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The Most Versatile VoIP Provider: FREE PORTING
JUST RELEASED: Visit the Incredible PBX WikiBeware the Ides of May: It’s Hammertime for Google Voice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyEE0qpfeig
You don’t have to be a soothsayer to appreciate what’s about to happen in the VoIP community. In just two weeks, millions of telephones in the United States are about to go silent. Let’s begin with what we know and don’t know about Google Voice and Google’s May 15 deadline. Google has made it crystal clear that XMPP connectivity to Google Voice is going away on May 15. What that means is that inbound and outbound calling using an XMPP connection to Google Voice will no longer work, period. And the platform really doesn’t matter. That includes Asterisk, FreePBX, FreeSwitch, Yate, and GrooVe IP as well as hardware ATAs such has ObiHai devices. Why? The short answer is because Google says so, and they are/were paying the bills. The longer answer is that companies such as Microsoft and Apple that have proprietary communications platforms were not reciprocating with free connectivity to their services in the same way that Google was providing XMPP service. Another probable reason is that Google was taking a financial bath on Google Voice services which were being abused by many commercial organizations. Reportedly, as many as three to five million DIDs have been handed out as part of the Google Voice project with very little return on investment.
Some have suggested this is just another tempest in a teapot like Y2K. After all, Y2K came and went without many catastrophes. The difference is that businesses spent hundreds of millions of dollars preparing for Y2K to make certain there were no train wrecks. With Google Voice, many individuals have taken the ostrich approach with their heads buried in the sand pretending things are just going to work out. Without some effort on the part of those still using Google Voice, May 15 will be their Julius Caesar moment.
What to Do? One school of thought is that the "old fashioned" Google Voice connections using Python which simulated a web call with Google Chat will still function. If receiving and placing calls using your existing Google Voice numbers matters to you, take the opinions of these self-proclaimed experts with a grain of salt. Here’s what you need to appreciate. First, nobody outside of Google actually knows whether the Python approach will continue to function or not. Second, even if it works on May 15, nothing would preclude Google from making "adjustments" at any time that would disable this functionality. They’ve done it before. They can do it again. And Google has made it abundantly clear that they’re putting an end to the free gravy train. Third, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that PSTN call forwarding using Google Voice may be the next axe to fall. This probably won’t happen on May 15, but who knows. Finally, should you decide to go down this road, be aware that it is a major coding project regardless of your platform. But, if this is the road you wish to travel, you can find some tips on making the transition here. You’ve been warned.
The Smarter Approach. Our recommendations today are limited to those in the United States. Our apologies, but that’s two-thirds of our readership and roughly 95% of those that currently rely upon Google Voice. The same recommendations apply to those in Europe and South America and the Far East if calls to destinations in the U.S. are a major part of your VoIP traffic. What do we recommend? First, become VoIP savvy! The provider you use for outbound calls need not be the provider you use for incoming calls. Not putting all your eggs in one basket is a very good idea in the VoIP world.
Call us Chicken Little if you must, but Outbound Calling with Google Voice is going away on May 15. So, in the next two weeks, you definitely need to come up with an alternative for call terminations in the U.S./Canada market. We think you have two options: purchase an all-you-can-eat plan that includes sufficient outbound calling minutes to meet your existing requirements. Or you can select a provider that offers pay by the minute service for all of your outbound calls. One advantage with most of the pay-by-the-minute providers is that you can set your CallerID as desired. Don’t be misled by the all-you-can-eat claims. Every VoIP provider imposes some sort of cap on outbound calling even if their plan is advertised as "unlimited." If your outbound calling minutes exceed 2000-3000 minutes a month, you’re going to be looking for a new provider within weeks because every provider that we know will drop you like a hot potato when you are no longer profitable in their business model. The other gotcha is that most, if not all, of the all-you-can-eat plans are restricted to residential (non-business) use.
Full Disclosure: We have a favorite all-you-can-eat provider (Vestalink) and a favorite pay-as-you-go provider (Vitelity), and both of them provide some financial support to the Nerd Vittles and PBX in a Flash projects; however, both were our favorites before they provided any support to our projects.
All-You-Can-Eat Calling Plans. We continue to like Vestalink (formerly Obivoice) even though their prices have increased since the release of our original article. That’s actually a good thing. There was no way they could have stayed in business with their original pricing model. On a new 2-year plan with unlimited U.S./Canada inbound AND outbound calls, E911 service, and a free DID in your choice of area codes, the current rate for 24 months is $89.99 which works out to roughly $3.50 a month. The service comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Another option which we previously have covered is a hardware device such as the netTALK Duo. With an upfront $100 hardware investment, you get the same features as Vestalink for $30 a year which works out to less than 10¢ a day. With both services, you have the option of porting your existing Google Voice number for a one-time fee. With Vestalink, you also have the option of spoofing your outbound CallerID number with your existing Google Voice number once it is verified as belonging to you. We prefer the latter approach at least until Google gives some hint that their call forwarding of incoming Google Voice calls is going away. Both services are bargains in our view. But, as we noted, for residential service we still prefer the pure VoIP solution provided by Vestalink.
Pay-As-You-Go Call Terminations. Most of the reputable pay-by-the-minute providers charge between 1¢ and 2¢ a minute for outbound calls with charges billed in 6 to 10-second increments. Unless you make an enormous number of lengthy calls, these rates are a bargain. Vitelity remains our favorite provider primarily because of the flexibility their service offers in setting up multiple sub-accounts for use with Asterisk or FreeSwitch. A sign-up link with a 50% discount on most DIDs is provided here and at the end of this article. We appreciate your support of our VoIP projects!!
While it is not yet officially available, the most compelling reason to switch to Vitelity is vMobile, a new $9.99/month cellphone plan that will integrate your Vitelity cellphone (actually a Samsung Galaxy S III) directly into your Asterisk setup. What that means is calls to extensions on your Asterisk server will also ring on your cellphone. And your cellphone functions exactly like any other extension on your Asterisk server whether you’re operating on 3G, 4G, or LTE networks as well as on WiFi at your home or office. You’ll be able to park calls, transfer calls, set up call monitoring, conferencing, and recording just as if you were on a standard VoIP phone in your home or office. And you can’t beat the price. Inbound and outbound calls on WiFi are totally free. Calls received or placed over what appears to be Sprint’s nationwide network are 2¢ a minute, about the same cost as pure VoIP calls.
For pay-by-the-minute terminations, we always recommend you set up accounts with multiple providers. Then, by setting multiple trunk sequences in your outbound routes, you’ll always have successful calls even when a particular provider happens to have an outage. Other than perhaps a small deposit, redundancy costs you nothing since you only pay for calls that you actually place through each provider. For a current list of our favorite termination providers in both the U.S. and Canada, see this thread on the PIAF Forum.
Handling Incoming VoIP Calls. Here’s the bottom line. The one thing you don’t want to do is risk losing your phone number because of the Google Voice train wreck. We have noticed a dramatic difference in call reliability for incoming calls over the past few months. Perhaps it’s an upstream provider problem… and perhaps not. Whatever the reason, get your phone numbers ported out of Google Voice as quickly as you can. It doesn’t have to be in the next two weeks, but you are well advised to begin the porting process soon. The Nerd Vittles Vitelity link will get you a monthly rate of $3.95 for a Tier A DID with unlimited incoming calls each month and automatic server failover. There are a few less expensive DID providers but, when it comes to our phone number, we’ve always wanted a provider with rock-solid reliability, flexibility, and a proven track record. Vitelity meets those requirements in spades. As we noted at the outset, the other advantage in separating out your inbound and outbound trunks is that, when service gets disrupted (and it happens to the best of providers), you’re not completely dead in the water.
For the short term, so long as you have an existing DID in the U.S. or Canada, you can forward your incoming Google Voice calls to that DID by simply adding it as a call forwarding destination in your Google Voice profile. We also recommend adding your cellphone as an additional call forwarding destination. Finally, be sure to disable the Google Chat option in your Google Voice setup and remove the Google Voice trunk in your FreePBX Google Voice/Motif setup. Good luck!
