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WebRTC: Asterisk Joins the Brave New World of Real Time Communications

Tuesday, February 26, 2013 / 4 Comments on WebRTC: Asterisk Joins the Brave New World of Real Time Communications

This week we’ll be wading into the world of real time communications and the Asterisk® 11 implementation of WebRTC, a JavaScript API that makes it easy to build click-to-call systems and softphone interfaces using nothing more than a web page. To simplify the task of creating an Asterisk 11/WebRTC platform, we’ve created a free virtual appliance for you that can be deployed in a matter of minutes on any Windows®, Mac®, Linux® or Solaris® desktop using Oracle’s VirtualBox®. In producing this WebRTC implementation, the Asterisk Dev Team has introduced an impressive new set of (stable) features formerly lacking in Asterisk: SRTP for secure communications, ICE, STUN, and TURN to allow NAT clients to better communicate with Asterisk. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. So let’s begin with a one-minute video that actually demonstrates Asterisk WebRTC in action. Using nothing more than a Chrome browser, we’re connecting to a web site hosted on the PBX in a Flash™ appliance to dial a news application that’s part of the included Incredible PBX™ 11 build.


Before we walk you through deploying your own WebRTC platform with Asterisk 11, let’s quickly cover some of the WebRTC basics as they apply in the Asterisk environment.

Rolling Your Own. If you’re one of the purists that prefers to roll your own server, then the starting point for your build should be the Asterisk Wiki. The other important component is sipml5, Doubango Telecom‘s terrific HTML5 SIP client. It’s the actual interface demonstrated in the YouTube video above. And this link provides a failsafe recipe for bringing up WebRTC on any Asterisk 11 server. Our appliance just saves you the one-hour hassle. We’ve chosen not to deploy WebRTC2SIP, the middleware that’s currently necessary if you want to add video support to Asterisk WebRTC. And our current build only works with the latest Chrome browser; however, WebRTC4all is available if you prefer Safari, Opera, Firefox, or Internet Explorer. All of the documentation for these components is provided in the links above for our pioneers.

Why WebRTC? Some of you may be asking, "What’s the big deal? Why would I want to deploy WebRTC?" The short answer is that it eliminates the need to install and configure a proprietary softphone on every customers’ desktop computer before they can communicate. Instead, all they need is a web browser that supports Real-Time Communications. By pointing their browser to a server address that you provide, the customer instantly gains a communications platform that’s as feature-rich as you choose to make it. And it’s comparable to the dedicated clients of old… without the cost or hassle of marrying a softphone to every customer’s particular desktop operating system! And your web page could easily provide a directory of supported contact names and numbers as part of the user interface.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsAWR_rJ5n8


The other beauty of WebRTC is it allows you to create your own (secure) Skype-like communications system without a Man in the Middle. And all you need is a browser at both ends. The WebRTC video above demonstrates a video conversation between a Chrome user at Google and a Firefox user at Mozilla.

Deploying PIAF-Green-WebRTC. So much for the theory. Let’s get your own server set up so you can experiment with this yourself. Here are the steps. It’s about a 10-minute procedure once you’ve downloaded our virtual machine appliance from SourceForge.

  1. Install Oracle’s VirtualBox on your Desktop computer
  2. Download PIAF-Green-WebRTC
  3. Import PIAF-Green-WebRTC into VirtualBox
  4. Start the PIAF-Green-WebRTC Appliance
  5. Using Chrome, Access the WebRTC Page Hosted on PIAF-Green-WebRTC
  6. Configure sipml5 to Make a Connection Using an Asterisk Extension
  7. Place Your First Call

1. Install Oracle’s VirtualBox. Download the VirtualBox installer for your desktop platform from VirtualBox.org. Run the installer and accept the default settings. For details, here’s a link to Oracle’s VM VirtualBox User Manual.

2. Download PIAF-Green-WebRTC. To get PIAF-Green-WebRTC installed on your desktop is quick and easy. Because the image tips the scales at over 2GB and due to the 2GB file size limit on many systems, we’ve chosen to split the download into two pieces. You need both of them! Just download them onto any flavor desktop from SourceForge. Once you’ve downloaded the two files, reassemble them into a single file known as an Open Virtualization Appliance (.ova). Then verify the checksums for the reassembled file to be sure everything is in its proper place. Finally, double-click on the .ova file which will initiate the import process into VirtualBox.

So let’s begin by downloading the two halves from SourceForge: PIAF20631aa and PIAF20631ab.

The reassembly procedure depends upon your desktop operating system. For Windows PCs, you’ll need to drop down to the Command Prompt, change to the directory in which you downloaded the two files, and type the following command:
 
copy /b PIAF20631aa + PIAF20631ab PIAF-Green-WebRTC.ova

To check the MD5/SHA1 checksums in Windows, download and run Microsoft’s File Checksum Integrity Verifier.

For Mac or Linux desktops, open a Terminal window, change to the directory in which you downloaded the two files, and type the following commands:
 
cat PIAF20631a{a..b} > PIAF-Green-WebRTC.ova
md5 PIAF-Green-WebRTC.ova (use md5sum for Linux)
openssl sha1 PIAF-Green-WebRTC.ova

The MD5 checksum for PIAF-Green-WebRTC.ova is 946c149c6adb53602ccfcd3ace10e13b. The SHA1 checksum is 285a5b999c761fcbef13d1a97b4c335a81e1cb0d. If you have a match, proceed. Otherwise, rinse and repeat.

3. Import PIAF-Green-WebRTC into VirtualBox. You only perform the import step one time. Once imported into VirtualBox, PIAF-Green-WebRTC is ready to use. There’s no further installation required, just like an OpenVZ template… only better. Double-click on the .ova file you downloaded to begin the procedure and load VirtualBox. When prompted, be sure to check the Reinitialize the Mac address of all network cards box. Read and accept the license agreement. Then click the Import button. Once the import is finished, you’ll see a new PIAF-Green-WebRTC virtual machine in your VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window. You need to make a couple of one-time adjustments to the PIAF-Green-WebRTC Virtual Machine configuration to account for differences in sound and network cards on different host machines.

Click on PIAF-Green-WebRTC Virtual Machine in the VM List. Then click Settings -> Audio and check the Enable Audio option and choose your sound card. Save your setup by clicking the OK button. Next click Settings -> Network. For Adapter 1, check the Enable Network Adapter option. From the Attached to pull-down menu, choose Bridged Adapter. Then select your network card from the Name list. Then click OK to save your setup. Finally, click Settings -> System, uncheck Hardware clock in UTC time, and click OK. That’s all the configuration that is necessary for the PIAF-Green-WebRTC Virtual Machine. If you blinked, you probably missed it.

4. Start the PIAF-Green-WebRTC Appliance. Once you’ve imported and configured your new Virtual Machine, you’re ready to go. Highlight the appliance in the VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button. The boot procedure with CentOS 6.3 will begin just as if you had installed PBX in a Flash and Incredible PBX on a standalone machine. You’ll see a couple of dialogue boxes pop up that explain the keystrokes to move back and forth between your host operating system desktop and Incredible PBX.

Here’s what you need to know. To work in the Virtual Machine, just left-click your mouse while it is positioned inside the VM window. To return to your host operating system desktop, press the right Option key on Windows machines or the left Command key on any Mac. For other operating systems, read the dialogue boxes for instructions on moving around. Always shut down your virtual machine gracefully! Click in the VM window with your mouse, log in as root, and type: shutdown -h now. Or, from the VirtualBox Manager Window, Ctl-Click on the PIAF-Green-WebRTC VM and choose Close -> ACPI Shutdown.

Always run Virtual Machines behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure!

To begin, position your mouse over the VM window and left-click. Once the virtual machine has booted, log in as root with password as the password. Change your root password immediately by typing passwd at the command prompt. Now set up a secure maint password for FreePBX as well. Type passwd-master. If you’re not in the Eastern U.S. time zone, then you’ll want to adjust your timezone setting so that reminders and other time-sensitive events happen at the correct time. Issue the following command to pick your time zone: /root/timezone-setup. Now type status and write down the IP address of your appliance. Finally, edit /etc/asterisk/sip_custom.conf and replace the secret=8000 entry with a very secure password. This is your WebRTC extension password. Restart Asterisk: amportal restart.

5. Access WebRTC Page Hosted on PIAF-Green-WebRTC Using the latest Chrome browser from a machine on the same subnet as your appliance, point to the WebRTC web page of your appliance using the actual IP address of your virtual machine: http://192.168.0.141/myphone/call.htm.

6. Configure sipml5 to Make a Connection to Asterisk. There are two configuration steps before you can log in and start making calls through your Asterisk server. First, click on the Expert Mode button. Fill out the form as shown below using the actual IP address of your server. Click Save when you’re finished, close this browser window, and return to the main WebRTC page.

Next, fill out the Registration section using the actual IP address of your server and the extension 8000 password that you created above. Private Identity is 8000, Public Identity is sip:8000@ipaddress, Realm is Asterisk ipaddress.

Once you’ve completed your entries, click Login to make a connection to your Asterisk server.

7. Placing a Call with WebRTC. Once you’re logged in, it’s just as if you had registered a softphone to your Asterisk server. Calls from other extensions can reach you by dialing extension 8000. And you can place outbound calls using the Call Control panel. To demonstrate how this works, try the following. To retrieve Today’s News Headlines, enter 951. Then click the Call button. To retrieve the latest Weather Forecast for your city, dial 949 and say the city and state when prompted. You can’t enter touchtone keys so just ignore the "press pound" instruction and wait for the timeout.

We have intentionally not walked you through configuring an outbound trunk even though one can easily be used to make outbound calls. Before doing so, make very certain that your appliance is behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure. It’s your phone bill. Enjoy!

WebRTC Conference and Expo. The 2013 WebRTC Conference and Expo is returning to Atlanta on June 25. For everything you ever wanted to know about WebRTC, that’s the place to be. You can sign up now at WebRTCWorld.com. The Half-Price Early Bird discount ends on March 1. And you can save an additional 15% by using Coupon Code: AA.

Originally published: Tuesday, February 26, 2013


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

 

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

Allison Smith: State of the IVR Address

Friday, February 22, 2013 / 1 Comment on Allison Smith: State of the IVR Address

We’re delighted to welcome Allison Smith as our first (and only) Guest Columnist. We had asked Allison to provide us an update on IVR technology, and she was gracious enough to accept our invitation. For most of our readers, Allison is best known for her pioneering work as the Voice of Asterisk®. But her accomplishments as the professional telephone voice for Verizon, Qwest, Cingular, Sprint, and Bell Canada among others are legendary. So… here’s Allison!

We’ve come a long way from the mindset of thirty years ago, where people approached the writing of their IVR prompts with the intention of guiding their callers through this strange, unfamiliar, automated land. Where we needed to point out that this is not an actual, live person speaking. Where we felt it was necessary to point out that if they simply listen to and follow these instructions, they will be rewarded with an answer, obeying an almost Oz-like mission, deciding which attribute best describes what you’re after and selecting the right department which will fulfill your dreams.

We are now so attuned to the idea of encountering an automated “gating” system when calling practically any entity – be they local dry cleaner or multinational – that we are in shock if the call is answered by an actual breathing person. Whereas before, designers of IVR trees were in the position of almost enticing or inviting the caller to “participate” in the exercise of finding the right department which best suits their needs, by now, everyone knows that this is a necessity to get where they want to go; and everyone knows the drill: I need to make a decision as to where my call should go – and it will be a big waste of my time if I choose incorrectly.

