Request for all PRI users to test new branch of Asterisk code that allows taking PRI channels out of service.

Posted on the Users list today. Help The community out if you can!

For a long while, Asterisk administrators have had the desire to take PRI channels out of service and keep them that way, usually to create a window in which to perform maintenance or another such purpose. We are finally very close to having that functionality in Asterisk, but what we need is a few people who have PRI circuits to test out this functionality.

Please, if you are an administrator with a PRI, we would really appreciate if you could take some time to test this branch of code that will allow us to introduce this functionality in a new version of Asterisk. We need some real world tests to supplement our lab tests, to ensure that everything works correctly.

The two branches which have to be installed, in concert, are:
libpri - http://svn.digium.com/svn/libpri/team/dhubbard/issue3450_to_commit
Asterisk - http://svn.digium.com/svn/asterisk/team/group/issue3450

Once you have tested, please respond either here or on the issue itself.
We're not going to commit this new functionality until we confirm our lab tests with real world results.

http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=3450

Digium Requests Users to Test the B410P Quad-Port BRI

Today on the -users list, there was a message posted by Shaun from Digium letting us all know that there's a new version of Asterisk Dahdi-Tools and to test on our B410P cards if we have them. Just helping spread the news.

There are new release candidates for dahdi-linux (2.1.0-rc3), dahdi-tools (2.1.0-rc3), and dahdi-linux-complete (2.1.0-rc3+2.1.0-rc3, a combination of dahdi-linux and dahdi-tools in one package) that contain a new DAHDI driver for the B410P Quad-Port BRI card.

http://www.digium.com/en/products/digital/b410p.php

If you are a user of the B410P card, and are able, please test these release candidates in your environment. To test you will need version 1.4.4 or greater of libpri and version 1.6.0 or greater of Asterisk.

You can download the dahdi-linux-complete release candidate at:
http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/dahdi-linux-complete/releases/dahdi-linux-complete-2.1.0-rc3+2.1.0-rc3.tar.gz

or via svn from:
http://svn.digium.com/svn/dahdi/linux-complete/tags/2.1.0-rc3+2.1.0-rc3

The file system.conf.sample in dahdi-tools contains notes about configuring DAHDI for the BRI card.

http://svn.digium.com/view/dahdi/tools/tags/2.1.0-rc3/system.conf.sample&view=markup

The ChangeLogs with all the changes for these releases are at:
http://svn.digium.com/svn/dahdi/linux/tags/2.1.0-rc3/ChangeLog
and
http://svn.digium.com/svn/dahdi/tools/tags/2.1.0-rc3/ChangeLog

Many Thanks,
Shaun

Shaun Ruffell
sruffell@digium.com

Installing and Configuring chan_mobile for Bluetooth Presence support in Asterisk 1.6

Following this tutorial on how to get Chan_Mobile working with Asterisk for Bluetooth support for our headsets and mobile phones we worked out how to get it working on Asterisk 1.6.

We figured we would share this information with our readers incase they were interested in Bluetooth for Asterisk and the capabilities it will open up to their system. Just think, the server will know when you're in the room or out of the office and other fancy things.

First you should make sure that your Bluetooth Dongle works with Asterisk, and that your Cellular Phone is known to work with Asterisk and Bluetooth. You can verify all this information over at the Voip-Info Chan_Mobile page.

Requirements:

• Asterisk PBX
• Bluetooth Support (Motherboard or Dongle)
• Cellular Phone with Bluetooth support
• Bluez Bluetooth Libraries and Development Headers

Tutorial:

So, first we have to install some pre-requisite software. We'll assume that you already have Linux installed, your kernel is compiled, Asterisk is installed and working, and that you have a basic familiarity with Linux commands. We've written this tutorial for Ubuntu, using FreePBX so instructions may change based on your OS or Asterisk Configuration GUI.

So, lets get down to business shall we.

First, install Bluez Utilities on your Server

# apt-get install bluez-utils bluez-hcidump

Now Configure Bluez to work with your server and dongle. We won't go into depth on this as it mostly "just works" but there are ample tutorials and documentation if your dongle is a little finiky on your system.

Now, open up the file hcid.conf in the Bluetooth configuration directory, and match the contents to the following.

# nano /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf

Erase the contents, and replace it with this

# HCId options
options {
autoinit yes;
security auto;
pairing multi;
passkey "1234";
}

device {
name "Our PBX System";
class 0x3e0100;
iscan enable; pscan enable;
discovto 0;
lm accept;
lp rswitch,hold,sniff,park;
}

options {
autoinit yes;
security auto;
pairing multi;
pin_helper /etc/bluetooth/pin;
}

Note you can also experiment with making Asterisk a handsfree headset, but we won't go over this in this tutorial. The following lines can be added to your hcid.conf in replacement of the "Our PBX System" device mentioned above if you want to try this:

device {
name "Asterisk";
class 0x200404;
iscan enable;
pscan enable;
lm accept;
lp rswitch,hold,sniff,park;
}

Now that our bluetooth is configured, we can go back to configuring Asterisk to work with Chan Mobile for Bluetooth Support. We'll assume you already have Asterisk 1.6 running on your machine for this to work. If not, compile it and instal it!