Originally published: Thursday, May 1, 2014
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…
4 Months in Paradise: The Return of Free International VoIP Calling
With the impending implosion of Google Voice, it seemed appropriate to begin our quest for alternative termination providers. One of the real beauties of VoIP technology is you don’t have to put all of your eggs in one basket particularly in the termination department. It costs almost nothing to set up accounts with multiple providers for outbound calling. In addition to redundancy, the other clear advantage in using multiple providers for outbound calls is that you can take advantage of special rates to different destinations. So here’s the bargain of the week. If you have loved ones traveling to South America, Europe or Asia this summer, now’s your chance to sign up for VoIP service with FreeVoipDeal and enjoy four months of free calling to more than 50 countries around the world for every $15 of credits you purchase on their web site. Please note the fine print: "FreeVoipDeal reserves the right after a certain amount of calls to start charging the default rate." There is no mention of what that "certain amount" happens to be. When your free calling finally ends, you can either purchase $15 of additional credits for 120 more "free" days or continue to call all of the previously free destinations for about 2¢ a minute.
The company behind FreeVoIPDeal is betamax which hosts over 30 sites offering varying deals to different countries. BEWARE: The prices change regularly. So a country that’s free today may suddenly cost money tomorrow. How does a mere mortal keep track? Well, betamax probably hopes that you won’t. But an enterprising individual named Robert Siemer has done the work for you. His backsla.sh/betamax web site automatically updates the pricing for all betamax sites every day! If this sounds like a lot of work to save a few cents a minute, you’d be right. And Vitelity which sponsors both the Nerd Vittles and PBX in a Flash projects offers consistently low rates to all of these countries. You’ll find a DID special at the end of this article, and their excellent international rate table is available at this link.
Setting Up an Account. Before you can set up a trunk in PBX in a Flash, you’ll first need to create a FreeVoipDeal account. In the "old days" this required use of their Windows client to obtain your credentials. Now you can simply create an account on the web site at this link. You’ll need either a regular land line or a cell phone number to verify your registration. Once you’re set up and you’ve deposited at least 10 euros (about $15) in your account, it’s time to set up a SIP trunk and outbound route in PBX in a Flash.
Configuring a Trunk with PBX in a Flash. Assuming you already have a phone registered to an extension in PBX in a Flash, it’s a one-minute drill to configure a trunk and outbound route to support FreeVoipDeal. Using a browser, log into FreePBX® using your maint username and password. Choose Connectivity -> Trunks -> Add SIP Trunk. Name the trunk: FreeVoipDeal. For the Dialed Number Manipulation Rules, enter Prepend: 1 and Match Pattern: NXXNXXXXXX. Clear out all of the default entries in Outgoing and Incoming Settings. Then, in Outgoing Settings, enter Trunk Name: freevoipdeal. For the PEER Details, enter the following using your actual account USERNAME and PASSWORD. Then SAVE your settings and reload FreePBX.
username=USERNAME
authuser=USERNAME
secret=PASSWORD
type=peer
qualify=yes
nat=yes
insecure=port,invite
host=sip.freevoipdeal.com
fromdomain=sip.freevoipdeal.com
dtmfmode=auto
disallow=all
canreinvite=no
allow=ulaw
There’s no need to enter a CallerID number. All of the outgoing calls will be delivered as ANONYMOUS. You also won’t need to register with the provider since Asterisk® can handle this on the fly using your credentials entered above.
Configuring an Outbound Route with PBX in a Flash. One more step, and you’ll be ready to start making calls. Choose Connectivity -> Outbound Routes. For the Route Name, enter: FreeVoIPDeal. For the Dial Pattern to make U.S. calls, enter: NXXNXXXXXX. If you want to force callers to dial a prefix to use the FreeVoipDeal trunk, then enter a 9 or some other number in the Prefix field. For Trunk Sequence 0, choose: FreeVoipDeal. Click Submit Changes and restart FreePBX when prompted. You’re done!
Making Your First Call. Using a phone or softphone logged into your server, dial the prefix (if any) plus the 10-digit number of someone in the United States. When the called party answers, make sure you can hear the called party and vice versa. If not, open Settings -> SIP Settings in FreePBX and add your External IP and Local Network settings. Also make certain the NAT entry is set to YES.
Configuring Your Server for International Calls. We do not recommend configuring your server to permit international calls to everywhere. The reason is simple. If strangers manage to access one of your extensions, they can run up your phone bill in a hurry. For this reason, we also strongly recommend that you do not configure automatic credit card replenishment with any VoIP provider!
For international calling, we recommend you add a separate Dial Pattern to both your FreeVoipDeal trunk AND the outbound route for each country code you wish to enable. Here is the complete list of codes. For example, to allow calls to Germany from another country, you’d add 49XXXXXXXXXX, save your changes, and reload FreePBX.
Spoofing Your CallerID. If you first verify that you own a number by using the web portal, you then can spoof the outbound CallerID using the number you verified. Just add the following entries to your trunk settings replacing 9991234567 with your verified CallerID number. Special thanks to @hillclimber on the PIAF Forum for the tip.
fromuser=0019991234567
sendrpid=yes
Originally published: Friday, April 25, 2014
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…
Obivoice = OBi Heaven: Dumping Google Voice for Less Than 10¢ a Day
What a difference a week makes! When we wrote last week’s article about netTALK and their terrific pricing, we were pleased to report that at least one company could offer a drop-in replacement for Google Voice without breaking the bank. But, alas, all is not well in netTALK Land. For openers, the Better Business Bureau revoked their accreditation last June because of failure to respond to or resolve technical complaints. And a recent SEC Filing paints a fairly bleak picture of the company’s financial condition. Special thanks to Gershom1624 for his sleuthing efforts. This merely reinforces the difficulty of providing reliable, unlimited VoIP service at the $2.50 a month price point. But we firmly believe $2.50 is the magic price point, and it is achievable with some safeguards for the provider, i.e. residential service, no call centers, no 10,000 minutes-a-month customers. My mom loved the telephone, but she never spent 5 hours a day on the telephone. There also has to be some tradeoff in the level of support customers can expect. If customers tie up expensive support reps with multiple calls, the pricing matrix falls apart very quickly. And that brings us to this week.
Let’s review the Wish List for those that missed last week’s article. We want a drop-in replacement for Google Voice on both the OBi110 (stand-alone with any POTS telephone) and Asterisk® (PBX) platforms. It needs to provide unlimited (within reason) calling in the U.S. and Canada. It needs a feature set that is fairly comparable to Google Voice. It needs to include E911 service because the federal government says so. We don’t care much about support as long as the setup process is well-documented, the service is reliable, and calls sound great. Charging for support requests to resolve issues that aren’t the company’s fault is perfectly fine with us. But the price point for unlimited calling needs to be $2.50 a month, i.e. $30 a year or $60 every two years for the math-challenged. We’d prefer no tips, taxes, or fees. We want to keep our existing number. And, lest we forget, the company must promise to stay in business and never raise prices… forever.
Suppose we could find you a company that, with a 2-year commitment, could provide all of the above (minus the last sentence) plus fax support including a web page to send outgoing faxes from attachments, free calling and a mobile app for your iOS and Android devices, Visual Voicemail with voicemail transcription as well as email delivery of voicemail messages, call forwarding, call waiting, CallerID spoofing for any number you own, and unbelievable customer service. Not sure about the service? How about a 30-day free trial with 60 free minutes?
Let us introduce you to Obivoice. Don’t be alarmed by the one-year price of $40. The two-year price is just $60. But it doesn’t cost you a nickel to sign up and try the service. Obivoice is a pure SIP provider so the setup with PBX in a Flash™ or an OBi110™ takes only a couple minutes. Here’s the SIP trunk setup for PBX in a Flash using FreePBX®. All you need is your SIP credentials and phone number once you’ve signed up for an account. Plug in your 10-digit phone number in the Outbound CallerID and Register String, replace 1234 with your Account Number in the username, fromuser, and Register String, and replace yourpassword with your real Password in the secret and Register String.
Next, build yourself an Inbound Route with your 10-digit DID ↑ and point it to your favorite PBX destination. Finally, create an Outbound Route using obivoice as the Trunk Sequence, and you’re all set. It doesn’t get any easier than that.
We don’t think you will but, if you need assistance setting this up, head over to the PIAF Forum where there’s a lively discussion about Obivoice already.
The OBi110 setup is just as easy. Plug in sms.intelafone.com as the ProxyServer and OutboundProxy in your ITSP Profile, add your SIP credentials in the SP1 Voice Services dialog, and forward (or transfer) your existing Google Voice number to Obivoice. Done! Obivoice’s complete tutorial is available here.