We’ve also come a long way towards streamlining and simplifying IVR instructions – through trial and error, we’ve got a clearer idea than ever as to the caller’s capacity for information – and their tolerance for time-wasting nonsense.
Instead of lengthy and complicated instructions on how clients can reach your physical location, I’m frequently voicing the phrase I’ve long campaigned for: “For directions to our facility, program our address into your GPS-enabled device…” Gone are hackneyed requests to “Please listen carefully, as our menu options have recently changed..” or “Please leave a detailed message after the tone…” (Nobody – especially first-time callers – care if your phone tree has changed. Also: people are well aware of what information to leave in a phone message.) And most importantly: I’m seeing a huge awareness in the fact that customers do not have an infinite amount of time or patience; get the callers sorted as efficiently and as quickly as possible, and be done with deluging them with too much information or anything which sounds even remotely like a commercial or sales pitch. They’ve been to your website. They’re sold on you. Now show them – through your phone tree – how effortless and easy it is to transact with you. –Allison Smith

 

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.
 

Originally published: Friday, February 22, 2013


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

 

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

The Ultimate Android Tablet: Meet the Microsoft Surface Pro

Monday, February 18, 2013

We were fully prepared to hate the Microsoft Surface Pro. After all, it was designed and produced by Microsoft, and we haven’t seen many flashes of brilliance from Redmond since the XBox. That was more than eleven years ago! Yes, Microsoft has new smartphones, but they’re too little, too late in our opinion. So why is the Surface Pro different? For openers, it runs pure Windows 8, not the Windows RT crippleware. While we’re not much of a Windows cheerleader any more (we were for the first 25 years), it is worth noting that Apple has one operating system for desktops and notebooks and a different (crippled) one for smartphones and tablets. And Google has one operating system for its notebooks and a very different one for its smartphones and tablets. Microsoft, on the other hand, had a better idea. The same operating system runs on both its desktop computers, its notebooks, and its latest tablet, the Surface Pro. What that means is the same application that runs on your desktop computer can now perform equally well on a tablet. And it can do it with or without the Surface’s revolutionary, portable keyboard. Application portability is huge especially if your company happens to still be a pure Microsoft shop. And it’s especially important if you or your employees happen to travel for a living.

It Just Works. So much for the theory. The bottom line for us was whether our existing PBX in a Flash, Incredible PBX, and Android platforms could live and breathe on the Surface Pro. The short answer is a resounding YES. This is not the crippled, proprietary Windows RT platform found in the original (klunky) Surface. This is a fully functional Windows 8 machine with an Intel processor, blazing performance, and both microSD and USB 3.0 slots, nice additions that you won’t find on a lot of tablets. If an app will run with Windows 7 or Windows XP, it works just as well or better on the Surface Pro. And with BlueStacks, you can run 750,000 Android apps on your Surface Pro as well. We quickly downloaded our favorite Android VoIP app, Groove IP, from Google’s Play Store using BlueStacks. Then we performed a couple of quick calls using a Google Voice account. The calls were flawless even with our shaky DSL connection on a very snowy day in the mountains. Adding BlueStack’s Cloud Connect will let you push existing apps from your Android phone or tablet to your Surface Pro. Pretty cool.

For a complete technical review of the Surface Pro, visit ZDnet or TechRadar. Just pray you never need repairs.

The only thing we’ve found missing hardware-wise on the Surface Pro is a PrintScreen key on the awesome keyboard which is a must-have, by the way. To print screens, you’ll need to use the tablet trick: VolDown + Home. But, as you can see from the screenshot above, it works fine. Because of the high resolution screen however, you lose something shrinking the images down to 650 pixels. On the software front, there were few surprises. WiFi is rock solid, and links to MiFi devices make the Surface Pro truly portable. If ass-backwards scrolling with the touchpad drives you crazy, use RegEdit and search for the mouse entry for FlipFlopHScroll. Change the decimal value from 0 to 1. The Chrome browser works fine with the keyboard and mousepad, but you’ll be using Internet Explorer to work with the touchscreen in tablet mode. Hopefully, that will get fixed shortly.

SAMBA connections work fine after the usual tweaks to the Windows Registry and a reboot. NeoRouter as a VPN client or server functions just as you would expect after telling Windows 8 to run the main programs as Administrator. Windows 8 is a bit more picky about this even when you’re logged in as an Administrator. Oracle’s VirtualBox as a virtual machine platform for Linux appliances works swimmingly, and performance is AMAZING. We built an Incredible PBX server using the latest .ova template in under 5 minutes, and we were making free calls and sending out faxes through Google Voice in under 10 minutes. Amazing!

Family Feud. There’s only one major shortcoming worth noting. Microsoft has taken their feud with Google to a whole new level with Windows 8. It’s not so much the Bingification of every Windows utility that bothers us. It’s what appears to be a conscious effort to banish Google from the Windows platform entirely. Think Apple! Those using two-step authentication for Google services are S.O.L. when it comes to Gmail. You’re left having to deploy Gmail as an IMAP mail service to get your mail at all. Giving Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, you could give them a pass on this if it had just been the initial Windows 8 release. But there have been plenty of patches and updates since Day One, and two-step authentication for Google services remains MIA. If the United States is going to retain its lead in the software development arena, Microsoft and Google and Apple had best bury the hatchet and learn how to work together to make their offerings complimentary. Consumers aren’t going to tolerate this kind of seventh grader nonsense in this day and age. So, wake up, Microsoft. Ruining an otherwise promising platform while trying to shaft Google is a lousy business decision, and it’s going to backfire. Consumers will simply move exclusively to their platform of choice, and guess what? That platform isn’t going to be Microsoft. More importantly, this article is a testament to what actually can be accomplished in Googlifying a Surface Pro with a little Yankee ingenuity. For all practical purposes, our Surface Pro is the best Android tablet we’ve ever owned, and we’ve owned a few. So here’s a little tip for Microsoft: Remember what made Windows a hit! Ubiquity, not exclusivity!

Originally published: Monday, February 18, 2013


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

whos.amung.us If you’re wondering what your fellow man is reading on Nerd Vittles these days, wonder no more. Visit our new whos.amung.us statistical web site and check out what’s happening. It’s a terrific resource both for us and for you.

 

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…

Paradise Found: The Holy Grail of Mobile Communications » Meet the OBi202

Monday, February 4, 2013 / 7 Comments on Paradise Found: The Holy Grail of Mobile Communications » Meet the OBi202

Much has been written about the quest for Unified Communications where all real-time communications services are transparently accessible by phone, by email, or via the web using multiple devices and various media types. But the Holy Grail of Business Communications is a bit different from our perspective. For the modern business person, business telecommunications comes down to a 3-way time slice between a home or home office, a real office with a real phone, and a cellphone whenever the person morphs into a road warrior or telecommuter. What the business person really wants is transparent integration of his or her smartphone into existing home and office phone setups. In other words, when we’re at home with a cell phone, we want to answer incoming cell phone calls on a house phone rather than scrambling to find a ringing cellphone on the other side of the house. And when we’re at the office, we want incoming cellphone calls to either ring on our desktop phone or be redirected to the office PBX when we’re unavailable. For many businesses, the only phone number that a customer ever has is the business person’s smartphone number. So, when we place outbound calls from home, or the office, or the cellphone, we want the customer to always see the cellphone number in the CallerID display. For accounting purposes, we’d also like all of the calls to be recorded in the cellphone log so that we can actually track call activity without reviewing logs in three different places. Well, we’ve finally got it!

Google Voice™ solved some of this cellphone integration with its new service. You can actually have calls ring on multiple devices simultaneously including your cellphone, your office phone, and your home phone. But there are several limitations. First, it’s only available in the United States. Second, some folks just don’t want Google knowing everything about your call history. Third, there’s a flexibility issue when using Google Voice to forward calls to your home or office. Without a lot of hands-on daily management, the incoming calls get forwarded to your alternate numbers whether you’re there or not. So, for example, if you’re on the road, you probably don’t want incoming business calls to your cellphone picked up by either your spouse or the office switchboard because there’s no way to easily route the calls back to you.

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And that brings us to a pair of terrific new products from ObiHai. Last year we were provided a prerelease version of the OBi202™ at no cost, but frankly we hadn’t had time to play with it until a business opportunity presented the perfect case for the OBi202. In addition to being a terrific standalone VoIP phone system, the OBi202 also supports an analog fax machine using Google Voice as well as T.38 digital faxing with a CallCentric trunk. And then we discovered the OBiBT™ Bluetooth® Adapter which we actually purchased. Lo and behold, for under $100, the Holy Grail of Mobile Phone Communications was staring us in the face. So let’s begin with a quick summary of how all of this works, and then we’ll show you how to do it yourself. As with all of our Amazon links, you are obviously free to buy products wherever you like. Where prices are competitive or availability is a factor, we often recommend Amazon because Amazon provides financial support to Nerd Vittles through its referral links. That really does help keep the lights on so thanks in advance for your understanding.

The way The Holy Grail works in our SOHO setup goes something like this. I carry a Bluetooth-enabled, Galaxy Note II smartphone. While away from the house, the smartphone works like any other cellphone. I can make and receive calls as well as email and SMS messages. The only difference is that I have the phone connected through a Google Voice number so that incoming SMS messages are also delivered as Gmail messages. When I return home, the OBi202 with the OBiBT adapter senses that a smartphone is within range. You can pair and prioritize up to 10 of them. Incoming calls still ring on the cellphone, but they also ring on some POTS cordless phones scattered around the office. The POTS phones are connected to the first of two phone connections on the OBi202. CallerID actually shows the same thing as the cellphone CallerID. And incoming SMS messages also appear in the CallerID display of the cordless phones. If an incoming call is not answered in two rings, the OBi202 transfers the call to our Incredible PBX™ running on a Raspberry Pi®. It then processes the call through an AutoAttendant and delivers the call either to all of the house phones or to the desired person in the house. If there’s no answer, the call is handled by the voicemail system in Incredible PBX, and the message is also emailed to the desired recipient.

While at home base, outbound calls from the POTS phones in the office are always placed through my cellphone using the Bluetooth connection in the OBi202. Depending upon how you set up your Google Voice interaction with your cellphone, outbound calls will show either your cell phone number or Google Voice number as the CallerID. When we leave the office, the office phones no longer ring, just the Galaxy Note II. And outbound calls from the SOHO cordless phones are handled using a preconfigured SIP provider or Google Voice trunk in the OBi202 instead of via Bluetooth and the smartphone.

This may sound trivial to some of you. Suffice it to say, it’s not. You won’t find any commercial PBX that can do it. And the Asterisk Dev Team has been working on a Bluetooth connector called chan_mobile for as long as we can remember. It still doesn’t work reliably. You can follow the progress of our half dozen chan_mobile pioneers here.

Getting Started with the OBi202. Before you can tackle Bluetooth, you need to get a perfectly functioning OBi202. Plug it in with a network cable behind your router which must provide a DHCP address to the device. Plug a POTS phone into PHONE 1. Now make a test call to OBiTALK by dialing **9 222 222 222. Next, decipher the IP address of your device by dialing ***1. Make sure your device is running the latest software by dialing ***6. Using a browser, go to http://www.obitalk.com. Create an account and then log in. Choose Add Device and follow the prompts to get your new device registered. If you want to use Google Voice, now is the time to set up your account. Choose Configure Voice Service Providers, choose your provider, and specify what phone port to use for the service. By default, both phone ports will work with whatever service provider you first configure. If you want to register your OBi202 as an extension on your Asterisk® server, now’s the time to do that as well. We also recommend you create an account with VoIP.ms and obtain a free INUM trunk. You can read how to set this up and why in this Nerd Vittles article. The advantage of having this trunk is that you can use it to route calls between your OBi202 and your Asterisk server at no cost. Just create and then register separate subaccounts on VoIP.ms for both your Asterisk server and your OBi202. Build a trunk and an inbound route on your Asterisk server to route calls from your INUM DID to wherever you’d like incoming INUM calls to go, e.g. an extension, a ring group, or an IVR. INUM DIDs look like this: 88351000XXXXXXX where the last seven digits are your personal number. Use SP4 on your OBi202 to set up your VoIP.ms subaccount. Be sure all of the accounts you create get properly registered.

