incredible PBX Whole Enchilada with 31+ applications for Asterisk or the Lean & Mean version which is pure Asterisk compiled on the fly from source. Press the ENTER key. Choose your time zone, create a really secure root password, and have a coffee break. When Scientific Linux 6.9 has been installed, your server will reboot. Accept the Incredible PBX license agreement and press the ENTER key. Go to lunch and, when you return, you should be good to go. Finish reading this tutorial to add the finishing touches and secure your server. Then read the Incredible PBX Application User’s Guide to learn all about the dozens of FREE applications for Asterisk® that are included in the Enchilada build. DONE!

Let us take a moment to explain the Incredible PBX installation process using this ISO. We don’t hide stuff in our ISO or play games with your security. We don’t give ourselves or our application any secret permissions. There are just two steps to an Incredible PBX ISO install. When the install begins, it loads pure Scientific Linux 6.9 onto your server,1 not some homegrown concoction using proprietary repositories. Your server then reboots. After restarting, the very latest copy of the Incredible PBX 13-13 installer is downloaded and run (see the actual source code of the script below). You’ll find the source code for the Incredible PBX installer in your /root directory after the install is completed: IncrediblePBX-13-13R.sh. You’ll also find some other helpful scripts in /root including the optional (free) Incredible Fax installer. If you ever have a question about what was installed on your server, feel free to examine the source code of our installers or post a note on the PIAF Forum. It’s unencrypted GPL2 code. You’re free to use it, enhance it, and share it.

%post
###############################################################
#
# Post Script - this script runs on Incredible PBX server
# immediately after Scientific Linux 6.9 install finishes
#
###############################################################
/usr/sbin/ntpdate -su pool.ntp.org
rpm -e readahead
/bin/sed -i 's|rhgb quiet||' /boot/grub/grub.conf
/bin/echo "/tmp/firstboot" >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local
/bin/echo "#!/bin/bash" > /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " " >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "/etc/init.d/network restart" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "wait" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "cd /root" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "/usr/bin/wget http://incrediblepbx.com/favicon.ico" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "if [ ! -f favicon.ico ]; then" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " /bin/echo ' '" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " /bin/echo 'WARNING: Network may be down. Download failed.'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " if [ ! -f /tmp/firstboot.msg ]; then" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "  /bin/rpm -e NetworkManager" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "  /bin/echo nameserver 8.8.8.8 >> /etc/resolv.conf" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "  /bin/echo nameserver 8.8.4.4 >> /etc/resolv.conf" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "  /bin/touch /tmp/firstboot.msg" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "  /bin/echo 'Fix applied. Rebooting. One moment please...'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "  /usr/bin/reboot" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "  exit" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " fi" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo 'We are going to exit now. What to do next:'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo ' '" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '**** WRITE THESE NEXT 6 STEPS DOWN... ****'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo ' '" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '1. Log into your server as root.'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '2. Try this command: ping -c 1 incrediblepbx.com'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '3. If it fails, fix your network and repeat ping test.'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '     HINT: Before retest, try this: ifup eth0'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '4. If it still fails: yum install NetworkManager. Then repeat ping test.'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '5. When ping is successful, you may proceed.'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo '6. To continue install, run: /tmp/firstboot'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " echo ' '" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " read -p 'Press RETURN key now to exit and login.'" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo " exit" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "fi" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "cd /root" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "sed -i 's|NO_DM |NO_DM rhgb quiet|' /boot/grub/grub.conf" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "/bin/touch incrediblepbx-install-log.txt" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "/bin/touch oauth" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "/usr/bin/wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx-13-13-LEAN.tar.gz" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "/bin/tar zxvf incrediblepbx-13-13-LEAN.tar.gz" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "/bin/rm -f incrediblepbx-13-13-LEAN.tar.gz" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "sed -i '/firstboot/d' /etc/rc.d/rc.local" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "./Inc*" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/echo "./Enc*" >> /tmp/firstboot
/bin/chmod +x /tmp/firstboot
eject
%end

Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO Installation Guide

Downloading the Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO. On the machine you’ll be using to create your installation media, download IncrediblePBX13-13.iso from SourceForge.

Burning a DVD-ROM from the ISO. If your server platform doesn’t have USB support, then burn the ISO to a DVD using a Mac or Windows machine.

Creating a USB Flash Drive Installer. If your server platform has USB ports, you have three ways to move the Incredible PBX 13-13 ISO to a 1GB or larger flash drive. You can use a Windows PC, a Mac, or a Linux machine to create the USB thumb drive installer.