Let us close with our own customer service story. We were so excited about this new service when it was announced yesterday that we actually clicked the wrong button and signed up for the wrong plan. Of course, it only takes a minute to get that sinking feeling in your stomach when you know you’ve screwed up. So late yesterday (Sunday night!) I opened a support ticket and asked to either cancel the wrong plan so that I could reenlist or to transfer to the $60 two-year plan. At 1:30 a.m. this morning, I got an email back from customer service indicating that the plan had been adjusted and that I had been billed for the price difference. WOW!
Run, don’t walk, to sign up for Obivoice. It’s that great!
p.s. The Obivoice jingle in their YouTube video is as good as their calls. We want it for our Music on Hold!
Originally published: Monday, January 13, 2014
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 whos.amung.us statistical web site and check out what’s happening. It’s a terrific resource both for all of us.
Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors
FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.
BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.
The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.
VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…
Twofer Tuesday: Incredible PBX for RasPBX on BeagleBone Black and Raspberry Pi
We never were big fans of unfinished projects. And with Festivus behind us and Christmas tomorrow, it seemed only fitting to celebrate with a Twofer Tuesday Encore. Whether you like ’em or hate ’em, Google’s free text-to-speech engine is a big deal. It’s as close to perfect as any commercial product you can buy. So getting it to work with the BeagleBone® Black was really important for those of us that believe the BeagleBone Black is a near perfect telephony platform for home users and SOHO businesses. With this week’s release of Incredible PBX™ 4.11.3 for the RasPBX™, the GoogleTTS engine finally is available in all its glory on both the Raspberry Pi® and BeagleBone Black platforms. At $45 and sporting a "Made in the USA" moniker, the BeagleBone’s only real competition is the Raspberry Pi which has roughly a third the performance for VoIP-related tasks. Finding a BeagleBone Black has not been the easiest thing to accomplish either. They have sprung up five or six times over the past two weeks only to be snarfed up in a couple of hours. We have a PIAF Forum thread that will keep you apprised of the latest sightings or just follow us on Twitter. As with the early days of the Raspberry Pi, price gouging is alive and well so we’ll leave it to you to decide what your budget can tolerate. Our recommendation is hold your nose and pay the extra $15. The BeagleBone Black is worth it!
NEWS FLASH: The all-new Incredible PBX release for Raspberry Pi 2 is now available.
There’s more Black news this week as well. PIAF-Black™ now ushers in the next generation of Asterisk® with the official release of Asterisk 12.0.0. You can download the latest 32-bit or 64-bit PIAF™ ISOs from SourceForge. Then pick your favorite flavor of Asterisk to install. It’s that easy! New torrents were released this week as well thanks to our good friend, Isaac McDonald. Torrents are available for the latest PIAF 2.0.6.5.0 ISOs as well as two virtual machine builds for PIAF-Green™ with FreePBX™ 2.11 and Incredible PBX 11. Just visit the PIAF web site to grab your favorite torrent. Merry Christmas everybody!
For long time Nerd Vittles readers, you may recall that we built the original Incredible PBX™ for Raspberry Pi® (aka Incredible Pi) using much of the development platform pioneered by Gernot Bauer of RasPBX™ fame. In the early days of Gernot’s project, we just couldn’t get the necessary pieces in place on his platform to support Incredible PBX so we temporarily forked his terrific work in order to get Incredible Pi out the door quickly. That was then, and this is now as they say. RasPBX has grown in popularity because of the untiring efforts of Gernot & Co. in continually improving the platform. And six months ago, RasPBX was ported to the BeagleBone Black. Don’t be misled by its tiny footprint. The BeagleBone Black1 provides nearly triple the performance of a $35 Raspberry Pi for an extra $10 to $25 hardware investment depending upon where you buy the board. The rainbow case is a few cents more. 😉
Let us cut to the chase. Run, don’t walk, to buy a BeagleBone Black! It’s that good. If Amazon is sold out, here is a link to other suppliers. See also this thread on the PIAF Forum for the latest availability news. In terms of performance, we would be hard-pressed to distinguish the BeagleBone Black’s performance from an identical Asterisk® and FreePBX®-based system running on the Intel® Atom® platform. The performance boost is that dramatic. So a few weeks ago we decided to take another look at the RasPBX platforms with the goal of porting Incredible PBX in much the same way that we currently provide the add-on for PBX in a Flash™ builds. The advantage for us is that it gets us out of the hardware business and lets us concentrate on building better VoIP application software. The advantage for you is it gives you additional choices, and they’re all still free!
UPDATE: Good News and More Good News. Everything covered below works flawlessly on the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black platforms.
Nerd Vittles Demo IVR Options
1 – Call by Name (say "Delta Airlines" or "American Airlines" to try it out)
2 – MeetMe Conference (password is 1234)
3 – Wolfram Alpha (say "What planes are overhead?")
4 – Lenny (The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare)
5 – Today’s News Headlines
6 – Weather Forecast (say the city and state, province, or country)
7 – Today in History
8 – Speak to a Real Person (or maybe just voicemail if we’re out)
Overview of Incredible PBX for RasPBX. Let’s quickly run down the new feature set for Incredible PBX 4.11.3 on the RasPBX platform. With the demise of Google Voice less than six months away, we thought it was important to begin offering some additional choices. With this build, you’ll have a dozen preconfigured VoIP trunks from the best providers in the business to choose from. Most offer outbound calls in the U.S. and Canada for a penny or less per minute. And many offer DID trunks with unlimited inbound calls for under $5 a month. Several offer free SIP URIs, or free U.S. DIDs, or free iNum DIDs for unlimited free calling worldwide. You’ll find lots of tips and suggestions in the Providers section of the PIAF™ Forum. Once you’ve signed up with one or more providers, all you have to do is plug in your credentials and enable the desired trunks in FreePBX. It only takes a few seconds.
We also wanted to provide a robust collection of Asterisk applications that let you bring up a fully-functional, feature-rich VoIP platform in a matter of minutes. As with all Incredible PBX builds, this release activates the Flite text-to-speech engine as well as Google’s TTS and STT interfaces. The Baker’s Dozen VoIP applications we’ve chosen for this initial release include free CallerID Name lookups for incoming calls, Voice Dialing with speech-to-text (STT) capability as well as Speed Dials, Yahoo News and Weather reports with text-to-speech (TTS) translation of the Yahoo news feeds, Weather Reports by ZIP code from the National Weather Service, MeetMe conferencing by simply dialing an extension, Telephone Reminders and Hotel-Style Wakeup Calls (both accessible by phone or via FreePBX GUI), Today in History, SMS messaging, Wolfram Alpha, and our versatile AsteriDex contacts database. We’ve also integrated the Incredible PBX automatic update service into the RasPBX build. Just log into your server once in a while, and the rest is automagic. You also get email delivery of voicemails in MP3 format so that you can play back your messages with almost any email client. Finally, there’s a new status application to tell you everything you want to know about your RasPBX server in a single screen.
Getting Started. Incredible PBX for RasPBX is basically a scripted installer. It assumes you already have a functioning RasPBX device. The only gotcha is your RasPBX system needs to be freshly created with no customization. This is important because, as part of the installation procedure, Incredible PBX loads a 15MB image snapshot that overwrites all of your Asterisk, FreePBX, and MySQL configurations. If you have previously customized your setup or added features such as faxing, those will get wiped out during the Incredible PBX installation process. Bottom Line: Start by creating a new RasPBX SD image for use with Incredible PBX. Boot RasPBX and log in as root. Download and run the Incredible PBX installer. Once the Incredible PBX install is complete, customize your new system as desired. While nothing is 100% bullet-proof, we’ve taken pains to design Incredible PBX in such a way that it can coexist with future updates to RasPBX deployed through the raspbx-upgrade utility. And Incredible PBX has its own update utility, update-my-raspbx, which is run automatically when you log into your server as root. Finally, we are confident that this new Incredible PBX release is stable; however, it is version 1.0 software and should be treated as such at least through the end of 2013. Please report any bugs you discover on the PIAF Forum, and we will attempt to provide timely fixes.