Configuring Bluetooth on the OBi202. Setting up the Bluetooth functionality is straightforward. Plug in the OBiBT. Dial *28 from a phone connected to the OBi202. Within two minutes, open the Bluetooth network settings menu on your smartphone and pair it with the OBi202. If prompted for a passcode, it’s 0000. Refresh your OBi Dashboard, and click on Edit BT icon in the Voice Service Providers frame. Set the device up as shown above. Click the Submit button.

At this point, incoming calls on your cellphone will also ring on the POTS phones connected to your OBi202. And calls that you place using a phone connected to the OBi202 will be routed out through your cellphone. This may be sufficient for many of you. We wanted the added functionality of routing inbound calls to our PBX when there was no answer on the OBi202-connected phones. At least with AT&T and StraightTalk, two rings is about the most you can allow without risking a voicemail pickup through your cellphone provider. Here’s how to set it up.

From the OBi202 Device Configuration Menu, click on the blue OBi Expert Configuration button. Acknowledge that you know what you’re doing and then click on the blue Enter OBi Expert button. In the left column under Voice Service, click OBiBlueTooth. Edit the Calling Features section and make it look like what’s shown above, replacing xxxxxxx with your personal INUM DID assigned from VoIP.ms. Click the Submit button when you’re finished. Now incoming calls will ring twice on your OBi202-connected phones and then be transferred to the INUM DID configured in Asterisk.

You can check the status of your OBi202 at any time by launching OBi Expert and clicking System Status. Enjoy!

Originally published: Monday, February 4, 2013

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 Forum. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of users just like you.


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

whos.amung.us If you’re wondering what your fellow man is reading on Nerd Vittles these days, wonder no more. Visit our new whos.amung.us statistical web site and check out what’s happening. It’s a terrific resource both for us and for you.

 

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…

Introducing Incredible PBX 11 & Incredible Fax for Asterisk 11 and FreePBX 2.11

Saturday, January 19, 2013 / 9 Comments on Introducing Incredible PBX 11 & Incredible Fax for Asterisk 11 and FreePBX 2.11

In celebration of the start of Nerd Vittles 9th Year, it seemed only fitting to introduce a terrific new VoIP product that takes advantage of the latest and greatest feature sets in both Asterisk® and FreePBX®. For years, bleeding edge Asterisk software was more blood than most folks could tolerate. But we’ve been pleasantly surprised. Asterisk 11 is a different beast. For a new release, it has less bugs and more new features than we’ve ever previously seen. And even the beta releases of FreePBX 2.11 are much improved with major plumbing changes that make for a much flexible and feature-rich product. So we started with the new Asterisk 11 and FreePBX 2.11 platform and built what we believe is the ultimate turnkey PBX solution. Incredible PBX™ 11 gives you the best of all worlds plus all of the very best, preconfigured Asterisk applications we could find. And the installer together with all of the apps are pure open source so you can learn how to build a system like this for yourself if that happens to be your thing. Installation is a breeze. Set up a new 32-bit PBX in a Flash™ 2.0.6.3 server with PIAF-Green and FreePBX 2.11, download the Incredible PBX 11 installer, and five minutes later you’re ready to begin your VoIP adventure. And it’s all FREE!

News Flash: And now Incredible PBX 11 and Incredible Fax are available for the $35 Raspberry Pi.

So what’s new? Dozens of upgraded Asterisk Apps. 9-Layer Security. 20 Preconfigured VoIP Provider Trunks. 1-Click Installers for Asterisk.everything. Certified Asterisk support. All-new Google Voice connectivity with Asterisk Motif. Voice-enabled SMS messaging and script-based SMS message blasting. Incredible PBX Automatic Update Utility. Incredible Fax™ 11 delivers free faxing with HylaFax™ and AvantFax®. Incredible PBX and Incredible Fax are now GPL2-licensed.

The Incredible PBX 11 Inventory. For those that have never heard of The Incredible PBX, here’s the current 11.0 feature set in addition to the base install of PBX in a Flash with the CentOS 6.3, Asterisk 11, FreePBX 2.11, and Apache, SendMail, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, IPtables Linux firewall, Fail2Ban, and WebMin. Incredible Fax, NeoRouter and PPTP VPNs, and all sorts of backup solutions are still just one command away and may be installed using the scripts included with Incredible PBX 11 and PBX in a Flash. Type help-pbx and browse /root for dozens of one-click install scripts.

And then there’s the Incredible Freebie! As they say, "Never look a gift horse in the mouth." What began as a kludgey, dual-call, dual-provider Google Voice implementation to take advantage of Google’s free PSTN calling in the U.S. and Canada with Asterisk 1.4 and 1.6 is now a zippy-quick, Gtalk-based calling platform that rivals the best SIP-to-SIP calls on the planet. The Incredible PBX Google Voice implementation provides virtually instantaneous PSTN connections to almost anybody, anywhere. Trust us! Except for the price which is still free, you’ll never know you weren’t connected via Ma Bell’s overpriced long-distance lines and neither will the Little Mrs.

To get started, download the latest 32-bit PBX in a Flash 2.0.6.3 ISO from SourceForge, burn to then boot from the PIAF2 CD, choose the PIAF-Green option to load Asterisk 11, and pick FreePBX 2.11 when prompted. Take a look at the PIAF Quick Start Guide for step-by-step installation instructions. Once the PIAF2 install is completed, just download and run the new Incredible PBX 11 installer.

A Few Words About Security. Thanks to its Zero Internet Footprint™ design, Incredible PBX is different. It remains the most secure Asterisk-based PBX around. What this means is The Incredible PBX has been engineered to sit safely behind a NAT-based, hardware firewall with no Internet port exposure to your actual server. For those needing remote telephone support, Incredible PBX loads Travelin’ Man 2 and 3 for you so your IPtables Linux Firewall can be either self-managed by end-users or set up with predefined IP addresses and FQDNs for all of your remote sites. Read about this Asterisk SIP vulnerability. Then you’ll understand why WhiteList-based server security has become absolutely essential. WhiteList Security means only those devices with a registered IP address in your WhiteList can get to your server’s resources. To everyone else, your server doesn’t even exist. Their only way to connect to you is with a POTS telephone and your published phone number.

For those with multiple servers to interconnect, we’ve provided one-click installers for not one but two VPN solutions: NeoRouter and PPTP. Suffice it to say, Incredible PBX has Security in Spades™: customized IPtables Linux Firewall, Fail2Ban tweaked for Asterisk security monitoring, FreePBX Extension Lockdown by IP address, randomized FreePBX extension passwords, Travelin’ Man 2 and 3 WhiteList Security, multiple VPN solutions for encrypted server-to-server communications, plus a bottom-up design focused on flawless operation behind a hardware-based firewall. You won’t find a more secure Personal Branch Exchange™ at any price.

Here’s the Incredible PBX 9-Layer Security Model:

書呆子Vittles: Did we mention that all of this telephone goodness is still absolutely FREE!

Prerequisites. Here’s what we recommend to get started properly:

We’ve shifted gears on our recommended Atom platform for PIAF2 after excellent results with both the single-core and dual-core Atom kits manufactured by Foxconn (pictured on the left below). That’s the dLink Gaming Router on the right. Seems kinda silly to spend twice as much for a machine that you can build yourself in under 5 minutes. Basically you remove four screws, insert a Phillips screwdriver in one of the holes and gently pry the cover away from the box. Then you pop off the back by inserting a small flat-blade screwdriver, remove four more screws, slide in a solid-state drive (SSD) and a 4GB stick of notebook computer RAM, and you’re done in a couple minutes. Replace the screws and the cover, and you have a perfect PIAF2 platform with terrific performance and no moving parts for about $200. The link above will take you to the PIAF Forum thread for these machines. They go on sale almost weekly. See the right column of Nerd Vittles (just below our tweets) for this week’s special at Amazon. The dual-core Atom box typically is under $150. It could easily handle an office with 50+ employees sitting on a bookshelf with an Internet connection (wired or wireless!). No noise. Very little heat. Low power requirements. Perfect!

Installing Incredible PBX 11. The installation process is simple. Here are the 3 Easy Steps to Free Calling, and The Incredible PBX will be ready to receive and make free U.S./Canada calls immediately:

1. Install PIAF-Green with FreePBX 2.11 using 32-bit PIAF2 ISO or PIAF-Green VM
2. Run Incredible PBX 4 installer
3. Configure Google Voice and a softphone or SIP phone

Configuring Google Voice. If you plan to use Google Voice, you’ll need a dedicated Google Voice account to support Incredible PBX 11. If you want to use the inbound fax capabilities of Incredible Fax 11, then you’ll need an additional Google Voice line that can be routed to the FAX custom destination using FreePBX. The more obscure the username (with some embedded numbers), the better off you will be. This will keep folks from bombarding you with unsolicited Gtalk chat messages, and who knows what nefarious scheme will be discovered using Google messaging six months from now. So keep this account a secret!

We’ve tested this extensively using an existing Gmail account, and inbound calling is just not reliable. The reason seems to be that Google always chooses Gmail chat as the inbound call destination if there are multiple registrations from the same IP address. So, be reasonable. Do it our way! Set up a dedicated Gmail and Google Voice account, and use it exclusively with Incredible PBX 11. It’s free at least through 2013. Google Voice no longer is by invitation only so, if you’re in the U.S. or have a friend that is, head over to the Google Voice site and register.

You must choose a telephone number (aka DID) for your new account, or Google Voice calling will not work… in either direction. Google used to permit outbound Gtalk calls using a fake CallerID, but that obviously led to abuse so it’s over! You also have to tie your Google Voice account to at least one working phone number as part of the initial setup process. Your cellphone number will work just fine. Don’t skip this step either. Just enter the provided 2-digit confirmation code when you tell Google to place the test call to the phone number you entered. Once the number is registered, you can disable it if you’d like in Settings, Voice Setting, Phones. But…

IMPORTANT: Be sure to enable the Google Chat option as one of your phone destinations in Settings, Voice Setting, Phones. That’s the destination we need for The Incredible PBX to work its magic! Otherwise, all inbound and outbound calls will fail. If you don’t see this option, you may need to call up Gmail and enable Google Chat there first. Then go back to the Google Voice Settings.

While you’re still in Google Voice Settings, click on the Calls tab. Make sure your settings match these:

  • Call Screening – OFF
  • Call Presentation – OFF
  • Caller ID (In) – Display Caller’s Number
  • Caller ID (Out) – Don’t Change Anything
  • Do Not Disturb – OFF
  • Call Options (Enable Recording) – OFF
  • Global Spam Filtering – ON

Click Save Changes once you adjust your settings. Under the Voicemail tab, plug in your email address so you get notified of new voicemails. Down the road, receipt of a Google Voice voicemail will be a big hint that something has come unglued on your PBX.

Incredible PBX 11 Installation. Log into your server as root and issue the following commands to run The Incredible PBX 4 installer:

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx11.gz
gunzip incrediblepbx11.gz
chmod +x incrediblepbx11
./incrediblepbx11

Now have a quick cup of coffee while the installer works its magic. While you’re waiting just make sure that you’ve heeded our advice and installed your server behind a hardware-based firewall. No ports need to be opened on your firewall to support Incredible PBX. Leave it that way!