Creating a USB Flash Drive Installer with a Windows PC. In order to create a USB thumb drive using an ISO image, you’ll first need to install Rufus. It’s free. Once you’ve installed it, insert a blank USB thumb drive and run Rufus. Make your settings look like what’s shown above. Be very careful in choosing your Device. You don’t want to accidentally erase the wrong drive on your Windows machine. The correct choice is the USB thumb drive you just inserted. Don’t guess!! Step 2 is choosing the IncrediblePBX13-13.iso file that you downloaded from SourceForge. Step 3 is clicking Start. The ISOHybrid Window will be presented. Step 4 is changing the default setting to "Write in DD image mode." Step 5 is pressing OK. In a few minutes, your ISO image transfer to the USB flash drive will be finished. Give it 15 seconds just to be safe. Then remove the USB thumb drive and you’re ready to begin the install on your dedicated Incredible PBX server.

Creating a USB Flash Drive Installer with a Mac. To create a USB thumb drive using an ISO image on a Mac, first insert the USB thumb drive and partition it with a single MS-DOS partition using Disk Utility. Next, open a Terminal window and issue the command: diskutil list. Review the device names and find the one that matches the size of your thumb drive. It will be something like /dev/disk9. Again, be careful. You don’t want to accidentally erase the wrong drive on your Mac! Next, change to the directory into which you downloaded IncrediblePBX13-13.iso, e.g. cd Desktop. Now issue the following commands substituting the actual device name for /dev/disk9 below:

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk9
sudo dd if=IncrediblePBX13-13.iso bs=1m of=/dev/disk9
sudo sync
diskutil eject /dev/disk9

When the install completes, remove the USB thumb drive and you’re ready to begin the install on your dedicated Incredible PBX server. NOTE: There will be no feedback during the dd step above. It can take 15 minutes or more depending upon the horsepower of your Mac. Be patient!

Creating a USB Flash Drive Installer on a Linux machine. To create a USB thumb drive using an ISO image on a Linux machine, first log into your server as root. Insert a blank USB thumb drive. From the CLI, decipher the device name of your thumb drive: fdisk -l. The device name will be something like /dev/sdb. Be careful. You don’t want to accidentally erase the wrong drive on your Linux server! Change to the directory into which you downloaded IncrediblePBX13-13.iso, e.g. cd /root. To transfer the ISO to your thumb drive, issue the following commands replacing /dev/sdb with the actual device name for your thumb drive in lines 1 and 3 below:

dd if=IncrediblePBX13-13.iso bs=4M of=/dev/sdb
sync
udisks --detach /dev/sdb

When the install completes, remove the USB thumb drive and you’re ready to begin the install on your dedicated Incredible PBX server. NOTE: There will be no feedback during the dd step above. It can take 5 to 15 minutes depending upon the horsepower of your Linux machine.

Kicking Off the Incredible PBX 13-13 Install. Now we’re ready to install Incredible PBX 13-13 on your dedicated server platform. Simply insert the DVD-ROM or USB thumb drive in your server-to-be and boot. During the POST boot process, press the function key that displays a Boot Device Menu and choose your DVD-ROM drive or USB device. When the Incredible PBX 13-13 installation menu displays, choose the Default Install for Full Enchilada and press ENTER. Choose your time zone, create a really secure root password, and have a coffee break. When Scientific Linux 6.9 has been installed, your server will reboot. Accept the Incredible PBX license agreement and press the ENTER key. Go to lunch and, when you return, you should be good to go. When the installation finishes, reboot your server and log in as root to apply the last minute updates for Incredible PBX.

To complete the install, perform the following from the Linux CLI while logged in as root:

  • Change your passwords: /root/update-passwords
  • Set your correct time zone: /root/timezone-setup
  • Add WhiteList entries to firewall if needed: /root/add-ip or /root/add-fqdn
  • Store PortKnocker credentials in a safe place: cat /root/knock.FAQ
  • *** THE REMAINING FEATURES ARE OPTIONAL ADDITIONS ***
  • Login to your NeoRouter VPN server: /root/nrclientcmd
  • To enable free faxing: /root/incrediblefax13.sh
  • Set admin password for AvantFax: /root/avantfax-pw-change
  • To enable PPTP VPN: /root/pptp-install

Managing Incredible PBX with a Browser

Most of your time initially configuring and managing your server will be spent using the web-based tools provided with Incredible PBX. Using any modern browser, go to the IP address of your server as shown in the status display above. This will bring up the login screen for the PBX Admin GUI. The default username is admin and the password is what you set during the final installation steps above. Once the Incredible PBX GUI appears, edit extension 701 so you can figure out (or change) the randomized passwords that were set up for your 701 extension and voicemail account: Applications -> Extensions -> 701. If you’re behind a hardware-based firewall, verify the NAT setting is set to YES.