Now, Enter the directory with your Asterisk-Addons 1.6 source.

# cd /opt/asterisk/asterisk-addons-1.6.0/

Issue your configure line

# make distclean
# ./configure --with-bluetooth

Now, issue the configure menu tree

# make menuselect

Now, on the left hand side, hit the down arrow button until you get to the Channel Drivers section. On the right hand side, you should see "chan_mobile" with a little "*" next to it telling us it's enabled.

[*] chan_mobile

If you don't, pretty right on your arrow keys, and then press the enter key to select chan_mobile. Exit the configuration menu by pressing F12 to save your changes.

Now, build Asterisk-Addons 1.6 as you normally would

# make
# make install

This will place chan_mobile.so into /usr/lib/asterisk/modules so the next time you start Asterisk it will be available.

We're pretty much done the "difficult" stuff now, and just need to go on and start bluetooth on our system and then configure Asterisk to work with it.

So, start up bluetooth

# /etc/init.d/bluetooth start

Now, lets make sure that Bluetooth is running and sees our devices

# hcitool dev

This should output some information like this:

Devices:
hci0 00:50:B6:80:34:DD

Make a note of the "hardware" address in a text file or somewhere handy because we will need it later. The hardware address is the one that looks like a MAC address. In this case it's "00:50:B6:80:34:DD" note that your system will be different.

Now, lets edit Asterisk's mobile configuration file

# nano /etc/asterisk/mobile.conf

Add your Bluetooth Adapter to the file like this, using the Hardware ID from the hcitool command you ran above. There should already be an entry that looks similar to this (with an id=blue) just replace the hardware ID in this entry with yours.

[adapter]
id=blue
address=00:50:B6:80:34:DD
;forcemaster=yes
;alignmentdetection=yes

Now exit and save the file.

Before we forget, we should add bluetooth to the startup options of the server if it's not already there. Do so like this;

# update-rc.d bluetooth defaults

Now, in order for other devices to be able to see your server and vice-versa we have to make it discoverable. That's done with the following command.

# dbus-send --system --type=method_call --print-reply --dest=org.bluez /org/bluez/hci0 org.bluez.Adapter.SetMode string:discoverable

The fun begins right about now. Go and get your mobile phone. Turn bluetooth on on the phone. You should see your Asterisk PBX in the list of discoverable devices. Double click on it to add it to your device, and input the security key of 1234 when prompted.

Note that on our windows mobile 6.1 devices, after adding the Asterisk PBX to our bluetooth list, we also had to click on it and then hit refresh services list a few times until it showed us "Bluetooth Headset" as a list of supported options. We selected it on the screen, and closed the bluetooth configuration on our HTC Tytn II (Kaiser) test devices.

Now it's time to make your phone discoverable so the PBX can attach to it. Go back to your phone, and find the option to enable bluetooth discovery. Turn it on.

Now from the Asterisk Server Command Line we should be able to issue this command to search for our Bluetooth Mobile Phone.

# hcitool scan

It should show you a list of results like this

Scanning ...
00:16:BC:1F:E1:E8 Phone1
00:17:83:6F:BD:51 Phone2

In our example, we'll only be connecting to Phone2. One finicky thing we noticed is that if you want to connect more than one mobile phone at a time, you need a dongle to match. So, for example if you want to connect 5 bluetooth mobile phones, you would also need 5 bluetooth dongles, and 5 free USB ports (or a USB HUB) to get it all working. We've never tried with more than 2 bluetooth phones, so your mileage may vary.

If you don't see your phone, something is wrong - try the above steps again to see if it fixes it.

Now continue on by stopping Asterisk PBX, and reloading it to take advantage of our new chan_mobile module.

# /etc/init.d/asterisk stop

Now start Asterisk in debug mode so you can verify everything is working.

# asterisk -vvvvvvvvvvvvvgc

Now type this command on the Asterisk CLI to find your mobile devices

*CLI> mobile search

You should see something similar to the following

Address Name Usable Type Port
00:17:83:6F:BD:51 Phone2 Yes Phone 2
00:13:33:44:4d:23 Phone1 Yes Phone 5

The above is a listing of all Bluetooth devices available to your Asterisk PBX.

• The Address Field is the Device Identifier Code (MAC Address)
• The Name Field holds the name of the device (Phone1)
• The Usable Field tells us if the phone is Usable by Asterisk or not (Yes/No)
• The Type Field tells us if it's a Phone (FXO) or a Headset (FXS) device
• The Port Field tells us which port the phone is using

Make a note of this information and continue on to the next step.