One final word of caution is in order regardless of your choice of providers: Do NOT use special characters in any provider passwords, or nothing will work!

FINAL STEPS. Once the Incredible PBX install completes, there are two optional steps for those that will have remote phones or users outside your firewall. Install both Travelin’ Man 2 and 3 for an ultra-secure system.

Logging in to FreePBX 2.11. Using a web browser, you access the FreePBX GUI by pointing your browser to the IP address of Incredible PBX. Click on the Users tab. It will change to Admin. Now click the FreePBX Admin button. When prompted for a username, it’s maint. When prompted for the password, it’s whatever you set up as your maint password when you installed PBX in a Flash. If you forget it, you can always reset it by logging into your server as root and running passwd-master.

Configuring Google Voice Trunks in FreePBX. All trunk configurations now are managed within FreePBX, including Google Voice. This makes it easy to customize your Incredible PBX to meet your specific needs. If you plan to use Google Voice, here’s how to quickly configure one or more Google Voice trunks within FreePBX. After logging into FreePBX with your browser, click the Connectivity tab and choose Google Voice/Motif. To Add a new Google Voice account, just fill out the form. Do NOT check the third box or incoming calls will never ring!

While you’re still in FreePBX, choose Applications, Extensions, and click on the 701 extension. Write down your extension and voicemail passwords. You’ll need them to configure a phone in a minute.

IMPORTANT LAST STEP: Google Voice will not work unless you restart Asterisk from the Linux command line at this juncture. Using SSH, log into your server as root and issue the following command: amportal restart.

Incredible Fax 11 Installation. If you want the added convenience of having your Incredible PBX double as a free fax machine, run /root/incrediblefax11.sh after the Incredible PBX 4 install completes. Plug in your email address for delivery of incoming faxes and enter your home area code when prompted. For every other prompt, just press the Enter key. If you’d like to also add the optional OCR utility, just choose it when prompted. For complete documentation, see this Nerd Vittles article. Don’t forget that a REBOOT OF YOUR SERVER is required when the install is finished, or faxing won’t work! Then log in through the PIAF GUI using maint:password. You’ll find the AvantFax GUI on the Admin menu.

Also be sure to set up a second, dedicated Google Voice number if you want support for inbound faxing. Once the Google Voice credentials are configured in FreePBX for the additional Google Voice line, simply add an Inbound Route for this DID to point to the Custom Destination: Fax (Hylafax). This comes preconfigured with Incredible PBX 11.

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

Setting Up a Desktop Softphone. PBX in a Flash supports all kinds of telephones, but we’ll start with the easy (free) one today. You can move on to "real phones" once you’re smitten with the VoIP bug. For today, you’ll need to download a softphone to your desktop PC or Mac.

The easiest way to get started is to set up a YATE softphone on your Desktop computer. Versions are available at no cost for Macs, PCs, and Linux machines. Just download the appropriate one and install it from this link. Once installed, it’s a simple matter to plug in your extension credentials and start making calls. Run the application and choose Settings -> Accounts and click the New button. Fill in the blanks using the IP address of your server, 201 for your account name, and whatever password you created for the extension. Click OK.

Once you are registered to extension 201, close the Account window. Then click on YATE’s Telephony Tab and place your first call. It’s that easy!

Incredible PBX Test Flight. The proof is in the pudding as they say. So let’s try two simple tests. First, let’s place an outbound call. Using the softphone, dial your 10-digit cellphone number. Google Voice should transparently connect you. Answer the call and make sure you can send and receive voice on both phones. Second, from another phone, call the Google Voice number that you’ve dedicated to The Incredible PBX. Your softphone should begin ringing shortly. The call will be answered by the Nerd Vittles sample IVR. You can explore all of the preconfigured options at your leisure.

Learn First. Explore Second. Even though the installation process has been completed, we strongly recommend you do some reading before you begin your VoIP adventure. VoIP PBX systems have become a favorite target of the hackers and crackers around the world and, unless you have an unlimited bank account, you need to take some time learning where the minefields are in today’s VoIP world. Start by reading our Primer on Asterisk Security. We’ve secured all of your passwords except your root password and your passwd-master password. We’re assuming you’ve put very secure passwords on those accounts as if your phone bill depended upon it. It does! There’s loads of additional documentation on the PBX in a Flash documentation web site.

Incredible PBX 11 Automatic Update Utility. With Incredible PBX 11, we are introducing a new automatic update utility to assist in keep your system current and secure. It runs each time you log into your server as root. The first ten updates are at no cost. You then can elect to continue the service by subscribing to the update service which is available for a modest $20 for calendar year 2013. Whether you subscribe or not, new releases of PBX in a Flash and Incredible PBX will always be free! This simply is a way for us to recover our costs in providing a service that many of our users have asked for. We hope you like it.

Choosing VoIP Providers. Nothing beats free when it comes to long distance calls. But nothing lasts forever. And, in the VoIP World, redundancy is dirt cheap. So we strongly recommend you set up another account with Vitelity using our special link below. This gives your PBX a secondary way to communicate with every telephone in the world, and it also gets you a second real phone number for your new system… so that people can call you. Here’s how it works. You pay Vitelity a deposit for phone service. They then will bill you $3.99 a month for your new phone number. This $3.99 also covers the cost of unlimited inbound calls (two at a time) delivered to your PBX for the month. For outbound calls, you pay by the minute and the cost is determined by where you’re calling. If you’re in the U.S., outbound calls to anywhere in the U.S. are a little over a penny a minute. If you change your mind about Vitelity and want a refund of the balance in your account, all you have to do is ask. The trunks for Vitelity already are preconfigured with The Incredible PBX. Just insert your credentials using FreePBX and uncheck the Disable Trunk checkbox. Then add the Vitelity trunk as the third destination for your default outbound route. That’s it. Congratulations! You now have a totally redundant phone system.

Incredible PBX includes preconfigured trunk setups for all of your favorite trunk providers. Just plug in your credentials and activate the trunks you need. In less than a minute, you’re done. Here’s the Incredible PBX Top 20 Trunk List with some reasons why these providers made our short list:

  • AxVoice ($14.99/mo. Business Plan; $16.58/mo. Unlimited Calls to 45 Countries)
  • CallCentric (Good International Calling Rates)
  • DIDforSale (20 channels per DID; unlimited DID calls for $8.99/mo.)
  • ENUM
  • FlowRoute (Good International Calling Rates)
  • FreeNum
  • Future-Nine (Supports CallerID Spoofing)
  • Google Voice (Free DIDs and free U.S./Canada calling)
  • IPkall (Free SIP/IAX DIDs)
  • Les.net (Supports CallerID Spoofing; very low rates)
  • LocalPhone (Dirt-cheap DIDs and calling rates worldwide; Free iNum DID)
  • Simon Telephonics (Free SIP-to-GoogleVoice Gateway)
  • SIPgate (Free residential DIDs sometimes)
  • Skype (Free Skype-to-Skype calls worldwide)
  • Teliax (Unlimited inbound DID $5/mo.)
  • Vitelity (Our supporter and the Best in the Business!)
  • VoIPms (CallerID spoofing; Free iNum calling; Very low rates)
  • VoIPMyWay (Residential Unlimited: $15.50/mo. Business Unlimited: $40/mo.)
  • VoIPStreet (Free DID)

Configuring Email. You’re going to want to be notified when updates are available for FreePBX, and you may also want notifications when new voicemails arrive. Everything already is set up for you except actually entering your email notification address. Using a web browser, open the FreePBX GUI by pointing your browser to the IP address of your Incredible PBX. Then click Administration and choose FreePBX. To set your email address for FreePBX updates, go to Admin -> Module Admin and click on the shield on the right margin. To configure emails to notify you of incoming voicemails, go to Applications -> Extensions -> 701 and scroll to the bottom of the screen. Then follow your nose. Be sure to reload FreePBX when prompted after saving your changes.

A Final Word About Security. In case you couldn’t tell, security matters to us, and it should matter to you. Not only is the safety of your system at stake but also your wallet and the safety of other folks’ systems. Unless you subscribe to the new Automatic Update Utility, our only means of alerting you to security issues which arise is through the RSS Feed that we maintain for the PBX in a Flash project. This feed is prominently displayed in the web GUI which you can access with any browser pointed to the IP address of your server. Check It Daily! Or add our RSS Feed to your favorite RSS Reader. We also recommend you follow @NerdUno on Twitter. We’ll keep you entertained and provide immediate notification of security problems that we hear about. Finally, visit the PIAF Forums regularly. You’ll be surprised what you can learn in 10 minutes of browsing. Be safe!

Kicking the Tires. OK. That’s enough tutorial for today. Let’s play. Using your new softphone, begin your adventure by dialing these extensions:

  • D-E-M-O – Incredible PBX Demo (running on your PBX)
  • Z-I-P – Enter a five digit zip code for any U.S. weather report
  • T-I-D-E – Get today’s tides and lunar schedule for any U.S. port
  • 4-1-1 – Phonebook lookup/dialer with AsteriDex
  • C-O-N-F – Set up a MeetMe Conference on the fly (PIN: 1234)
  • 1-2-3 – Schedule regular/recurring reminder (PW: 12345678)
  • 2-2-2 – ODBC/Timeclock Lookup Demo (Empl No: 12345)
  • 2-2-3 – ODBC/AsteriDex Lookup Demo (Code: AME)
  • 3-3-3 – Look up a definition for any word or term
  • 9-4-9 – Weather forecast for any city in the world
  • 9-5-0 – Retrieve stock report by stock symbol
  • 9-5-1 – Latest Google News headlines
  • Dial *68 – Schedule a hotel-style wakeup call from any extension

Don’t forget to List Yourself in Directory Assistance so everyone can find you by dialing 411. And add your new number to the Do Not Call Registry to block telemarketing calls. Or just call 888-382-1222 from your new number. Enjoy!

Originally published: Saturday, January 19, 2013

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! In fact, there is a thread dedicated to support of Incredible PBX 11. 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 ordinary users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.


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

whos.amung.us If you’re wondering what your fellow man is reading on Nerd Vittles these days, wonder no more. Visit our new whos.amung.us statistical web site and check out what’s happening. It’s a terrific resource both for us and for you.

 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


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

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

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

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

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

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

The Definitive VoIP Quick Start Guide: Introducing PBX in a Flash 2.0.6.3

Thursday, January 10, 2013 / 2 Comments on The Definitive VoIP Quick Start Guide: Introducing PBX in a Flash 2.0.6.3

Whether you’re just getting started with VoIP telephony or merely want to kick the tires of PBX in a Flash™ 2.0.6.3.1, this guide is for you. We’ll try to cover the basics as well as the fine points to get your PBX in a Flash system running on almost any platform. Let’s begin by telling you why PIAF™ is different and why it matters. PBX in a Flash is the only Asterisk® and FreePBX® aggregation in which most of the components are compiled as part of the install. PIAF is also the only platform that lets you choose a stand-alone server platform, or a turnkey virtual machine appliance for any Windows, Mac, Linux, or Solaris desktop, or a hosted platform from RentPBX for only $15 a month! If you’re cost conscious or just want to tinker, we’ve got a simplified version with dozens of utilities for the $35 Raspberry Pi.