Setting Up a Soft Phone for Incredible PBX

Now you’re ready to set up a telephone so that you can play with Incredible PBX. 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 Settings -> Accounts and click the New button. Fill in the blanks using the IP address of your server, 701 for your account name, and whatever password you created for the extension. Click OK.

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 - Allison's IVR Demo
947 - Weather by ZIP Code
951 - Yahoo News
*61 - Time of Day
*68 - Wakeup Call
TODAY - Today in History

Now you’re ready to connect to the telephones in the rest of the world. If you live in the U.S., the easiest way (at least for now) is to set up a free Google Voice account. Your server is automatically configured for OAUTH authentication. The Incredible PBX 13-13 tutorial will walk you through the Google Voice setup procedure. The PIAF Forum includes dozens of recommendations to get you started.

Troubleshooting Audio and DTMF Problems

You can avoid one-way audio on calls and touchtones that don’t work with these simple settings in the GUI: Settings -> Asterisk SIP Settings. Just plug in your public IP address and your private IP subnet. Then set ULAW as the only Audio Codec.

A Few Words About Our Security Model

Incredible PBX for Scientific Linux joins our previous builds as our most secure turnkey PBX implementation. As configured, it is protected by both Fail2Ban and a hardened configuration of the IPtables Linux firewall. The latest 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 is either on your private network or 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. We always recommend you also add an extra layer of protection by running your server behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure, but that’s your call. And it’s your phone bill. 😉

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 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. We originally had planned to make our fortune off update fees, but we changed our mind. So… ignore the language in some earlier builds, contributions to our projects are PURELY VOLUNTARY. No one will be breaking down your door for a donation.

We also 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.

Incredible PBX Wholesale Providers Access

Nerd Vittles has negotiated a special offer that gives you instant access to 300+ wholesale carriers around the globe. In lieu of paying the $650 annual fee for the service, a 13% wholesale surcharge is assessed to cover operational costs of TelecomsXchange. In addition, TelecomsXchange has generously offered to contribute a portion of the surcharge to support the Incredible PBX open source project. See this Nerd Vittles tutorial for installation instructions and signup details.

Incredible PBX Application Users Guide

Your next stop ought to be learning about the three dozen applications included in Incredible PBX. We’ve put together this tutorial to get you started. There’s also a great tutorial to walk you through initial configuration of extensions, trunks, and routes. Enjoy!

Originally published: Monday, January 8, 2018


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.



NEW YEAR’S TREAT: If you could use one or more free DIDs in the U.S. with unlimited inbound calls and unlimited simultaneous channels, then today’s your lucky day. TelecomsXChange and Bluebird Communications have a few hundred thousand DIDs to give away so you better hurry. You have your choice of DID locations including New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, and Iowa. The DIDs support Voice, Fax, Video, and even Text Messaging (by request). The only requirement at your end is a dedicated IP address for your VoIP server. Once you receive your welcome email with your number, be sure to whitelist the provider’s IP address in your firewall. For Incredible PBX servers, use add-ip to whitelist the UDP SIP port, 5060, using the IP address provided in your welcoming email.

Here’s the link to order your DIDs.

Your DID Trunk Setup in your favorite GUI should look like this:

Trunk Name: IPC
Peer Details:
type=friend
qualify=yes
host={IP address provided in welcome email}
context=from-trunk

Your Inbound Route should specify the 11-digit DID beginning with a 1. Enjoy!





 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


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

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

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

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

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



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

  1. If you’re wondering what packages are installed with Scientific Linux, come back next week and download the entire Incredible PBX ISO build environment. The 1,000+ packages installed on your server are included in the build platform itself. Feel free to add to them or change them to your heart’s content. We don’t have a million dollar staff. That’s why we depend upon folks like you to offer suggestions and enhancements. In short, we treat Incredible PBX like a real open source project. Come join the fun! []

Beginner’s Navigation Guide to VoIP PBXs and Nerd Vittles

Here at Nerd Vittles, we cover a lot of VoIP territory over the course of a year. To kick off the new year, we thought it might be helpful for those just beginning their VoIP adventure to sketch out the VoIP lay of the land for you. We’re assuming that you came to our site because you wanted a VoIP solution that gives you something to play with and to learn from. That’s not for everybody, and there are less flexible, turnkey VoIP solutions that function pretty much like a toaster. At the top of that short list would be the Ooma Telo and OBi200. Both offer (almost) free calling in the U.S. and Canada.