Now, exit Asterisk by typing "stop now" on the command line

*CLI> stop now

You'll be back at the CLI now.

In our example, we'll be using Phone2 to configure to work with Asterisk.

Go back and edit your mobile configuration file in /etc/asterisk to look similar to this

# nano /etc/asterisk/mobile.conf

Add something similar to the following below the adapter configuration you added earlier in the tutorial.

[TytnII]
address=00:17:83:6F:BD:51
port=2
context=from-pstn
adapter=blue
;group=1

If you are configuring a headset, the line would look something like this instead

[headset]
address=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx ; the address of the headset
port=x ; the port number
type=headset ; tells asterisk it is a headset
adapter=blue ; adapter to use

Now you can start asterisk again. I would start it in debug mode so you can verify your phone is connected.

# asterisk -vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvgc

You should see messages similar to the following on the Asterisk Console letting you know your device has connected to Asterisk

-- Bluetooth Device TytnII has connected.
-- Bluetooth Device TytnII initialised and ready.

And if you issue the show devices command

*CLI> mobile show devices

You should see something like this

ID Address Group Adapter Connected State SMS
TytnII 00:17:83:6F:BD:51 0 blue Yes Free No

This means your phone is now connected to Asterisk. Depending on the context you put it in, if a call comes in to your cellular phone and you are within proximity of your Asterisk server it should route over to your one of your SIP extensions. Asterisk will automatically pair and unpair with your mobile phone as you come in and out of range respectively. Cool huh?

It is worth it to mention this warning from the original article as well: "Important: Watch what your cell phone is doing the first few times. Asterisk won’t make random calls but if chan_mobile fails to hang up for some reason and you get a huge bill from your telco, don’t blame me."

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial, let us know if you have any comments or other fun ideas to do with chan_mobile, bluetooth and Asterisk in the comments!

Asterisk Performance as a B2BUA (Back to Back User Agent) Report Released

Found on the list today, some interesting results, promising even.

In 2007 we published the results of a performance test of Asterisk as a Back to Back User Agent (B2BUA). Based on the helpful feedback from the mailing list we improved our test procedures and re-ran a new performance test case of Asterisk configured as a B2BUA.

Our test platform hosting Asterisk was a $1000 Dell PowerEdge 840 with a Quad Core Xeon X3220, 2x4M cache, 2.40 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB and 4 GB RAM.
Redhat V5 was the operating system. The test was configured to simulate a wholesale VoIP operation with three minute call durations and an average of two call retries for every completed call. This was an "out of the box"
Asterisk configuration with default settings and no optimizations.

We found that Asterisk on the test server could handle approximately 1000 simultaneous calls with no codec transalation. This works out to be about a
$1 per port investment for a B2BUA platform.

When calls were transcoded from G.711 to G.729, the call capacity fell to 320 simultaneous calls. With the added cost of of the G.729 codec royalty and the lower call capacity, the cost increases to approximately $13.50 per port

You can download the test results and all the test plan details from:
http://www.transnexus.com/White%20Papers/Performance_Test_of_Asterisk_v1-4.htm

Jim Dalton
VoIP Routing, Accounting, Security
1.404.526.6053
www.TransNexus.com

HD Voice and Video coming to new Skype for Asterisk Channel Driver?

We are all well aware of the new Skype for Asterisk Channel Driver that was announced a couple weeks ago at Astricon.

Incase you've been on vacation, hiding under a rock due to the recent economic changes or whatever, there's a very good summary over here, here, and here about the new Skype addition for Asterisk.

We have information from a source close to Digium that has told us the future is looking very video rich, and high definition sounding for this Skype channel driver.

We can't hame names or mention places, but we have it on very high authority that we'll be seeing some HD Voice capability (We assume this means "quality doesn't suck like skype") and Video ability for the Skype channel driver.

Could be a promising future for Skype and Asterisk unity.

More info as we learn it.

Nagios Administrator Change Language Default to English instead of German

For any of you using Nagios Administrator, and you're native English speakers, the fact that it always defaults to German may irk you.

Here's how to do it. Thanks to h-w on the Nagios Portal Forums.

# cd /var/www/nagiosadmin

# cd apps/backend/config/

# nano i18n.yml

and change the

default_culture: de

to

default_culture: en

# cd /var/www/nagiosadmin

# ./symfony clear-cache

Now you should be good to go and it will load up in english. Cool huh?

No Jitter and Eastern Management release Opensource PBX Survey

Found this on the list today, posted by Dean Collins. No Jitter has announced a new survey pertaining to the market's use of Opensource PBX solutions. Fill it out and let the world know you love Asterisk.

Here's a very cool thing: Eastern Management Group is conducting a survey to try and size the market for Open Source IP-PBXs. As far as I can tell, no such quantification exists for this market, so it will be really great to see what John Malone and his team at Eastern Management come up with. You can take the survey by going here.

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