Why does this matter? First, you get the very latest updates to the CentOS® 6.3 operating system. Second, you get your choice of numerous Asterisk versions including 1.8, 1.8-Certified, 10, and 11. Each is compiled from source on the fly. Third, you get your choice of FreePBX versions as well: 2.8, 2.9., 2.10, or 2.11. Fourth, you have a bloat-free platform that will let you easily add and compile almost any Linux or Asterisk add-on in a matter of minutes but only if you need it. One size fits all simply doesn’t work for everybody in the VoIP world. Fifth, you can adjust and fine-tune the existing PIAF setup to meet your own requirements any time you like. This was especially handy last week when Digium announced that all prior versions of Asterisk had some major security flaws. By tweaking a simple script, any PIAF server could be updated to the latest version of Asterisk in under 30 minutes without losing any of the existing configuration. Of course you’ll also have access to the largest collection of free Asterisk utilities and add-ons anywhere on the planet. If you don’t need a particular function, don’t add it. If you do, it’s there for the taking on the PIAF Forum and can be installed in minutes. For the newbies that just want a system that works, you can run the Incredible PBX script to generate a turnkey system that’s ready to plug in phones once you complete the installation. In less than 5 minutes, you’ll have over 50 Asterisk applications with free Google Voice calling in the U.S. and Canada. Last, but not least, we have the best VoIP resource and collection of experts you’ll find anywhere on the PIAF Forum. And it’s free!

Where to Begin?

Thinking back to when I began exploring VoIP telephony, I would suggest your first order of business should be to have a seat in a quiet room and carefully sketch out your objectives. Many want to test the waters privately before recommending VoIP telephony to an employer. If that’s your situation, then start with the Incredible PBX 11 Virtual Machine for VirtualBox. Once you’ve downloaded the software, you can install it and be up and running on almost any modern desktop computer in under 5 minutes. It also works with VMware. We have an airline using PBX in a Flash worldwide that started in just this way.

About half of our readers don’t live in the United States. They live in 201 other countries scattered around the globe (see our Flag Counter). But they’re unable to take advantage of Google’s free phone service offering for calls in the U.S. and Canada. That’s an integral part of all PIAF installs although you certainly can use any SIP or IAX provider as well as traditional PSTN lines if you want to. If that’s your situation, take a careful look at the RentPBX Cloud offering. They’re the best in the business and also one of our project sponsors. For $15 a month, you can enjoy everything that’s available to any U.S. resident with a hosted PBX in a Flash or Incredible PBX account on one of their servers. It’s a great way to take advantage of Google Voice and establish a corporate presence in the U.S.

For those that just want a cheap VoIP solution with lots of bells and whistles for your home or home office, a $35 Raspberry Pi running Incredible PBX can’t be beat. You get almost the full feature set of Asterisk for the cost of an evening meal. What’s included? We could write a book about it. In fact, we almost have. Start here. Then go here.

Making a Hardware Selection

For the rest of you, the adventure begins here. We’re going to assume that you need a VoIP telephony solution that will support an office of up to several dozen employees and that you have an Internet connection that will support whatever your simultaneous call volume happens to be. This is above and beyond your normal Internet traffic. To keep it simple, you need 100Kbps of bandwidth in both directions for each call.1 And you need a router/firewall that can prioritize VoIP traffic so that all your employees playing FarmVille won’t cause degradation in VoIP call quality. Almost any good home router can now provide this functionality. Remember to disable ALG on your router, and it’s smooth sailing.

For computer hardware, you’ll need a dedicated machine. There are many good choices. Unless you have a burning desire to preserve your ties with Ma Bell, we recommend limiting your Ma Bell lines to your main number. Most phone companies can provide a service called multi-channel forwarding that lets multiple inbound calls to your main number be routed to one or more VoIP DIDs much like companies do with 800-number calls. If this works for you, then any good dual-core Atom computer will suffice. You’ll find lots of suggestions in this thread. And the prices generally are in the $200-$400 range. For larger companies and Asterisk’s capacity with beefier hardware, see these stress test results.

If your requirements involve retention of dozens of Ma Bell lines and complex routing of calls to multiple offices, then we would strongly recommend you spend a couple thousand dollars with one of our consultants. They’re the best in the business, and they do this for a living. They can easily save you the cost of their services by guiding you through the hardware selection process. They also have turnkey phone systems using much the same technology as you’ll find in PBX in a Flash. You won’t hurt our feelings. 🙂

Choosing the Right PIAF Platform

We get asked this question about a hundred times a week on the forums so here goes. There are more than two dozen permutations and combinations of CentOS, Asterisk, and FreePBX to choose from when you decide to deploy PBX in a Flash. We always recommend the latest version of CentOS because it tends to be the most stable and also supports the most new hardware. You have a choice to make between a 32-bit OS or 64-bit. Our preference is the 32-bit platform because it is better supported. The performance difference is virtually unnoticeable for most VoIP applications. With Asterisk, we always recommend an LTS release because those have long-term support. That narrows your choices to Asterisk 1.8 or the just released Asterisk 11. If you plan to use Digium® Phones (and we’ll get to that), then you’ll want either Certified Asterisk 1.8 or Asterisk 11. The conventional wisdom in the Asterisk community has been to avoid just released Asterisk versions like the plague. We think we’ve turned the corner on that approach. Asterisk 1.8 is close to end of life, and with Asterisk 11, you’re in great shape from a support standpoint for many years to come. We personally run Asterisk 11 and have yet to find something that functionally would qualify as a show stopper. That’s not to say there aren’t some bugs and security issues from time to time. A pretty serious collection of them was found just last week, but it affected all versions of Asterisk. So… our bottom line is that Asterisk 11 is the latest and greatest with the best feature set. If we were building a system for a commercial business, it would be our hands-down choice. In the PBX in a Flash world, we have colors for various versions of PBX in a Flash that support different versions of Asterisk. Asterisk 11 happens to be PIAF-Green, Asterisk 1.8=PIAF-Purple, Asterisk 10=PIAF-Red, Certified Asterisk 1.8=PIAF-Brown.

Choosing the Right Phones

If there is one thing that will kill any new VoIP deployment, it’s choosing the wrong phones. If you value your career, you’ll let that be an organization-driven decision after carefully reviewing at least 6-12 phones that won’t cause you daily heartburn. You and your budget team can figure out the price points that work in your organization keeping in mind that not everyone needs the same type of telephone. Depending upon your staffing, the issue becomes how many different phone sets are you and your colleagues capable of supporting and maintaining on a long term basis.

On February 1, Schmooze Com will release a public beta of their commercial End Point Manager (EPM) at a price point of $25 per server. They’ve been using the application internally to support their commercial customers for over a year so it is not your typical beta software. Suffice it to say, it’s the best $25 you will ever spend. You can sign up for an account with Schmooze through our commercial support site and purchase the software as soon as it becomes available. After taking a look at the Admin User Guide, if you’re a true pioneer, drop us a note and we’ll get you a sneak peek. The beauty of this software is it gives you the flexibility to support over 150 different VoIP phones as well as other devices almost effortlessly. Using a browser, you can configure and reconfigure almost any phone on the market in a matter of minutes. So the question becomes which phones should you show your business associates. That again should be a decision by you and your management and budget teams, but collect some information from end-users first. Choose a half dozen representative users in your company and get each of them to fill out a questionnaire documenting their 10 most frequent daily phone calls and listing each step of how they processed those calls. That will give you a good idea about types and variety of phones you need to consider for different groups of users. Cheaper rarely is better. There’s a reason that everybody bought IBM Selectric typewriters. It had nothing to do with cost. And phones can last a very long time, even lousy ones. So don’t blow it!

The phone brands that we would seriously consider include Cisco, Aastra, Snom, Digium, Mitel, Polycom, Yealink, and Grandstream. Do you need BLF, call parking or multiple line buttons, a hold button, conferencing, speakerphone, HD voice, power over Ethernet support, distinctive ringtones for internal and various types of external calls, Bluetooth, WiFi, web, SMS, or email access, an extra network port for a computer, headset support, customizable buttons (how many?), quick dial keys, custom software, XML provisioning, VPN support? How easy is it to transfer a call? Do you need to mimic key telephones? Also consider color screens, touch screens, busy lamp indicators, extension modules (what capacity?). What do we personally use: several Digium phones of various types, a couple of Aastra phones, a Grandstream GXP2200, and a collection of Panasonic cordless DECT phones, a fax machine, and Samsung Galaxy Note II connected through an OBi202 with an OBiBT Bluetooth Adapter to our PIAF server. Good luck!

Installing PBX in a Flash

With the office politics out of the way, let’s get to the fun stuff.

For most deployments, choose the default install by pressing Enter.

Leave the UTC System Clock option unchecked and pick your Time Zone. Tab to OK and press Enter.

Choose a very secure Root Password. Tab to OK and press Enter. Your server will whir away for 5-10 minutes installing CentOS 6.3. When the reboot begins, remove the DVD or USB thumb drive.

For today, we’re installing PBX in a Flash. So leave it highlighted, tab to OK, and press Enter.

Now pick your PIAF flavor, tab to OK, and press Enter.

The PIAF Configuration Wizard will load. Press Enter to begin.

Unlike any other aggregation, PIAF gives you the opportunity to fully configure Asterisk using make menuconfig if you know what you’re doing. For everyone else, type N and then confirm your choice.

Next, you’ll need to choose your Time Zone again for PHP and FreePBX. Don’t worry if yours is missing. A new timezone-setup utility is available in /root to reconfigure this to any worldwide time zone.

Next, choose your version of FreePBX to install. Ignore the screen info regarding Incredible PBX. It’s out of date. The following limitations apply if you plan to also install Incredible PBX and Incredible Fax:

Incredible PBX 3 requires PIAF-Purple and FreePBX 2.9
Incredible PBX 4 requires PIAF-Purple and FreePBX 2.10 (32-bit only)
Incredible PBX 11 will require PIAF-Green and FreePBX 2.11

Finally, you need to choose a very secure maint password for access to FreePBX using a browser. You can pick your own, or the installer will generate one for you. Don’t forget it.

The installer will give you one last chance to make changes. If everything looks correct, press the Enter key and go have lunch. Be sure you have a working Internet connection to your server before you leave. 😉

In about an hour, your server will reboot. You should be able to log in as root using your root password. Write down the IP address of your server from the status display (above) and verify that everything installed properly. Note that Samba is disabled by default. If you want to use your server with Windows Networking, run configure-samba once your server is up and running and you’ve logged in.

Configuring PBX in a Flash

Most PIAF Configuration is accomplished using the FreePBX Web GUI. Point your browser to the IP address shown in the status display above to display your PIAF Home Page. Click on the Users tab. Click FreePBX Administration. When prompted for your username and password, the username is maint. The password will be the FreePBX master password you chose in the Config Module phase of the PBX in a Flash installation procedure above.

If you’re new to Asterisk and FreePBX, here’s the one paragraph primer on what needs to happen before you can make free calls with Google Voice. You’ll obviously need a free Google Voice account. This gets you a phone number for people to call you and a vehicle to place calls to plain old telephones throughout the U.S. and Canada at no cost. You’ll also need a softphone or SIP phone to actually place and receive calls. YATE makes a free softphone for PCs, Macs, and Linux machines so download your favorite and install it on your desktop. Phones connect to extensions in FreePBX to work with PBX in a Flash. Extensions talk to trunks (like Google Voice) to make and receive calls. FreePBX uses outbound routes to direct outgoing calls from extensions to trunks, and FreePBX uses inbound routes to route incoming calls from trunks to extensions to make your phones ring. In a nutshell, that’s how a PBX works. There are lots of bells and whistles that you can explore down the road.

To get a minimal system functioning to make and receive calls, here’s the 2-minute drill. You’ll need to set up at least one extension with voicemail, and we’ll configure a free Google Voice account for free calls in the U.S. and Canada. Next, we’ll set up inbound and outbound routes to manage incoming and outgoing calls. Finally, we’ll add a phone with your extension credentials.