Keep in mind that all of us started as beginners so there’s no reason to be intimidated if you choose to deploy your own PBX. We’ve gotten a dozen years of enjoyment out of our adventures with VoIP telephony, and there’s no reason you can’t do the same. Let’s begin.

Choosing a Hardware Platform for Your VoIP PBX

First, you’ll need to choose a platform for your VoIP-based PBX: dedicated hardware, virtual machine, or cloud-based PBX. In no small part, this choice depends upon the target audience for your PBX. If it’s for home use or a SOHO business, a $35 Raspberry Pi may suffice. On the other hand, if your PBX will be supporting more than a dozen users or more than a handful of simultaneous calls, we’d look elsewhere. Many of Intel’s Atom-based PCs work very well. And a VirtualBox virtual PBX running atop an iMac or beefy Dell PC can support dozens of users if you have the necessary Internet bandwidth to handle your call volume. Cloud-based servers come in all shapes and sizes as well. As prices have plummeted, cloud solutions have become our favorite. For $3 to $6 a month, you now can host your PBX in the cloud with automatic image backups of your entire server every week. If you’re willing to forfeit backups, here is a cloud solution that will only set you back about a dollar a month. If your server is primarily for business use, we strongly recommend our Platinum Sponsor, RentPBX, that offers dozens of VoIP choices for $14.99 a month with coupon code: NOGOTCHAS.

Choosing the Best PBX to Meet Your Requirements

Once you’ve nailed down your hardware platform, the next step is choosing an operating system and PBX to support your individual requirements. As you might have guessed, there are dozens from which to choose. In both the open source and commercial PBX world, most systems require a specific version of Linux so your operating system choice typically is dependent upon the PBX you choose. In the open source world, the PBX learning curve is often related to the feature set being offered. More sophisticated feature sets typically have a steeper learning curve. If you’re just getting started with VoIP and you want a platform for learning, experimenting, or home use, you can’t beat Incredible PBX 13-13 Whole Enchilada. It was designed by us to be a turnkey PBX for first-time users with rock-solid security and all of the features you will ever need. It includes 31 applications for Asterisk® that cover every imaginable function that can be performed with a telephone including faxing, voice dialing, SMS messaging, wakeup calls and telephone reminders, free calling, conferencing, text-to-speech applications such as News Headlines and Weather Forecasts, Wolfram Alpha for Siri-like queries, plus all the usual PBX features: blacklists, call forwarding, call waiting, call transfer, call parking, call recording, intercom, voicemail including voicemail transcription with email delivery, IVRs, paging, AutoAttendants, DISA, and many more.

If you’re an experienced Asterisk developer that just wants a lean PBX where you can customize it to meet individual customer’s requirements, then Incredible PBX 13-13 Lean should be just the ticket. All of its components are configurable including Asterisk which can be recompiled from the included source code.

At the sophisticated end of the spectrum is Incredible PBX for Wazo which is based upon the Wazo PBX, an Asterisk 15 realtime implementation with full support for High Availability redundancy, multi-party videoconferencing, WebRTC, and automatic nightly backups. It includes API libraries from which you literally can build your own customized PBX from the ground up. The Incredible PBX feature set provides a platform with virtually identical applications to those found in Incredible PBX 13-13.

Sandwiched in between Incredible PBX 13-13 and Incredible PBX for Wazo is Incredible PBX 13 for Issabel. Issabel is an enhanced fork of the previous Elastix 4.0 PBX. The 2018 release includes Asterisk 13, the LTS version of the Asterisk platform. With the new Incredible PBX 13 add-on, you get the best of all worlds with Google Voice support and dozens of applications for Asterisk. Issabel provides a Unified Communications platform that is second to none in the open source world.

Thus far, all of our recommendations have been to open source, GPL-licensed PBX platforms. But you’d be making a mistake to limit your search for business telephony platforms to open source offerings. Our corporate sponsor, 3CX, offers a full year of their commercial PBX running in the Google Cloud at no cost. It’s incredibly simple to install and configure. And the beauty of the 3CX commercial platform is it can scale to any size as your business grows. And the 3CX feature set can be expanded geometrically as your business requirements mature. We added free text-to-speech applications for News and Weather reports just last week. Our favorite open source deployment strategy is to install a 3CX PBX alongside Incredible PBX which yields literally the best of both worlds. The 3CX clients for Windows and Macs, Android, and iOS make VoIP telephony available from anywhere with a couple of button clicks, and 3CX users experience none of the traditional communications problems that invariably crop up on platforms deployed by novice VoIP users running Asterisk.