Installing Incredible PBX. As noted, we’re assuming you already have created a fresh SD card with your RasPBX image. If not, start with the first four steps only of the excellent tutorials for the Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone Black. Next, boot your system from the SD card and log in with username root and password raspberry or beaglebone depending upon your hardware platform. Be sure you have a working Internet connection for your hardware. Then proceed with the Incredible PBX installation procedure below:
cd /
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx11-raspbx.gz
gunzip incrediblepbx11-raspbx.gz
chmod +x incrediblepbx11-raspbx
./incrediblepbx11-raspbx
Hang around for the first couple minutes of the install. You’ll be prompted to type a Y as part of the raspbx-upgrade procedure. Once you get past that prompt, you can go have a cup of coffee while the installation procedure continues. It takes about 15-30 minutes to complete depending upon the speed of your Internet connection. Once the base install finishes, the update-passwords script will be launched. It’s imperative that you reset all of your passwords with very secure passwords immediately. This includes the root password, the FreePBX and ARI admin passwords, the extension 701 password, the extension 701 voicemail password, the email delivery address for extension 701, and the telephone reminders password for scheduling reminders by phone. Just fill in the blanks, and the script will do the heavy lifting.
Asterisk Security. Once the Incredible PBX install completes, what you still have is an Incredibly Insecure PBX. Unless you’ve already done so, make certain that Incredible PBX is repositioned behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure! This is very important. Neither Asterisk nor FreePBX was designed for direct exposure to the Internet. Before you do anything else, read our Primer on Asterisk Security. Remember, it’s your phone bill.
UPDATE: Travelin’ Man 3 Now Implemented. Beginning with Incredible PBX 4.11.3, IPtables WhiteList security was added to the RasPBX BeagleBone Black platform. And version 4.11.4 released on 1-4-14 added it to the Raspberry Pi edition of RasPBX as well. For the nuts and bolts of how the IPtables firewall and WhiteLists work, read the Travelin’ Man 3 tutorial. Do NOT install the application! It’s already there. We still recommend that you always run your server behind a hardware-based firewall. Travelin’ Man 3 just adds an extra layer of protection. Think of it as a second condom without the pain. 😉
As initially configured, IPtables is set up to allow all incoming and outgoing traffic. It will display as DN in the status display. You have a couple of options. If you only want to allow incoming traffic from phones and users on your private LAN while permitting registered SIP and IAX trunk connections from anywhere, then log into your server as root and execute this command:
cp /root/iptables.lanonly /etc/network/iptables
If you want to further lock down your server and manage all external connections from outside your LAN, run: /root/secure-iptables. As configured, IPtables never blocks internal LAN traffic. By running secure-iptables, you get to set one "safe" external IP address for access to your server in addition to automatically configuring the safe IP addresses of a dozen SIP providers. You then can add additional IP addresses to your WhiteList by running /root/add-ip or /root/add-fqdn. You can delete providers with /root/del-acct. Check the status of your IPtables setup at any time with this command: iptables-status. Restart/reload IPtables settings using only this command: iptables-restart. If you use the traditional IPtables reload procedure, you will permanently erase any fully-qualified domain names in your IPtables configuration and convert them (permanently) to IP addresses. Don’t do it! Always use iptables-restart. Never erase files in /root with the .iptables extension. This is how Travelin’ Man 3 keeps track of your WhiteList entries so that you can delete as desired. For further details, read the Travelin’ Man 3 article.
Overclocking the Raspberry Pi. On the Raspberry Pi platform only, to enable overclocking at your own risk, run: raspi-config. Overclocking works for us. YMMV! The key is a good power supply. Even though the kernel now monitors CPU temperature and manages overclocking, it’s always nice to see for yourself. To monitor the CPU temperature, just run the status program which provides a current snapshot anytime.
Resizing an SD Card. On both the BeagleBone Black and Raspberry Pi platforms, you can resize (expand) the default partition to accommodate a larger SD card. On the Raspberry Pi, the default partition is 4GB. On the BeagleBone Black, it’s only 2GB. To resize the partition to make use of a larger SD card on a Raspberry Pi, choose the resize option after running raspi-config. Then reboot. The BeagleBone Black is a different beast. While we don’t recommend it, you can actually run Incredible PBX using the internal 2GB eMMC memory board rather than an external Micro SD card. Gernot’s documentation will walk you through how to do it. While it is screaming fast compared to an SD card, you’ll only have 371MB of breathing room so it means constant monitoring of your log files and minimal use of functions that consume disk space. Or you could create a cron job to run daily and use a script like ours:
#!/bin/bash
cd /var/log/asterisk
touch empty.log
chmod 664 empty.log
chown asterisk:asterisk empty.log
cp empty.log freepbx_dbug
cp empty.log freepbx_debug
cp empty.log freepbx.log
cp empty.log full
cd ..
rm *.0*
rm *.1*
rm /tmp/ggl*
We much prefer at least an 8GB Type 4 SD card for Incredible PBX. On the BeagleBone Black, we’ve added the resize-partition script in the /root folder. Just run it after booting from your Micro SD card.
Setting Up Google Voice. If you want free calling in the U.S. and Canada for the next five months, then you’ll need a Google Voice account, and you’ll need one dedicated to Incredible PBX, or it won’t work. Log out after setting up the new Google Voice account! Also note that Google Voice will cease to function on May 15, 2014. Read all about it here.
- Register for Google Voice account (no funky characters in your password!)
- Enable Google Chat as Phone Destination
- Configure Google Voice Calls Settings:
- 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
- Place test call in and out using GMail Call Phone
Accessing Incredible PBX By GUI. You don’t have to be a Linux guru to use Incredible PBX. In fact, we’re just about finished with the Linux command prompt, but stay logged in until we finish a few more steps below. Most of your configuration of Incredible PBX will be performed using the FreePBX Web GUI.
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 Incredible PBX. 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.
Let’s get started. Using a browser, enter the IP address of your server or just use http://raspbx.local as the address. Choose FreePBX Administration. When prompted for a username and password, use admin for the username and whatever FreePBX password you set up when you initially configured your server above. If you ever forget your credentials, just run /root/update-passwords again to reset them.
Changing FreePBX admin Password and Default Email. From the main FreePBX GUI, click Admin => Administrators. Click on admin user in the far-right column. Enter a new Password and click Submit Changes button. We did this in update-passwords, but now you’ll know how to do it from with the FreePBX GUI as well. Click Apply Config button. Be sure to set your default email address in the right margin of Admin -> Module Admin and save your entry. By doing this, you’ll get periodic notices of FreePBX updates. It’s a good idea to stay current with these. They are generally well tested before release.
Activating a Google Voice Trunk. To create a Trunk in FreePBX to handle calls to and from Google Voice, you’ll need three pieces of information from the Google Voice account you set up above: the 10-digit Google Voice phone number, your Google Voice account name, and your Google Voice password. Choose Connectivity -> Google Voice (Motif) from the FreePBX GUI. The following form will appear:
Fill in the blanks with your information and check only the top 2 boxes. If your Google Voice account name ends in @gmail.com, leave that out. Otherwise, include the full email address. Then click Submit Changes and Apply Config.
There’s one more step or your Google Voice account won’t work reliably with Incredible PBX! From the Linux command prompt while logged into your server as root, restart Asterisk: amportal restart
Setting a Destination for Incoming Calls. Now that you’ve created your Google Voice Trunk, we need to tell FreePBX how to process inbound calls when someone dials your Google Voice number. There are any number of choices. You could simply ring an extension such as 700 which we’ve already set up for you. Or you could ring multiple extensions by first creating a Ring Group which is just a list of extension numbers. Or you could direct incoming calls to an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system.
By default, Incredible PBX is configured to route all incoming calls to extension 701. You can change this whenever you like by choosing Connectivity -> Inbound Routes -> Default. In the Set Destination section of the form, change the target to your desired destination for the incoming calls. Then click Submit and Apply Config.
Changing Extension Passwords. From the main FreePBX GUI, choose Applications -> Extensions. Then click on 701 in the Extension List on the right side of your display. You’ll see a form that looks like this:
We’ve already made these changes using update-passwords, but here’s how to do it in the FreePBX GUI. The extension secret needs to be a combination of letters and numbers. The Voicemail Password needs to be all numbers, preferably six or more. Replace the existing passwords with your own (very secure) entries. You also need to lock down this extension so that it is only accessible from devices on your private LAN. You do that with the deny and permit entries which currently are filled with zeroes. Leave the deny entry the way it is which tells Incredible PBX to block everybody except those allowed in the permit entry below. For the permit, we need the first three octets of your private LAN address, e.g. if your LAN is 192.168.0.something then the permit entry will be 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0.