A Few Words About Security. PBX in a Flash has been engineered to run on a server sitting safely behind a hardware-based firewall with NO port exposure from the Internet. Leave it that way! It’s your wallet and phone bill that are at stake. If you’re running PBX in a Flash in a hosted environment with no hardware-based firewall, then immediately read and heed our setup instructions for Securing Your VoIP in the Cloud Server. We would encourage you to visit your PIAF Home Page regularly. It’s our primary way of alerting you to security issues which arise. You’ll see them posted (with links) in the RSS Feed shown above. If you prefer, you can subscribe to the PIAF RSS Feed or follow us on Twitter. For late-breaking enhancements, you also should regularly visit the Bug Reporting & Fixes Topic on the PIAF Forum.

Extension Setup. Now let’s set up an extension to get you started. A good rule of thumb for systems with less than 50 extensions is to reserve the IP addresses from 192.x.x.201 to 192.x.x.250 for your phones. Then you can create extension numbers in FreePBX to match those IP addresses. This makes it easy to identify which phone on your system goes with which IP address and makes it easy for end-users to access the phone’s GUI to add bells and whistles. In FreePBX 2.10 or 2.11, to create extension 201 (don’t start with 200), click Applications, Extensions, Generic SIP Device, Submit. Then fill in the following blanks USING VERY SECURE PASSWORDS and leaving the defaults in the other fields for the time being.

User Extension … 201
Display Name … Home
Outbound CID … [your 10-digit phone number if you have one; otherwise, leave blank]
Emergency CID … [your 10-digit phone number for 911 ID if you have one; otherwise, leave blank]

Device Options
secret … 1299864Xyz [randomly generated]
dtmfmode … rfc2833
Voicemail Status … Enabled
voicemail password … 14332 [make this unique AND secure!]
email address … yourname@yourdomain.com [if you want voicemail messages emailed to you]
pager email address … yourname@yourdomain.com [if you want to be paged when voicemail messages arrive]
email attachment … yes [if you want the voicemail message included in email]
play CID … yes [if you want the CallerID played when you retrieve message]
play envelope … yes [if you want date/time of the message played before the message]
delete Vmail … yes [if you want the voicemail message deleted after it’s emailed to you]
vm options … callback=from-internal [to enable automatic callbacks by pressing 3,2 after playing a voicemail message]
vm context … default

Write down the passwords. You’ll need them to configure your SIP phone.

Extension Security. We cannot overstress the need to make your extension passwords secure. All the firewalls in the world won’t protect you from malicious phone calls on your nickel if you use your extension number or something like 1234 for your extension password if your SIP or IAX ports happen to be exposed to the Internet.

In addition to making up secure passwords, the latest versions of FreePBX also let you define the IP address or subnet that can access each of your extensions. Use it!!! Once the extensions are created, edit each one and modify the permit field to specify the actual IP address or subnet of each phone on your system. A specific IP address entry should look like this: 192.168.1.142/255.255.255.255. If most of your phones are on a private LAN, you may prefer to use a subnet entry in the permit field like this: 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0 using your actual subnet.

Adding a Google Voice Trunk. There are lots of trunk providers, and one of the real beauties of having your own PBX is that you don’t have to put all of your eggs in the same basket… unlike the AT&T days. We would encourage you to take advantage of this flexibility. With most providers, you don’t pay anything except when you actually use their service so you have nothing to lose.

For today, we’re going to take advantage of Google’s current offer of free calling in the U.S. and Canada through the end of 2013. You also get a free phone number in your choice of area codes. PBX in a Flash now installs a Google Voice module under FreePBX -> Connectivity that lets you set up your Google Voice account with PBX in a Flash in just a few seconds once you have your credentials.

A Word to the Wise: All good things come to an end… especially those that are free. So plan ahead with some alternate providers that keep your phones working should Google decide to pull the plug or change the terms with Google Voice.

Signing Up for Google Voice. You’ll need a dedicated Google Voice account to support PBX in a Flash. The more obscure the username (with some embedded numbers), the better off you will be. This will keep folks from bombarding you with unsolicited Gtalk chat messages, and who knows what nefarious scheme will be discovered using Google messaging six months from now. So keep this account a secret!

We’ve tested this extensively using an existing Gmail account rather than creating a separate account. Take our word for it. Inbound calling is just not reliable. The reason seems to be that Google always chooses Gmail chat as the inbound call destination if there are multiple registrations from the same IP address. So… set up a dedicated Gmail and Google Voice account2, and use it exclusively with PBX in a Flash. Google Voice no longer is by invitation only. If you’re in the U.S. or have a friend that is, head over to the Google Voice site and register. If you’re living on another continent, see MisterQ’s posting for some tips on getting set up.

You must choose a telephone number (aka DID) for your new account, or Google Voice calling will not work… in either direction. You also have to tie your Google Voice account to at least one working phone number as part of the initial setup process. Your cellphone number will work just fine. Don’t skip this step either. Just enter the provided confirmation code when you tell Google to place the test call to the phone number you entered. Once the number is registered, you can disable it if you’d like in Settings, Voice Setting, Phones. But…

IMPORTANT: Be sure to enable the Google Chat option as one of your phone destinations in Settings, Voice Setting, Phones. That’s the destination we need for PBX in a Flash to function with Google Voice! Otherwise, inbound and/or outbound calls will fail. If you don’t see this option, you may need to call up Gmail and enable Google Chat there first. Then go back to the Google Voice Settings and enable it. Be sure to try one call each way from Google Chat in Gmail. Then disable Google Chat in GMail for this account. Otherwise, it won’t work with PIAF.

While you’re still in Google Voice Settings, click on the Calls tab. Make sure your settings match these:

  • Call Screening – OFF
  • Call Presentation – OFF
  • Caller ID (In) – Display Caller’s Number
  • Caller ID (Out) – Don’t Change Anything
  • Do Not Disturb – OFF
  • Call Options (Enable Recording) – OFF
  • Global Spam Filtering – ON

Click Save Changes once you adjust your settings. Under the Voicemail tab, plug in your email address so you get notified of new voicemails. Down the road, receipt of a Google Voice voicemail will be a big hint that something has come unglued on your PBX.

Configuring Google Voice Trunk in FreePBX. All trunk configurations now are managed within FreePBX, including Google Voice. This makes it easy to customize PBX in a Flash to meet your specific needs. Click the Connectivity tab in FreePBX 2.11 and choose Google Voice [Motif]. To Add a new Google Voice account, just fill out the form. NOTE: The form has changed from prior releases of FreePBX. Do NOT check the last box: Send Unanswered to GoogeVoice Voicemail, or you’ll have problems receiving incoming calls.

Google Voice Username is your Google Voice account name without @gmail.com. Password is your Google Voice password. NOTE: Don’t use 2-stage password protection in this Google Voice account! Phone Number is your 10-digit Google Voice number. Next, check only the first two boxes: Add Trunk and Add Outbound Routes. Then click Submit Changes and reload FreePBX. Down the road, you can add additional Google Voice numbers by clicking Add GoogleVoice Account option in the right margin and repeating the drill. For Google Apps support, see this post on the PIAF Forum.

Outbound Routes. The idea behind multiple outbound routes is to save money. Some providers are cheaper to some places than others. It also provides redundancy which costs you nothing if you don’t use the backup providers. The Google Voice module actually configures an Outbound Route for 10-digit Google Voice calling as part of the automatic setup. If this meets your requirements, then you can skip this step for today.

Inbound Routes. An Inbound Route tells PBX in a Flash how to route incoming calls. The idea here is that you can have multiple DIDs (phone numbers) that get routed to different extensions or ring groups or departments. For today, we’ll build a simple route that directs your Google Voice calls to extension 201. Choose Connectivity -> Inbound Routes, leave all of the settings at their default values except enter your 10-digit Google Voice number in the DID Number field. Enable CallerID lookups by choosing CallerID Superfecta in the CID Lookup Source pulldown. Then move to the Set Destination section and choose Extensions in the left pull-down and 201 in the extension pull-down. Now click Submit and save your changes. That will assure that incoming Google Voice calls are routed to extension 201.

IMPORTANT: Before Google Voice calling will actually work, you must restart Asterisk from the Linux command line interface. Log into your server as root and issue this command: amportal restart.

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

General Settings. Last, but not least, we need to enter an email address for you so that you are notified when new FreePBX updates are released. In FreePBX 2.11, choose Admin -> Module Admin and click on the Upgrade Notifications shield on the right. Plug in your email address, click Submit, and save your changes. Done!

Setting Up a Desktop Softphone. PBX in a Flash supports all kinds of telephones, but we’ll start with the easy (free) one today. You can move on to "real phones" once you’re smitten with the VoIP bug. For today, you’ll need to download a softphone to your desktop PC or Mac.

The easiest way to get started is to set up a YATE softphone on your Desktop computer. Versions are available at no cost for Macs, PCs, and Linux machines. Just download the appropriate one and install it from this link. Once installed, it’s a simple matter to plug in your extension credentials and start making calls. Run the application and choose Settings -> Accounts and click the New button. Fill in the blanks using the IP address of your server, 201 for your account name, and whatever password you created for the extension. Click OK.

Once you are registered to extension 201, close the Account window. Then click on YATE’s Telephony Tab and place your first call. It’s that easy!

Monitoring Call Progress with Asterisk. That about covers the basics. We’ll leave you with a tip on how to monitor what’s happening with your PBX. There are several good tools within the FreePBX GUI. You’ll find them under the Reports tab. In addition, Asterisk has its own Command Line Interface (CLI) that is accessible from the Linux command prompt. Just execute the following command while logged in as root: asterisk -rvvvvvvvvvv.

What’s Next? We’ve barely scratched the surface of what you can do with PBX in a Flash. Log into your server as root and type help-pbx for a list of simple install scripts that can add almost any function you can imagine. And Incredible PBX 11 is just around the corner. You can try it out in the Incredible PBX 11 Virtual Machine today.

Special Thanks. In just ten days, Nerd Vittles kicks off its 9th year of publication. We wanted to express our thanks to all of you for visiting. In just the last three months, we’ve again begun compiling a list of countries that are represented in the Nerd Vittles Fan Club. Nerd Vittles has spread to 204 awesome countries so far. Just click on the Google Map and have a look for yourself. Very inspiring. Thanks again for your support and Happy New Year!

Originally published: Thursday, January 10, 2013


Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.
Or Try the New, Free PBX in a Flash Conference Bridge.

whos.amung.us If you’re wondering what your fellow man is reading on Nerd Vittles these days, wonder no more. Visit our new whos.amung.us statistical web site and check out what’s happening. It’s a terrific resource both for us and for you.

 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


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

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

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

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

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

  1. There obviously are ways to dramatically reduce VoIP bandwidth. Here’s a table that provides the details. The tradeoff is that you’ll need a beefier computer to compress and decompress VoIP packets if you elect to use a codec such as G.729. [↩]
  2. You also can use a dedicated Google Apps account for Google Voice with the latest version of the FreePBX module. Don’t use your regular Google Apps email address with Google Voice, or inbound calling will not work! [↩]

The 5-Minute PBX: It’s Incredible PBX 11 Virtual Machine for VirtualBox

Friday, December 21, 2012 / 8 Comments on The 5-Minute PBX: It’s Incredible PBX 11 Virtual Machine for VirtualBox

In our last article, we introduced the PBX in a Flash Virtual Machine for Oracle’s VirtualBox. To commemorate the end of the world today, we wanted to go out with a bang. So we’re pleased to introduce Incredible PBX 11 Virtual Machine. As with the PIAF-Green Virtual Machine, this new appliance features CentOS 6.3, Asterisk® 11, and FreePBX® 2.11 beta. In addition, it includes Incredible Fax with HylaFax and AvantFax, SMS speech-to-text messaging as well as SMS message blasting with Google Voice, and several dozen turnkey Asterisk applications including a speech-to-text phonebook dialer, text-to-speech news, weather, tide, and stock reports, a conference bridge for MeetMe conferencing, NeoRouter and PPTP VPN support, SAMBA for Windows Networking, ODBC database integration, Telephone Reminders and Hotel-Style Wakeup Calls, CallerID Superfecta, PBX End Point Manager, and Wolfram Alpha to name but a few. With the addition of free Google Voice accounts, you still get free voice and fax calling in 2013 throughout the United States and Canada. And, yes, Incredible PBX 11 still installs and is ready to go in under 5 minutes on any Windows, Mac, Linux, or Solaris desktop.

