Tag: Askozia

[Asterisk] Part 2: Installation, Configuration of an Askozia PBX and getting it working with Snom 360

- Download and burn the latest 1.0 Release as PC Live ISO (www.askozia.com,i.e. pbx-cdrom-1.0.3.iso, 30 MB)
- Insert and boot from in your target PC
( You could now already use this as live running Askozia Version - but we're going to install it onto the HDD )
- Just choose option "Install to Harddrive", choose the HDD you want to install onto and accept the questions, warning that your Data will be erased.
- Reboot and remove the CD from the drive.
- Choose Option 2 and set IP, Subnet (default 24), Gateway, DNS, choose wheter you want to go back to http or use ssl encrytpted https
- Go to your PC and enter http://ipoftheaskoziapbx or https://ipoftheaskoziapbx depending on your reacion to the last installation step.
- The default login data is admin, askozia
- Go to the General Setup, change Username, Password and other Settings you would like and save.
- Go to Voicemail, enter an E-Mail Account (username, pw, email, smtp server) you would like to use for the Voice Mail feature. Save the configuration and enter your own E-Mail Adress in "Test E-Mail" and press E-Mail Me - if that does work, you got Voicemail working.
- Go to Interfaces, change the Interface settings to your like and add ISDN or Analog Interface if you got such.
- Now your basic installation is done, go to reboot and restart your system.

Create an Sip Account and connect Snom 360
- Login to your Askozia again
- Choose Phones and click on "Add Sip"
- Enter the needed Information:
- Extension is your phone number
- Caller ID is the Name of the personal behind that number
- Password is needed to secure the SIP Account
- Voicemail is the E-Mail Adress of the Person, so Askozia can send you a) missed call notifications, b) your Mailbox Entrys as wav
- You need to activate for a) "send missed call notifications" as well
- Choose your Language
- And you may enter an Description and Advanced Settings if you want
- Press Save

- Login to your Snom 360
- Choose Identity 1 (i.e.)
- Enter the needed Information:
- Identity active: on
- Displayname you can choose to your like - maybe Sip Askozia
- Account is the Extension / Phone Number
- Password is the Sip Password
- Registrar is the IP of your Askozia PBX
- Press Save and Re-Register
- Enter your Password again on the Snom 360 and press the "Check Mark" button

Now you're done and can phone. Just enter the number of the other SIP Phone and press "Check Mark" to start calling.

Conferencing:
Under Services, Conferencing you got an Conference Room in the Askozia. On default calling number 2663 will get you there and you can conference with other Sip Users

Applications:
Under Dialplan, Applications you can call 3 Applications. 00003246 - Echo Test, 00009253 - WakeMe (an Wake Up Call Manager), 000064554 (1000Hz Test Tone)

Call Groups:
Under Dialplan, Call Groups you can set Call Groups (one Extension does ring multiple Phones)

Interfaces:
Under Interfaces you can change Interface settings - i.e. configure an ISDN Interface like an AMV Fritz Card ISDN which is recognized in Askozia Stable 1.0.3

Providers:
Under Accounts, Providers you may add an Sipgate Account i.e. to the PBX

Phones:
Under Accounts, Phones you can change Phone settings and add Provider Accounts to the Phone

[Asterisk] Part 1: Basics and Choosing the right OS

Finally the time has come for our first VoIP or Voice over IP Project. The final goal of this project shall be to integrate an Software Asterisk VoIP System into an already existing PBX / ISDN Enviroment, allowing Users on Analog and ISDN Phones to recieve and send VoIP Calls by using the Asterisk Gateway - and vice versa. An good starting point is the most famous open source Voice PBX, called Asterisk. Asterisk is aviable in many flavors and colors: As commandline on little OpenWRT enabled Routers to an Highpowered Cluster Solution running ten thousands of phones at the same time - beeing managable via an nice looking Webinterface and Batch Files.

As an starting point, myself and Co Worker Sebastian picked out the three most popular releases and integrations of the Asterisk server:

- AsteriskNoW! ( http://www.asterisk.org/asterisknow/ )
AsteriskNow is an development of dignium which does also develop Asterisk.
Uses CentOS.

- trixbox ( http://www.trixbox.org/ )
Trixbox is an PBX which has been build for business use and therefor has many options and special settings.
Uses CentOS.

- Askozia ( http://www.askozia.com/ )
Askozia is using the same system the m0n0wall and FreeNAS Appliances are build upon and is therefor very small and very lightweight.
Uses FreeBSD / m0n0wall / FreeNAS System.

AS for the test systems, we did decide to put all three Systems on real world servers, the first two ones because of their quite heavy weight resource needs onto 2 identical Tyan Tomcat Servers, powered by Pentium 4, 3 GhZ, 1 GB of Ram and an Sata Raid Controller, Mirroring the 160 GB Drive (Raid 1) to a second HDD. We got two 1 Gbit NICs and other stuff.

The test node for the Askozia is an Pentium 2 MMX, 500 MhZ, 64 MB Ram, 8 GB Hdd. 1 100 Mbit NIC and an AMV Fritz Card.

After extensiv tests of the systems we came to choose two favorites:
- Askozia
Because of its very lightweight, very simple configuration and low impact even on the tiny system
Downside: Not many options, shell access only with additional packages, limited expert options

- trixbox
For beeing very powerful and posessing many options.
Downside: Hardware hungry, VERY much options

Having these said we did shut down the two big servers and concentrated on the low end HP Desktop running Askozia. For beeing able to connect to an ISDN PBX we needed support for the AMV Fritz Card. Luckily we found this support included in the stable 1.0.3 release. The current 2.0.0 beta does NOT run with AVM and does not even recognize the Card. I wrote an report on the Forum and the admin did quickly reply to this, I'm waiting for an fix of the problem and therefor continued the work with the 1.0.3. Actually including Voicemail, two Sipphones, Conference Room and such is so easy that anyone can do it within less than 5 Minutes. But first things first - in the Installation How To.