Finally, you need to insert your actual email address in the Voicemail section so that voicemails can be delivered to you when someone leaves a message. You can also include a pager email address if you want a text message alert with incoming voicemails. If you want the voicemails to automatically be deleted from the server after they are emailed to you (a good idea considering the disk storage limitations of an SDHC card), change the Delete Voicemail option from No to Yes. That’s it. Now save your settings by clicking the Submit button. Then reload the dialplan by clicking on the red prompt when it appears.
In case you’re curious, unless you’ve chosen to automatically delete voicemails after emailing them, you can retrieve your voicemails for extension 701 by dialing *98701 from any extension on your phone system. You’ll be prompted to enter the voicemail password you set up. And you can leave a voicemail for someone by dialing their extension number preceded by an asterisk, e.g. *701 would let someone leave you a voicemail without actually calling you.
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. Incredible PBX 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.
As we mentioned, the easiest way to get started with Incredible PBX 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 701 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 Incredible PBX, 701 for your account name, and whatever password you created for the extension. Click OK.
Once you are registered to extension 701, close the Account window. Then click on YATE’s Telephony Tab and place your first call. It’s that easy!
Incredible Trunks. When you’re ready to try some other SIP providers, we’ve done the hard work for you by providing the setups for a dozen terrific providers. All you have to do is sign up for service on their sites, enable the desired Trunks in FreePBX, and plug in your credentials. Here is a quick Cheat Sheet courtesy of Kristian Hare, who translated the Incredible PBX setups into a spreadsheet. Just click on the image below to open it in a new window. Then click on the redisplayed image to enlarge it.
Adding WiFi Support. This is covered on Gernot’s web site, but we’ll address it just for ease of reference. The most important detail is don’t get creative with your choice of USB WiFi adapters. The Edimax EW-7811Un works so use it. It’s about $10 from Amazon with free 2-day Prime shipping. Next, edit /etc/network/interfaces and add the following lines using the name of your WiFi network as well as your password "in quotes":
auto wlan0
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid your-ssid-here-no-quotes
wpa-psk "your-passphrase-here-with-quotes"
Next, reboot your server and login as root. Your USB WiFi adapter should be lit. Running ifconfig should display an IP address for wlan0. ifdown eth0 will shut down your wired connection. Then restart Asterisk to switch to WiFi: amportal restart.
Shutting Down Your Server. Last but not least, never just pull the plug when you want to shut down your server, or you may end up with corrupted MySQL databases. Then nothing will run. Instead, log into your server as root, and issue the following commands: amportal stop and then shutdown -h now.
The Incredible PBX 4.11.3 Software Collection
Now for the fun stuff. For most folks getting started with Asterisk and FreePBX, the steepest learning curve is moving from a functioning system to one that can actually do cool stuff. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text applications and IVRs and call management and conferencing and click to dial and SMS messaging and faxing are what separate the men from the boys on the Asterisk playing field. And that’s where Incredible PBX really shines. You don’t have to do anything but choose the apps you want to deploy for yourself or your users. Everything is already in place. If you don’t use it, it doesn’t consume any computing resources. So it’s not like the bloatware of decades ago that was always sitting in memory wasting your computing cycles. Here’s a quick thumbnail on each of the applications that’s included in Incredible PBX for RasPBX. You can include almost all of these applications in your IVRs so that callers can make a selection from a list of menu choices. We’ve included the appropriate FreePBX links below. On many of the apps, we’ve also included links to Nerd Vittles or PIAF Forum tutorials for more detailed documentation when you need it.
News Headlines from Yahoo
How It Works. Dial 951. Listen to latest news headlines from Yahoo.
Prerequisites: Uses preconfigured Google TTS.
Setup Required: None
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> News Headlines
Worldwide Weather Forecasts by City from Yahoo
How It Works. Dial 949. Say the name of a city and state/country for weather report desired. Press #. Listen.
Prerequisites: Uses preconfigured Google STT for query and Google TTS for playback.
Setup Required: None
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Weather by City
Worldwide Weather Forecasts by City from Weather Underground
How It Works. Dial 949. Say the name of a city and state/country for weather report desired. Press #. Listen.
Prerequisites: Requires free Weather Underground API key. Uses preconfigured Google STT for query and Google TTS for playback.
Setup Required: Obtain free Weather Underground API key. In /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin, insert your API key in $apikey of nv-weather-underground.php. Copy nv-weather-underground.php to nv-weather-google.php. Replaces Yahoo Weather by City and provides best available free weather reports.
Limitations. Free account supports up to 10 calls per minute and up to 500 calls per day.
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Weather by City
U.S. Weather Forecasts by ZIP Code from National Weather Service
How It Works. Dial 947 (Z-I-P). Enter 5-digit ZIP code for weather report desired. Listen.
Prerequisites: Uses preconfigured Flite TTS to deliver weather report.
Setup Required: None
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Weather by ZIP
Today in History from HistoryOrb.com
How It Works. Dial 86329 (T-O-D-A-Y). Listen to today’s important events in history.
Prerequisites: Uses preconfigured Flite and Google TTS to deliver report.
Setup Required: None
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Today in History
Schedule Reminders by Phone and Web
How It Works. Dial 123. Enter password. Schedule a reminder or recurring reminder.
Web Interface. FreePBX -> Other -> Reminders to schedule, review, or delete existing reminders.
Prerequisites: Requires configuration of password with /root/update-passwords.
Setup Required: None. Complete tutorial available here.
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Reminders
Hotel-Style Wakeup Calls
How It Works. Dial *68. Schedule a wakeup call just like in the hotel.
Web Interface. FreePBX -> Applications -> Wake Up Calls to schedule and configure wakeup calls.
Prerequisites: None.
Setup Required: None. Complete tutorial available here.
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Wakeup Calls
Time of Day
How It Works. Dial *61. Check the time just like in the Ma Bell era.
Prerequisites: None.
Setup Required: None.
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Time of Day
AsteriDex Phone Book and RoboDialer
How It Works. Open AsteriDex. Populate entries. Set click-to-dial extension. Click on person/company to call. Answer ringing call on your designated click-to-dial extension. Wait for called party to be connected.
Web Interface. FreePBX -> Other -> AsteriDex to update directory and to place click-to-dial calls.
Prerequisites: Populate the AsteriDex directory with your favorite people and places to call.
Setup Required: Complete tutorial for AsteriDex is available here. Import Google Contacts. Import Outlook Contacts. Import from Exchange Server. Import Mac Address Book or CSV Contacts.
AsteriDex Voice Dialer
How It Works. Dial 411. Say the name of person or company to call. Entry is looked up from AsteriDex and called.
Web Interface. FreePBX -> Other -> AsteriDex to update directory and to place click-to-dial calls.
Prerequisites: Populate the AsteriDex directory with your favorite people and places to call. Uses Google STT.
Setup Required: None. Complete tutorial for AsteriDex is available here.
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Voice Dialer
AsteriDex Speed Dialing Duo
How It Works. Dial 412. Enter Speed Dial code of person/company. Entry is looked up from AsteriDex and called.
Alternative. Dial 000 + Speed Dial code. Entry is looked up from AsteriDex and called.
Web Interface. FreePBX -> Other -> AsteriDex to update directory and to place click-to-dial calls.
Prerequisites: Populate the AsteriDex directory with your favorite people and places to call. Include a DialCode for speed dial.
Setup Required: None. Complete tutorial for AsteriDex is available here.
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Call by Code
SMS Dictator
How It Works. Dial 767 (S-M-S). Say either the name of an AsteriDex entry or enter an SMS phone number to call. Dictate a message to be sent via Google SMS. Your message is converted to text and delivered via Google SMS.
Prerequisites: Requires Google Voice account and SMS Dictator setup. Uses preconfigured Google STT.
Setup Required: Before first use, sign up for a Google Voice account that can be dedicated to Incredible PBX use. Run install-smsdictator.sh in /root to configure SMS Dictator with your credentials. Complete documentation available here. May cease to function on May 15, 2014.
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> SMS Dictator
SMS Message Blasting
How It Works. Run the smsblast script in /root to deliver an SMS text message stored in smsmsg.txt to all of the SMS recipients configured in smslist.txt.