The Ultimate VoIP Appliance: Incredible PBX 11 Virtual Machine for VirtualBox

We broke new ground in the virtual machine development arena last week with the introduction of the PIAF Virtual Machine. Today we take it to the next plateau with a turnkey VoIP appliance that can be deployed and functional in less time than it takes you to shave. Today’s Incredible PBX Virtual Machine still gives you everything a bare metal install from source code would have provided. And, most importantly, the components are truly portable. They can be copied to a 4GB flash drive1 for the price of a good hamburger and installed from there onto any type of machine that happens to be in front of you. Five minutes later, you have a fully functional Asterisk server with FreePBX and exactly the same feature set and source code that you would have had installing Incredible PBX onto a dedicated server. Before you ask any questions, we urge you to try this VoIP appliance for yourself. The install process is as easy as 1-2-3:

  1. Download and install VirtualBox onto a Desktop Machine of your choice
  2. Download and double-click on Incredible PBX 11 Virtual Machine to import it into VirtualBox
  3. Select the Incredible PBX 11 Virtual Machine in VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button

Introducing Oracle VM VirtualBox

Here’s a quick review if you missed our last article. VirtualBox®, Oracle’s virtual machine platform inherited from Sun, is really something. It’s not only free, but it’s pure GPL2 code. VirtualBox gives you a virtual machine platform that runs on top of any desktop operating system. In terms of limitations, we haven’t found any. We even tested this on an Atom-based Windows 7 machine with 2GB of RAM, and it worked without a hiccup. So step #1 is to download one or more of the VirtualBox installers from VirtualBox.org or Oracle.com. As mentioned, our recommendation is to put all of the 100MB installers on a 4GB thumb drive. Then you’ll have everything in one place whenever and wherever you happen to need it. Once you’ve downloaded the software, simply install it onto your favorite desktop machine. Accept all of the default settings, and you’ll be good to go. For details, here’s a link to Oracle’s VM VirtualBox User Manual.

Introducing Incredible PBX Virtual Machine

To get Incredible PBX VM installed on your desktop is quick and easy. Because the image tips the scales at over 2GB and due to the 2GB file size limit on many systems, we’ve chosen to split this download into two pieces. You need both of them. Just download them onto any flavor desktop from SourceForge. Once you’ve downloaded the two files, reassemble them into a single file known as an Open Virtualization Appliance (.ova). Then verify the checksums for the reassembled file to be sure everything is in its proper place. Finally, double-click on the .ova file which will initiate the import process into VirtualBox.

So let’s begin by downloading the two halves from SourceForge: INCREDIBLEPBX11aa and INCREDIBLEPBX11ab.

The reassembly procedure depends upon your desktop operating system. For Windows PCs, you’ll need to drop down to the Command Prompt, change to the directory in which you downloaded the two files, and type the following command:
 
copy /b INCREDIBLEPBX11aa + INCREDIBLEPBX11ab IncrediblePBX11.ova

To check the MD5/SHA1 checksums in Windows, download and run Microsoft’s File Checksum Integrity Verifier.

For Mac or Linux desktops, open a Terminal window, change to the directory in which you downloaded the two files, and type the following commands:
 
cat INCREDIBLEPBX11a{a..b} > IncrediblePBX11.ova
md5 IncrediblePBX11.ova (use md5sum for Linux)
openssl sha1 IncrediblePBX11.ova

The MD5 checksum for IncrediblePBX11.ova is b17655785ef00381ffd70899a19375f9. The SHA1 checksum is 86ccd31d64d3b51e10a8e7429548be6ce15ecd9b. If you have a match, proceed. Otherwise, rinse and repeat.

Importing Incredible PBX 11 Virtual Machine into VirtualBox

You only perform the import step one time. Once imported into VirtualBox, Incredible PBX is ready to use. There’s no further installation required, just like an OpenVZ template… only better. Double-click on the .ova file you downloaded to begin the procedure and load VirtualBox. When prompted, be sure to check the Reinitialize the Mac address of all network cards box. Read and accept the license agreement. Then click the Import button. Once the import is finished, you’ll see a new IncrediblePBX11 virtual machine in your VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window. You need to make a couple of one-time adjustments to the IncrediblePBX11 Virtual Machine configuration to account for differences in sound and network cards on different host machines.

Click on IncrediblePBX11 Virtual Machine in the VM List. Then click Settings -> Audio and check the Enable Audio option and choose your sound card. Save your setup by clicking the OK button. Next click Settings -> Network. For Adapter 1, check the Enable Network Adapter option. From the Attached to pull-down menu, choose Bridged Adapter. Then select your network card from the Name list. Then click OK to save your setup. Finally, click Settings -> System, uncheck Hardware clock in UTC time, and click OK. That’s all the configuration that is necessary for Incredible PBX Virtual Machine. If you blinked, you probably missed it.

Running Incredible PBX Virtual Machine in VirtualBox

Once you’ve imported and configured Incredible PBX Virtual Machine, you’re ready to go. Highlight the appliance in the VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button. The boot procedure with CentOS 6.3 will begin just as if you had installed PBX in a Flash and Incredible PBX on a standalone machine. You’ll see a couple of dialogue boxes pop up that explain the keystrokes to move back and forth between your host operating system desktop and Incredible PBX.

Here’s what you need to know. To work in the Incredible PBX Virtual Machine, just left-click your mouse while it is positioned inside the VM window. To return to your host operating system desktop, press the right Option key on Windows machines or the left Command key on any Mac. For other operating systems, read the dialogue boxes for instructions on moving around. Always shut down Incredible PBX gracefully! Click in the VM window with your mouse, log in as root, and type: shutdown -h now. Or, from the VirtualBox Manager Window, Ctl-Click on the IncrediblePBX11 VM and choose Close -> ACPI Shutdown.

Always run Incredible PBX VM behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure!

Linux CLI Setup. To begin, position your mouse over the VM window and left-click. Once the virtual machine has booted, log in as root with password as the password. Change your root password immediately by typing passwd at the command prompt. Now set up a secure maint password for FreePBX as well. Type passwd-master. If you’re not in the Eastern U.S. time zone, then you’ll want to adjust your timezone setting so that reminders and other time-sensitive events happen at the correct time. Issue the following command to pick your time zone: /root/timezone-setup. If you plan to use Incredible Fax to send and receive faxes, set an email address for delivery of incoming faxes: /root/incrediblefax-setup. To use SMS messaging in Incredible PBX, you’ll need a Google Voice account which is covered below. Once you have your credentials, edit extensions_custom.conf in /etc/asterisk and insert your username and password in the 767 extension. To use SAMBA for Windows networking, replace the Interfaces IP address in /etc/samba/smb.conf with your actual IP address. Next, run smbpasswd and assign a password for root access to your server. Then restart SAMBA: service smb restart.

FreePBX Setup. Use a browser to log into your Incredible PBX server by pointing to the IP address of the virtual machine displayed in the status window of the CLI. Click on the User button to display the Admin choices in the Main PIAF Menu. Click on the FreePBX Admin option to load the FreePBX GUI. You will be prompted for a username and password. For the username, use maint. For the password, use whatever password you set up with passwd-master above.

You’ll want to keep FreePBX up to date. The easiest way is to configure FreePBX for email notifications when there are updates. In the FreePBX GUI, choose Admin -> Module Admin -> Upgrade Notifications and plug in your email address. Updates are installed in this same window. Click Check Online -> Upgrade All -> Process and Confirm. Scroll to the bottom of the Status window and click Return. Then click Apply Config. Now you try it.

GOOGLE VOICE ALERT: For old-timers that used the previous Google Voice module in FreePBX 2.x, it’s a little different in FreePBX 2.11. It now is called Google Voice (Motif), and you’ll find it under the Connectivity tab instead of the Other tab. More importantly, the form has changed. Do NOT check all 3 checkboxes as you did previously, or your incoming calls won’t be answered. Leave last checkbox "Send Unanswered to GoogleVoice Voicemail" UNCHECKED!!

Incredible PBX supports SIP, IAX, and Google Voice trunks to handle your outbound and incoming calls. The easiest way to get started it to set up a couple of Google Voice trunks, one for voice calls and one for faxing. These trunks must be dedicated for exclusive use with Incredible PBX. If you’re logged into these Google Voice accounts elsewhere, Incredible PBX won’t receive incoming calls. Read our Incredible PBX Quick Start Guide for the procedure to register for new Google Voice accounts. Once you have your credentials and phone numbers, choose Connectivity -> Google Voice in FreePBX to set up the accounts in FreePBX. For each trunk, you also need to set up an Inbound Route to tell FreePBX how to route the incoming calls. For your Fax trunk, here’s the drill. Choose Connectivity -> Inbound Routes. Insert your 10-digit Google Voice number in the DID Number field. Check Enable CID Superfecta and, for Set Destination, choose Custom Destinations -> Fax (HylaFax). Click Submit and then click Apply Config.

Before your Google Voice trunks will work reliably, there are two final steps. First, restart Asterisk from the Linux CLI: amportal restart. Then, make at least one outbound call using each Google Voice trunk.

We’ve preconfigured SIP trunks for all of the major VoIP providers in Incredible PBX. All you have to do is sign up for a few accounts. This isn’t like the old Ma Bell days so take advantage of the redundancy that using multiple VoIP providers gives you. There’s a very special offer from one of the major sponsors of the PBX in a Flash and Nerd Vittles projects below. Take advantage of it and support our open source projects.

1-7-13 Security Alert: We’ve just released Incredible PBX 11.1.2 which includes Asterisk 11.1.2 and the latest FreePBX 2.11 beta. The Asterisk Dev Team announced a serious security vulnerability in Asterisk 1.8, 10, and 11 late last week. This update addresses that. You can read all about it in the readme file on SourceForge. If you still are using an earlier version of Incredible PBX 11, make certain that it is behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure. And you should immediately patch your server or, better yet, switch to this new release.

Now read the latest Incredible PBX Quick Start Guide and begin your VoIP adventure. Then you’ll want to do some reading on VirtualBox. We’ve barely scratched the surface. Setting up Headless VMs that run in the background on any server is a breeze. From the command line, here’s an article to get you started. But you also can start Headless VMs from within the GUI by highlighting the VM and clicking Shift->Start. REMEMBER: Always shut down VMs gracefully: Close->ACPI Shutdown. You’ll find more great tips at virtualbox.org and GitHub.

One of the real beauties of VirtualBox is you don’t have to use a GUI at all. The entire process can be driven from the command line. Other than on a Mac, here is the procedure to import, configure, and run Incredible PBX 11 Virtual Machine:
 
VBoxManage import IncrediblePBX11.ova
VBoxManage modifyvm "IncrediblePBX11" --nic1 nat
VBoxManage modifyvm "IncrediblePBX11" --acpi on --nic1 bridged
VBoxHeadless --startvm "IncrediblePBX11" &
# Wait 1 minute for IncrediblePBX11 to load. Then decipher IP address like this:
VBoxManage guestproperty get "IncrediblePBX11" /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/IP
# Now you can use SSH to login to IncrediblePBX11 at the displayed IP address
# Shutdown the IncrediblePBX11 Virtual Machine with the following command:
VBoxManage controlvm "IncrediblePBX11" acpipowerbutton

On a Mac, everything works the same way except for deciphering the IP address. Download our findip script for that.