Getting Started with Extensions, Trunks, and Routes

The Big 3 when it comes to PBX configuration are extensions, trunks, and routes. Extensions carry calls between phones on the PBX and other phones either inside or outside your home or office. Trunks actually provide the links between your PBX and the outside telephony world. Inbound routes tell your PBX where to send incoming calls while Outbound routes tell your PBX which trunk to use when calls are made to numbers outside your PBX. We’ve covered this in more detail including dozens of trunk setups in this Nerd Vittles tutorial.

Making Free U.S./Canada Calls within the United States

There are three ways to make free calls using your PBX. If you’re in the United States, you can use Google Voice to make free calls to the U.S. and Canada if your PBX supports Google Voice trunks, e.g. Incredible PBX 13-13 Whole Enchilada and Incredible PBX for Issabel. An alternative, if your PBX does not directly support Google Voice trunks, e.g. Incredible PBX for Wazo and 3CX, is to use the Simonics SIP to Google Voice Gateway service. For Nerd Vittles users, there is a one-time $4.99 signup fee with no additional charges ever. Whether you live in the U.S or not, all the PBXs we’ve covered today can make free SIP calls to anyone in the world that has a SIP URI address and a SIP phone. Most SIP softphones are free.

Mastering the Incredible PBX Feature Set

Incredible PBX 13-13 Application User’s Guide

Configuring the Travelin’ Man 3 Firewall

All Incredible PBX servers include a firewall that is configured automatically as part of the installation process. On the 3CX platform, you’ll need to add the Travelin’ Man 3 firewall after installing your 3CX PBX. Here’s how:

3CX in the Cloud: 8 Great Ways to Secure Your Server

Configuring a Firewall WhiteList:

WhiteListing Users with Travelin’ Man 3 and IPtables Firewall

Learning to Build Effective IVRs

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems and AutoAttendants are the bread-and-butter applications for businesses. If you’ve ever called a business and actually spoken to a live person without encountering an IVR, lucky you! But, believe it or not, IVRs can actually be a useful tool including our Stealth AutoAttendant which lets you intercept incoming calls with a greeting which provides a slight delay to allow the caller (or you) to reroute the call to a specific destination before the default destination kicks in. Nerd Vittles and the Incredible PBX offerings provide all of the tools you’ll need to build any type of IVR imaginable. Mastering Allison Smith’s Top 15 is an excellent starting point.

Harnessing Nerd Vittles Resources

Google is your friend when it comes to finding tutorials of interest in the VoIP world. To narrow searches to just Nerd Vittles, use the following syntax:

stealth autoattendant site:nerdvittles.com

And the Nerd Vittles site itself provides several powerful ways to drill down into topics of interest. In the upper right column of any article, you’ll find a search function which will return a list of matching articles to peruse. At the bottom of every article, check out the all-new Articles of Interest section of Nerd Vittles arranged by topic. Also in the right column of Nerd Vittles, you’ll find a listing of Categories with Nerd Vittles articles conveniently grouped by topic. And, finally, you can quickly jump to the lead article on every major Incredible PBX implementation in the color-coded tabs labeled: GPL VOIP SOLUTIONS FOR ALL.

Happy New Year!

Originally published: Monday, January 1, 2018


Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as a VoIP PBX, 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 and 3CX gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.



NEW YEAR’S TREAT: If you could use one or more free DIDs in the U.S. with unlimited inbound calls and unlimited simultaneous channels, then today’s your lucky day. TelecomsXChange and Bluebird Communications have a few hundred thousand DIDs to give away so you better hurry. You have your choice of DID locations including New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, and Iowa. The DIDs support Voice, Fax, Video, and even Text Messaging (by request). The only requirement at your end is a dedicated IP address for your VoIP server. Once you receive your welcome email with your number, be sure to whitelist the provider’s IP address in your firewall. For Incredible PBX servers, use add-ip to whitelist the UDP SIP port, 5060, using the IP address provided in your welcoming email.

Here’s the link to order your DIDs.

Your DID Trunk Setup in your favorite GUI should look like this:

Trunk Name: IPC
Peer Details:
type=friend
qualify=yes
host={IP address provided in welcome email}
context=from-trunk

Your Inbound Route should specify the 11-digit DID beginning with a 1. Enjoy!



Need help with Asterisk or 3CX? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


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

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

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

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

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



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…