Prerequisites: Requires Google Voice account and SMS Blaster setup.
Setup Required: Before first use, sign up for a Google Voice account that can be dedicated to Incredible PBX use. Untar smsblast.tgz in /root: tar zxvf smsblast.tgz. Edit smsblast and insert your Google Voice credentials. Edit smsmsg.txt and type your SMS message to be sent. Edit smslist.txt and prepare your SMS message recipient list. Then run smsblast to deliver your messages. May cease to function on May 15, 2014.
Wolfram Alpha
How It Works. Dial 4747. Say your query for Wolfram Alpha. Examples here. Listen to results.
Prerequisites: Requires free Wolfram Alpha account and setup. Uses preconfigured Google STT and Flite.
Limitations: Free account restricted to 2,000 queries per month.
Setup Required: Before first use, sign up for a Wolfram Alpha account and obtain AppID. Then configure Wolfram Alpha with your credentials by running install-wolframalpha.sh in /root. Complete documentation available here.
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Misc Destination -> Wolfram Alpha
MeetMe Conferencing
How It Works. Dial 2663 (C-O-N-F). Enter user or admin PIN for conference room. Participate in conference call.
Prerequisites: None.
Setup Required: Configure your participant and admin PINs: FreePBX -> Applications -> Conferences -> 2663
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Conferences -> 2663
Telemarketers and Old Girl Friends: Meet Lenny
How It Works. Dial 53669 (L-E-N-N-Y). An entertaining solution for SPAM calls. Also configured as destination for callers on your BlackList.
Prerequisites: None. Read all about Lenny here.
Setup Required: Add 10-digit numbers of spammers to Admin -> Blacklist or dial *32 to BlackList your last caller.
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Extension -> 53669
HylaFax/AvantFax Fax Server
How It Works. Dial 329 (F-A-X). Faxing already is available as a module in RasPBX. You can send faxes to Incredible PBX using almost any SIP or Google Voice DID that you’ve dedicated to faxing.
Prerequisites: Read the Fax Gateway tutorial on Gernot’s web site.
Setup Required: After installing Incredible PBX, run the install-fax script to set up the HylaFax/AvantFax servers. When prompted whether to add an extension, type Y. We recommend 329 for the extension number. It spells F-A-X and makes it easy for everyone to remember the dedicated fax extension on your system. Specify an email address for delivery of the incoming faxes. Switch to FreePBX and add an Incoming Route for the DID that you’ve dedicated to incoming faxes. Specify 329 as the destination. To add additional fax numbers with additional email destinations, run add-fax-extension.
IVR/Dialplan Integration: Extension -> 329
Bluetooth Proximity Detection
Finally, if you really want to impress your friends, buy yourself a cheap Bluetooth adapter and set up a Proximity Detection System that will forward your Asterisk calls to your cellphone when you’re away from your desk. This Nerd Vittles article will walk you through the quick setup process. Before you begin, just install bluez on your Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone Black: apt-get install bluez.
A Word About Flite TTS
We’ve included FLITE as the generic text-to-speech engine for Asterisk. The quality of Google TTS is much better, but we never know how long Google apps will continue to function. Because FLITE is actually integrated into Asterisk, it is susceptible to breakage if a RasPBX upgrade installs a new release of Asterisk. If this happens, you’ll know when FLITE goes silent. You can also run the following command from the Linux command prompt to check it. If you don’t get a page of FLITE information, it’s broken. 🙂
asterisk -rx "core show application like flite"
Don’t fret if FLITE breaks. Here’s how to fix it:
cd /usr/src/flite
make clean
make
make install
amportal restart
A Word About MySQL
To eliminate the need to maintain separate versions of Incredible PBX for RasPBX on the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black platforms, we’ve changed the MySQL password on both platforms to raspberry. Originally, beaglebone was the assigned password on the BeagleBone Black RasPBX implementation.
Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of ordinary users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for a courteous response.
Originally published: Tuesday, December 10, 2013 Updated: Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.
Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors
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Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…
- 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 Definitive VoIP Quick Start Guide: Introducing PBX in a Flash 2.0.6.5.0
What a difference a year makes in the VoIP World! We now have a rock-solid, reliable Asterisk® 11 release and an equally stable FreePBX 2.11 on which to build state-of-the-art VoIP servers. If you’re new to the VoIP community, watch this video before you proceed.
Now let us welcome you to the World of PBX in a Flash™. This is our best release ever whether you’re a total newbie or an experienced Asterisk developer. You can’t really appreciate what goes into an open source product like PBX in a Flash until you try doing it yourself. The sad part is we and the CentOS™ development team are part of a dwindling few non-commercial entities that still are in the open source "business." If you want to actually learn about Asterisk from the ground up using pure source code to customize your VoIP deployment, PBX in a Flash has no competition because your only other option is to roll your own starting with a Linux DVD. So our extra special kudos go to Tom King, who once again has produced a real masterpiece in that it is very simple for a first-time user to deploy and, at the same time, incredibly flexible for the most experienced Asterisk developer. The new PIAF 2.0.6.5.0 ISOs not only provide a choice of Asterisk® and FreePBX® versions to get you started. But now you can build and deploy standalone servers for SugarCRM™, NeoRouter™ VPN, YATE™, FreeSwitch™, and OpenFire™ XMPP using the 32-bit and 64-bit PIAF™ ISOs. So let’s get started.
Making a Hardware Selection
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 Angry Birds 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 to increase 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 these have long-term support. That narrows your choices to Asterisk 1.8 or Asterisk 11. At this juncture, we think you’d be crazy to install anything other than Asterisk 11. It’s incredibly reliable and stable, and it will be supported for years to come. It also supports Digium Phones. The 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 11.6 happens to be the latest PIAF-Green, and we recommend you install it with the latest version of FreePBX as well, 2.11.0.11
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.
Schmooze Com has released their commercial End Point Manager (EPM) at a price point of $39 per server. They’ve been using the application internally to support their commercial customers for over a year. Suffice it to say, it’s the best money you will ever spend. You can sign up for an account with Schmooze through our commercial support site and purchase the software now. You can review the Admin User Guide here. The beauty of this software is it gives you the flexibility to support literally hundreds of different VoIP phones and devices almost effortlessly. Using a browser, you can configure and reconfigure almost any VoIP phone or device 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. Keep in mind that phones can last a very long time, even lousy ones. So choose carefully.
The phone brands that we would seriously consider include Yealink, Aastra, Snom, Digium, Mitel, Polycom, Cisco, 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: Yealink’s T46G is our favorite, and we also have 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 as well as a Samsung Galaxy S4 and Moto X connected through an OBi202 with an OBiBT Bluetooth Adapter.
Installing PBX in a Flash
With the office politics out of the way, let’s get to the fun stuff.
- Download PIAF 2.0.6.5.0 ISO from SourceForge
- Burn the ISO to a USB Thumb Drive or a DVD using a Mac or Windows machine
- Boot dedicated server using PIAF Flash Drive or DVD
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 6.4. When the reboot begins, remove the DVD or USB thumb drive.
Log into your server as root from either the console or an SSH connection to the IP address displayed on your server. Unless you need to install custom hardware drivers, choose the first option to install PBX in a Flash.
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. You’ll note there are some new colors. 🙂
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 also to reconfigure this to any worldwide time zone once the install has completed.
Next, choose your version of FreePBX to install. 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 requires PIAF-Green and FreePBX 2.11 (recommended!)
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 30-60 minutes, your server will reboot. You should be able to log in as root again 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. You also can ignore the MySQL DOWN alert shown above. Yours won’t say that. We’ve been experimenting with MariaDB as a MySQL replacement. You can read all about it in the Developers’ Corner of the PIAF Forum.
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. FreePBX now has some of the best documentation in the business. Start here.
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 may 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 and Incredible Fax can be installed in under 2 minutes to provide you almost every Asterisk application on the planet. You can read the complete tutorial here. In addition, Travelin’ Man 3 can be installed as part of Incredible PBX for rock-solid Internet security. If you care about your wallet, add Travelin’ Man to your server!
New App of the Week. We’re pleased to introduce Trunk Failure Email Alerts for Asterisk supporting SIP, IAX2, and Google Motif trunks. Just insert your email address in this little script and run it every hour as a cron job. You’ll get an email alert whenever any of your VoIP trunks fail. Enjoy!