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Originally published: Friday, December 21, 2012 Updated: Saturday, December 22, 2012


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

The 5-Minute PBX: PIAF Virtual Machine for VirtualBox (Windows, Mac, or Linux)

Wednesday, December 12, 2012 / 7 Comments on The 5-Minute PBX: PIAF Virtual Machine for VirtualBox (Windows, Mac, or Linux)

For most of us, today marks the last time we’ll ever see the day, month, and year line up on the calendar in perfect harmony so Happy 12-12-12 to everyone. It’ll be 88+ years before it happens again. And the Mayans believe the world will be ending in 9 more days so there may be no need to worry about the 88 years anyway. Whatever happens, it seemed like an appropriate time to take stock of how we’re doing in the development of the Perfect PBX™. Such an assessment, of course, is in the eyes of the beholder. From our perspective, in addition to being feature-rich, it has to have three components: ease of installation, ease of use, and flexibility. The first two are self-explanatory but flexibility needs some explanation. Flexibility to us means a feature set that’s appealing not only to those just beginning the journey but also to those of us that need to make frequent changes and additions to the platform to keep it current or make it better. After all, that’s what open source is all about.

The real beauty of PBX in a Flash has not been that someone with sufficient expertise couldn’t assemble something just as good or even better. Watch the AstriCon presentations from this year if you have any doubts. The beauty of PIAF is it puts this technology down where the goats can get it. It provides a toolset that encourages further development by simplifying the learning curve for a broad cross-section of the VoIP community while not compromising functionality or flexibility. The source code for the major components is included in the build so you can customize and recompile Asterisk or load a new version of Asterisk or any additional Linux app in minutes without losing your existing setup.

As many of you know, we have literally hundreds of gurus on the PIAF Forum. That doesn’t mean any particular person or group knows everything. It’s merely a designation that a particular individual is an expert at something. The collective wisdom of the group is what makes PBX in a Flash as a project better because we’ve put in place a platform that experts from many different disciplines can build upon without needing to learn everything about everything. Simply stated, you can be a terrific chef without knowing how to build a stove!

Turning to Asterisk® 11 and FreePBX® 2.11, from everything we’re seeing, these new releases are shaping up to be a remarkable step forward both in terms of toolset and in the new mindset of the development community. That’s a good thing. For our part, we’ve wanted to get our latest preview release of PBX in a Flash with CentOS 6.3, Asterisk 11 and the new FreePBX 2.11 beta into as many hands as possible keeping in mind the objectives we outlined above.

The Ultimate VoIP Appliance: PIAF Virtual Machine for VirtualBox

Today brings us to a new plateau in the virtual machine development era. Thanks to the masterful work of Tom King on PBX in a Flash 2.0.6.3.1, we’re pleased to introduce a new product that can be installed in under 5 minutes and will run on any Windows PC, Mac, or Linux machine as well as Solaris. And, unlike the dedicated machine platforms and OpenVZ compromises of years past, today’s PIAF Virtual Machine gives you everything a bare metal install from source code would have provided. Most importantly, the components are truly portable. They can be copied to a 4GB flash drive1 for the price of a good hamburger and installed from there onto any type of machine that happens to be in front of you. Five minutes later, you have a fully functional Asterisk server with FreePBX and exactly the same feature set and source code that you would have had doing a bare metal PIAF install to a dedicated server. And we’ve built both a production-ready PIAF-Purple VM with Asterisk 1.8 and FreePBX 2.10 as well as a Pioneer edition PIAF-Green VM with Asterisk 11 and FreePBX 2.11 beta. The choice is yours. No Internet access required to perform the install. Sound too good to be true? Keep reading or, better yet, try the PIAF appliance for yourself. The install process is simple:

  1. Download and install VirtualBox onto a Desktop Machine of your choice
  2. Download and double-click on the PIAF Virtual Machine to import it into VirtualBox
  3. Select the PIAF Virtual Machine in VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button

Introducing Oracle VM VirtualBox

We’re late to the party, but Virtual Box®, Oracle’s virtual machine platform inherited from Sun, is really something. It’s not only free, but it’s pure GPL2 code. VirtualBox gives you a virtual machine platform that runs on top of any desktop operating system. In terms of limitations, we haven’t found any. We even tested this on an Atom-based Windows 7 machine with 2GB of RAM, and it worked without a hiccup. So step #1 is to download one or more of the VirtualBox installers from VirtualBox.org or Oracle.com. As mentioned, our recommendation is to put all of the 100MB installers on a 4GB thumb drive. Then you’ll have everything in one place whenever and wherever you happen to need it. Once you’ve downloaded the software, simply install it onto your favorite desktop machine. Accept all of the default settings, and you’ll be good to go. For more details, here’s a link to the Oracle VM VirtualBox User Manual.

Introducing the PIAF Virtual Machine

We’ll walk you through installing the PIAF-Green Virtual Machine. It’s basically the same procedure with PIAF-Purple except you get to skip the reassembly step since the PIAF-Purple.ova image is only 1.3GB.

The PIAF-Green Virtual Machine tips the scales at over 2GB. Because of the 2GB file size limit on many systems, we’ve chosen to split this download into two pieces. You need both of them. Just download them onto any flavor desktop from SourceForge. Once you’ve downloaded the two files, we need to reassemble them into a single file known as an Open Virtualization Appliance (.ova). Then verify the checksums for the reassembled file to be sure everything is in its proper place. Finally, we’ll double-click on the .ova file which will initiate the import process into VirtualBox.

So let’s begin by downloading the two halves of PIAF-Green from SourceForge: PIAFGREENaa and PIAFGREENab. If you’d prefer production-ready code, just download PIAF-Purple.ova and skip the reassembly step. There’s also a new surprise offering that’s covered in the comments to this article. 🙂

The reassembly procedure depends upon your desktop operating system. For Windows PCs, you’ll need to drop down to the Command Prompt, change to the directory in which you downloaded the two files, and type the following command:
 
copy /b PIAFGREENaa + PIAFGREENab PIAF-Green.ova

To check the MD5/SHA1 checksums in Windows, download and run Microsoft’s File Checksum Integrity Verifier.

For Mac or Linux desktops, open a Terminal window, change to the directory in which you downloaded the two files, and type the following commands:
 
cat PIAFGREENa{a..b} > PIAF-Green.ova
md5 PIAF-Green.ova (use md5sum for Linux)
openssl sha1 PIAF-Green.ova

The correct MD5 checksum for PIAF-Green ( PIAF-Green.ova) is a86a018466c7045372e51100cddd42ea. For PIAF-Purple.ova, it’s 664b1afe75c3b1877029531b0fe28063. The correct SHA1 checksum for PIAF-Green is d883c5e137ac19ecb45c1e6f127180b78a9cd0af. For PIAF-Purple, it’s 15f94352745ca989fd9939d9a8ee8b765fc8388c. If you have a match, proceed. Otherwise, rinse and repeat.

Importing the PIAF Virtual Machine into VirtualBox

You only perform the import step one time. Once imported into VirtualBox, PBX in a Flash is ready to use. There’s no further installation required, just like an OpenVZ template… only better. Double-click on the .ova file you downloaded to begin the procedure and load VirtualBox. When prompted, be sure to check the Reinitialize the Mac address of all network cards box and then click the Import button. Once the import is finished, you’ll see a new PIAF virtual machine in your VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window. Regardless of flavor, you’ll need to make a couple of one-time adjustments to the PIAF Virtual Machine configuration to account for differences in sound and network cards on different host machines.

Click on the PIAF Virtual Machine in the VM List. Then click Settings -> Audio and check the Enable Audio option and choose your sound card. Save your setup by clicking the OK button. Next click Settings -> Network. For Adapter 1, check the Enable Network Adapter option. From the Attached to pull-down menu, choose Bridged Adapter. Then select your network card from the Name list. Then click OK. Finally, click Settings -> System, uncheck Hardware clock in UTC time, and click OK. That’s all the configuration that is necessary for your PIAF Virtual Machine. The rest is automagic.

Running the PIAF Virtual Machine in VirtualBox

Once you’ve imported and configured the PIAF Virtual Machine, you’re ready to go. Highlight PIAF Virtual Machine in the VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button. The PIAF boot procedure with CentOS 6.3 will begin just as if you had installed PBX in a Flash on a standalone machine. You’ll see a couple of dialogue boxes pop up that explain the keystrokes to move back and forth between your host operating system desktop and your PIAF VM.

Here’s what you need to know. To work in the PIAF Virtual Machine, just left-click your mouse while it is positioned inside the VM window. To return to your host operating system desktop, press the right Option key on Windows machines or the left Command key on any Mac. For other operating systems, read the dialogue boxes for instructions on moving around. Always shut down PIAF gracefully! Click in the VM window with your mouse, log in as root, and type: shutdown -h now.

Run the PIAF Virtual Machine behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure!

To begin, position your mouse over the VM window and left-click. Once the PIAF VM has booted, log in as root with password as the password. Change your root password immediately by typing passwd at the command prompt. Now set up a secure maint password for FreePBX as well. Type passwd-master. If you’re not in the Eastern U.S. time zone, then you’ll want to adjust your timezone setting so that reminders and other time-sensitive events happen at the correct time. While logged into your server as root, issue these commands to download and run the timezone-setup script:

cd /root
wget http://pbxinaflash.com/timezone-setup.tar.gz
tar zxvf timezone-setup.tar.gz
./timezone-setup

Next, use a browser to log into your PIAF server by pointing to the IP address of the PIAF VM that’s displayed in the status window of the CLI. Click on the User button to display the Admin choices in the main PIAF Menu. Click on the FreePBX option to load the FreePBX GUI. You will be prompted for an Apache username and password. For the username, use maint. For the password, use whatever password you set up with passwd-master.

Now read the latest PIAF Quick Start Guide and begin your VoIP adventure. Then you’ll want to do some reading on VirtualBox. We’ve barely scratched the surface. Setting up Headless VMs that run in the background on any server is a breeze. From the command line, here’s an article to get you started. But you also can start Headless VMs from within the GUI by highlighting the VM and clicking Shift->Start. Always shut down VMs gracefully: Close->ACPI Shutdown. You’ll find more great tips at virtualbox.org and GitHub.

One of the real beauties of VirtualBox is you don’t have to use a GUI at all. The entire process can be driven from the command line. Other than on a Mac, here is the procedure to import, configure, and run PIAF-Purple Virtual Machine:
 
VBoxManage import PIAF-Purple.ova
VBoxManage modifyvm "PIAF-Purple" --nic1 nat
VBoxManage modifyvm "PIAF-Purple" --acpi on --nic1 bridged
VBoxHeadless --startvm "PIAF-Purple" &
# Wait 1 minute for PIAF-Purple to load. Then decipher IP address like this:
VBoxManage guestproperty get "PIAF-Purple" /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/IP
# Now you can use SSH to login to PIAF-Purple at the displayed IP address
# Shutdown the PIAF-Purple Virtual Machine with the following command:
VBoxManage controlvm "PIAF-Purple" acpipowerbutton

On a Mac, everything works the same way except for deciphering the IP address. Download our findip script for that.

Enjoy!

Originally published: Wednesday, December 12, 2012


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

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