VoIP Experts on Twitter. GetVoip.com has just released their list of The Top 50 VoIP Experts to Follow on Twitter. It’s a great read… but we may be biased. 😉
Join Google+ Today. For the latest VoIP and technology news, come follow us on Google+ and join CircleCount.com for a terrific overview of your Google+ friends and their hometowns.
Originally published: Tuesday, December 17, 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.
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 New VoIP Frontier: Meet the iPad Mini with Retina Display
Last week was interesting if for no other reason because Apple released an amazing new product without tooting a single trumpet. In fact, the iPad Mini with Retina display was quietly made available on Apple’s web site in the middle of the night. Most believe that the rationale was that the devices were in such short supply that Apple couldn’t afford the PR nightmare of releasing a new product that very few could buy. Guess what? It’s still available. You have to order on the web. Then you can either pick up the device at your local Apple Store, or have it shipped directly to you… from China. We ordered on Tuesday and received the unit on Friday. What struck us about the new iPad Mini is the striking resemblance to the old iPad Mini. One suspects that Apple is running out of magic bunnies to pull from the hat so we’re getting down to one new gee whiz feature per year. In fairness, the new iPad Mini not only has a Retina display, but also has the new A7 chip with 64-bit architecture. The CPU is up to four times faster while graphics performance saw an 800% improvement without sacrificing battery life. To be completely honest, Apple needed the extra horsepower to drive the retina display, and the battery life has been preserved by increasing its size considerably. Almost half of the inside of an iPad Mini is now nothing but battery. Hop over to iFixIt for all the details.
If the new hardware were the only addition, we probably would have had little interest in the new iPad Mini. But we learned a couple of years ago that there’s a dramatic difference in reading on a 7 inch tablet vs. an 8 inch tablet. And, when you add the retina display with 2048-by-1536 resolution and a staggering 326 pixels per inch, the iPad Mini becomes an almost perfect traveling companion for those that do a lot of reading. Apple also bundles an impressive list of business and productivity applications including Siri at no additional cost. For those that work on the Mac platform, the most important enhancement to these apps is that what you see on the Mac desktop using Pages, Numbers, or Keynote is exactly what you’ll see when the document is moved to either the iPad Air or iPad Mini with Retina display. For traveling business folks, that’s a huge improvement!
There have been some equally impressive additions on the communications front for those that enjoy Voice over IP technology. If you’re using PBX in a Flash™ or Asterisk®, we’re pleased to report that the Zoiper IAX client for iOS 7 works flawlessly. Simply set up an IAX extension on your server and enter your credentials in the Zoiper client on your iPad. Screwy as it sounds, Google has released Hangouts on the iOS 7 platform (only) with the added capability to place and receive PSTN phone calls anywhere in the world using a Google Voice PSTN phone number. And calls within the U.S. and Canada are free! Will it disappear? Will Google ever support it on their own Android devices? Who knows? We’ve given up trying to predict what Google will do next, but this addition will probably remain so long as Hangouts continues to be a viable platform. And Google seems to be staking their VoIP fortunes on Hangouts just as Apple has done with FaceTime and Microsoft with Skype. Of course, PSTN calls aren’t possible with FaceTime and, with Skype, PSTN calls are never free. So there is that important difference, and Hangouts fills that niche.
The other major software news is that Google Play Music now is available for iOS 7 as well. In addition to unlimited streaming of almost any music on the planet for $9.95 a month (to a single device at a time), you also can move 20,000 of your favorite songs to the Google Cloud and stream them for free. Apple offers free music alternatives as well including iTunes Radio which now is rolled into the iPad Music app.
There used to be a big reason for buying the cellular addition to the iPads. It made the GPS functionality work. Our Wi-Fi only unit had no problem pinpointing our location with nothing but a WiFi signal. Of course, if you have one of the new Verizon or AT&T bundled data plans, adding an iPad is just $10 a month. That alone would warrant purchase of the unlocked cellular model which now works with all cellular carriers. What a concept!
As you might expect, there are no deals to be had on the iPad Mini with Retina display. But, if you’re looking to buy a new iPad for Christmas, you should probably pay a visit to WalMart or Target on Black Friday. Both retailers are throwing in a $100 gift card with your purchase of the new iPad Air. Nobody other than Apple is yet selling the iPad Mini with Retina display. For another great review, see today’s coverage on The Verge. Enjoy!
Just Released: AstriCon 2013 Videos. Digium has just released all of the videos from AstriCon 2013 on the new YouTube Asterisk Channel.
Originally published: Monday, November 18, 2013
Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.
Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors
FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.
BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.
The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.
VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…
Happy Halloween: Google Puts the Final Nail in the Google Voice Coffin
Meet the new Microsoft: It’s Google! If you follow Nerd Vittles regularly, you’ll recall that five months ago we warned you to start packing your bags if you were a Google Voice user with PBX in a Flash. And, as a special Halloween treat, Google gave the open source community the finger. As of May 15, 2014, there will be no more XMPP support for Google Voice. So much for embracing the open source community. And, for all of you that supported and fostered the Google Voice project and were part of Google’s development community, F U. Welcome to Oligopoly World!
It’s one thing for a company to shift gears and venture out in a new direction. It’s quite another to knife your developers in the back on the way out the door. Here’s an interesting background piece on the folks now driving the Google Voice Bus. Fundamentally, there’s so much wrong with Mr. Singhal’s posting that it’s difficult to know where to begin. But let’s start with "These [Google Voice] apps violate our terms of service."
So let’s go to law school for a bit, shall we? One of the first things you’ll learn is never take the factual basis for someone else’s conclusions and insults at face value. Go read the material for yourself. And, when you do, what you’ll discover is there’s not even a hint that these Google Voice applications have ever violated Google’s terms of service. Never mind that Google was and still is selling and profiting from the GrooveIP application which is marketed and sold in the Google Play Store.
We’re reproducing the Terms of Service in all their glory so that you don’t have to take our word for it either. Of course, the terms are sprinkled across multiple web pages so bear with us…
And finally, there’s the Google catch-all which you will note changes regularly (and is about to change again). So, even if you didn’t violate the Terms last week, next week may be a different story. Multiply that Catch-22 by five years in the case of Google Voice.
Google Terms of Service
This Terms of Service will be replaced by our new Google Terms of Service effective November 11, 2013. Please see our summary of changes for additional details.
Last modified: March 1, 2012 (view archived versions)
Welcome to Google!
Thanks for using our products and services (“Services”). The Services are provided by Google Inc. (“Google”), located at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States.
By using our Services, you are agreeing to these terms. Please read them carefully.
Our Services are very diverse, so sometimes additional terms or product requirements (including age requirements) may apply. Additional terms will be available with the relevant Services, and those additional terms become part of your agreement with us if you use those Services.
Using our Services
You must follow any policies made available to you within the Services.
Don’t misuse our Services. For example, don’t interfere with our Services or try to access them using a method other than the interface and the instructions that we provide. You may use our Services only as permitted by law, including applicable export and re-export control laws and regulations. We may suspend or stop providing our Services to you if you do not comply with our terms or policies or if we are investigating suspected misconduct.
Using our Services does not give you ownership of any intellectual property rights in our Services or the content you access. You may not use content from our Services unless you obtain permission from its owner or are otherwise permitted by law. These terms do not grant you the right to use any branding or logos used in our Services. Don’t remove, obscure, or alter any legal notices displayed in or along with our Services.
Our Services display some content that is not Google’s. This content is the sole responsibility of the entity that makes it available. We may review content to determine whether it is illegal or violates our policies, and we may remove or refuse to display content that we reasonably believe violates our policies or the law. But that does not necessarily mean that we review content, so please don’t assume that we do.
In connection with your use of the Services, we may send you service announcements, administrative messages, and other information. You may opt out of some of those communications.
Your Google Account
You may need a Google Account in order to use some of our Services. You may create your own Google Account, or your Google Account may be assigned to you by an administrator, such as your employer or educational institution. If you are using a Google Account assigned to you by an administrator, different or additional terms may apply and your administrator may be able to access or disable your account.
If you learn of any unauthorized use of your password or account, follow these instructions.
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Google’s privacy policies explain how we treat your personal data and protect your privacy when you use our Services. By using our Services, you agree that Google can use such data in accordance with our privacy policies.
We respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement and terminate accounts of repeat infringers according to the process set out in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
We provide information to help copyright holders manage their intellectual property online. If you think somebody is violating your copyrights and want to notify us, you can find information about submitting notices and Google’s policy about responding to notices in our Help Center.
Your Content in our Services
Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.
When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.
You can find more information about how Google uses and stores content in the privacy policy or additional terms for particular Services. If you submit feedback or suggestions about our Services, we may use your feedback or suggestions without obligation to you.
About Software in our Services
When a Service requires or includes downloadable software, this software may update automatically on your device once a new version or feature is available. Some Services may let you adjust your automatic update settings.
Google gives you a personal, worldwide, royalty-free, non-assignable and non-exclusive license to use the software provided to you by Google as part of the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling you to use and enjoy the benefit of the Services as provided by Google, in the manner permitted by these terms. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, or lease any part of our Services or included software, nor may you reverse engineer or attempt to extract the source code of that software, unless laws prohibit those restrictions or you have our written permission.
Open source software is important to us. Some software used in our Services may be offered under an open source license that we will make available to you. There may be provisions in the open source license that expressly override some of these terms.
The other important thing you learn in law school is that CONTEXT MATTERS. For example, there’s this generic warning buried in the terms which undoubtedly is the language Google is now using to claim that Asterisk, FreeSwitch, OBiHai, and GrooveIP implementations of Google Voice (among others) crossed the line:
Well, not so fast. It turns out that the "method" used for the Google Voice interface in all of these implementations happens to be the one that was documented, supported, and hosted on Google’s own developer web site. Here’s a snapshot of the site before it, too, disappears. Pay particular attention to the sentence we’ve highlighted: "[The Google Talk XMPP Extensions] are documented so that you can design a client that can take advantage of specific Google Talk features."
It’s also worth recalling that Google Voice began as Craig Walker’s Grand Central project and that Craig, while heading up the Google Voice team, had the following dialogue with me in June of 2009:
WM: Just hoping that you might reconsider providing a SIP interface to Google Voice. It really would make it the Whole Enchilada. Adding a password through the web interface would make it very secure. We’ve written several articles on Nerd Vittles about Google Voice, and it would be an incredible addition.
CW: Hey Ward. Thanks for your note and I share a lot of your sentiments. Let me get it out to the world as my first priority:)
Here’s the Bottom Line: You can’t have it both ways, Google. You can’t encourage open source development with one hand and then use your other fist to slap down developers who do exactly what you encouraged them to do. Sorry to say it but this time Microsoft got it just about right:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QI4KmlcQr4
For organizations considering a move to Google’s platform, you might want to think twice and take an open-minded look at the carnage in the Google Graveyard. Remember Google Buzz? How about Google Wave? Then came Google knol. How about Google Directory Assistance (GOOG-411)? And then Google Reader followed by iGoogle. And now the open source edition of Google Voice. This is just the tip of The Iceberg. And most of the open source Google apps have also fallen by the wayside: sports scores, weather reports, news feeds, and the JavaScript Maps API is on the chopping block for later this month. Many of these weren’t failed undertakings. Google simply decided they no longer wished to support them regardless of whether millions of people depended upon them. Ask yourself this simple question. Do you really want to stake the future of your company or your development efforts on this sort of corporate infrastructure? What can you do? Start here.
Where Do We Go From Here? Have no fear. The VoIP community is not going to wither away because of Google’s shenanigans. We’ll have a lot of great new approaches and solutions in coming weeks and months. In the meantime, make yourself a list of how you currently use Google Voice services. You’ll need that as we move forward. A belated Happy Halloween! It took me 5 days to cool off sufficiently to even write this article.
Originally published: Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.
Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors
FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.
BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.
The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.
VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…
The 5-Minute PBX: Incredible PBX 11 and Incredible Fax Get a Facelift
With the release of PBX in a Flash™ 2.0.6.4.4 last week, it seemed only fitting to reintroduce our one-click wonder that takes advantage of the latest and greatest feature sets in both Asterisk® 11 and FreePBX® 2.11. 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 PBX in a Flash™ 2.0.6.4.4 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: Incredible PBX 11 and Incredible Fax also are available for the $35 Raspberry Pi.
So what’s included? 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®. And 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 6.4, 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.
- AsteriDex
- CallerID Superfecta (FreePBX Module adds Names to CID Numbers)
- CallWho for Asterisk (Dial 411)
- Digium Phone Support (install-digiphones)
- Preconfigured Email That Works with SendMail and Incredible Fax
- OSS Endpoint Manager
- Extensions (1 preconfigured with random password)
- Festival Server and Festival TTS for Asterisk (festival –server &)
- Flite TTS for Asterisk
- FreePBX Backups
- Google Dictionary by Phone (Dial 333)
- Google News by Phone (Dial 951)
- Google Stocks by Phone (Dial 950)
- Google Voice (FreePBX GV/Motif Module)
- Hotel-Style Wakeup Calls (FreePBX Module)
- Incredible Backups… and Restores (install-incredbackup2)
- ISN: FreeNum SIP Calling from Any Phone
- MeetMe Conference Bridge (just dial C-O-N-F)
- Mondo Full System Backups (install-diskbackup)
- Download latest Incredible Fax installer: http://nerd.bz/2nSeHKs
- Incredible Fax 11 (/root/incrediblefax11.sh)
- Incremental Daily Backups (install-dailybackup)
- Munin Reports (install-munin)
- NeoRouter VPN Client (nrclientcmd)
- NewsClips from Yahoo
- ODBC Database Support (Dial 222, 223)
- OpenFire Instant Messaging & Chat Server (install-openfire)
- New PBX in a Flash Registry (show-registry)
- PPTP VPN for PIAF (/root/install-pptp)
- Reminders by Phone and Web
- SAMBA Windows Networking (configure-samba)
- SMS Dictator with Google Voice (Dial S-M-S)
- Speech-to-Text Directory Assistance (Dial 411)
- Stealth AutoAttendant
- TFTP Server (setup-tftp)
- Tide Reports with xTide (Dial T-I-D-E)
- Travelin’ Man 2 & 3 (Secure, remote access)
- Trunks (Vitelity, Gtalk, SIPgate, IPkall, VoIP.ms, and more)
- Weather by ZIP Code
- Worldwide Weather by Phone (Dial 949)
- Wolfram Alpha by Phone (/root/wolfram)
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 PBX in a Flash 2.0.6.4.4 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 optionally 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 the NSA and 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. Can you hear me now?
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:
- Hardware-based Firewall
- IPtables
- Fail2Ban
- Randomized Extension Passwords
- IP-Address Lockdown for Extensions
- Travelin’ Man 2 User-Managed WhiteList
- Travelin’ Man 3 Administrator-Managed WhiteList
- NeoRouter VPN
- PPTP VPN
Prerequisites. Here’s what we recommend to get started properly:
- Broadband Internet connection
- $200 Dual-Core Atom PC, 4GB RAM, 60GB SSD (no moving parts!)
- dLink Router/Firewall. Low Cost: $35 WBR-2310 Best: DGL-4500 Latest: DIR-826-L
- 2 Dedicated Google Voice accounts (voice and fax)
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 PIAF2 ISO or PIAF-Green VM
2. Run Incredible PBX 11 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!
[purehtml id=10]
FINAL STEPS. Once the Incredible PBX 11 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 11. 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 701, 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’ve introduced a new automatic update utility to assist in keeping 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 the remainder of 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 11 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)
- 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.
Deals of the Week. There are a couple of amazing deals still on the street, but you’d better hurry. First, for new customers, Sangoma is offering a board of your choice from a very impressive list at 75% off. For details, see this thread on the PIAF Forum. Second, a new company called Copy.com is offering 20GB of free cloud storage with no restrictions on file size uploads (which are all too common with other free offers). Copy.com has free sync apps for Windows, Macs, and Linux systems. To take advantage of the offer, just click on our referral link here. We get 5GB of extra storage, too, which will help avoid another PIAF Forum disaster.
Originally published: Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.
Don’t miss the first-ever FreePBX World on August 27-28 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. For complete details, see this post on the FreePBX blog.
We are pleased to once again be able to offer Nerd Vittles’ readers a 20% discount on registration to attend this year’s 10th Anniversary AstriCon in Atlanta. And, if you hurry, you also can take advantage of the early bird registration discount. Here’s the Nerd Vittles Discount Code: AC13NERD.
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.
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