Aastra space bug bites me again!

Aastra has some nice phones and I needed to demo on of these for a client the other day.

I punched in some settings and copied others using copy and paste - big mistake!

With my copy and paste I had an extra character which was a space.

It looks like Aastra phones don't like the extra space in a field where they expect an ip address.

It took me about 30 minutes but I eventually found the extra space - removed and everything registered nicely. What bothers me is that this is the second time I've managed to make the same mistake. I am betting others are going through this exact same thing - hope it helps someone.

Reset Elastix Password to default

If you are using Elastix distro and you have forgotten your password you can reset it to the default palosanto password by executing the following command

sqlite3 /var/www/db/acl.db "update acl_user set md5_password='7a5210c173ea40c03205a5de7dcd4cb0' where id=1"

Note: the command is one line

FreePBX default password

The default login and password for the FreePBX gui is admin admin

Note that if you are using a distro like trixbox, asterisknow, elastix, PIAF (PBX in a Flash) it is probably different.

Look in the /etc/amportal.conf

This is the default FreePBX config file - the passwords should be readable here.

Cisco SPA504G Paging & Intercom

One of the reasons I wanted to get a Cisco 504G was to test the FreePBX/Asterisk Paging & Intercom module. With every new phone release its always important to test the feature set before deploying to clients.

The paging and intercom work the same way as the SPA942 models. Just need to enable "Auto Answer Page" and remove any vertical service codes that might conflict with FreePBX paging/intercom codes.

There is a new multicast feature that enables paging directly from the phone - need to look into this more.

The New Cisco Cares About Asterisk!

It wasn't too long ago that there was no "official" documentation that would suggest that Cisco products worked with Open Source Asterisk.

Now with Small Business Pro there is a sense that Cisco has put some effort in documenting and being more open to their products working with Asterisk.

There is a great deal of documentation that is really useful - in fact more than any other vendor. Documents can be found at https://www.myciscocommunity.com

You can find the following Asterisk documentation:

Asterisk: Configuring Cisco SPA5xx phones with the Web-UI
Asterisk: Zero-Touch Configuring Cisco SPA5xx phones
Configuring the Cisco SPA8800 IP Telephony Gateway in an Asterisk Environment
Interoperability information for Asterisk(R)-based Phone Systems
Asterisk: Configuring the Cisco SPA500S Attendant Console

You don't see this level of documentation from any of the following vendors that benefit from Asterisk.

1. Polycom - very little official documentation - even though many of their products work well with Asterisk - if it wasn't for the great Asterisk community many of their products wouldn't even be used with Asterisk systems

2. Grandstream - Just enough to get things working - very little documentation - but at least they acknowledge Asterisk - guessing that most of the IP phones that Grandstream sells go directly for Asterisk deployments. Grandstream is the equivalent of Dlink in the voip world. They sell lots of shitty product at low prices and available everywhere.

3. Aastra - have done a great deal with their xml and auto provisioning toolkit for systems like trixbox and elastix. No enough documenting if you want to configure things manually.

4. Snom - the stuff works - well documented on their wiki for Asterisk - just wish the basic phones weren't so ugly and expensive. The new 800 series look great though!

Cisco SPA504G Review

Just got my hands on a Cisco SPA50G, this is the revised SPA942 (probably the most popular voip phone)

The SPA942 was a very nice voip phone - it offered extensive features at a very nice price. There were some things that needed improving. The SPA504 fixes most of the problems. The one problem I was hoping it would improve immensely was the speaker phone but I am out of luck here.

Although with recent firmware upgrades for the SPA942 the speaker phone became usable its still was not a "great" sounding speaker phone compared to Polycom phones. Seems that Cisco just can't figure out the speaker phone.

The SPA504G has the following improvements:

1) Support HD/g722 codec
2) Handset - heavier - more polished -sounds better - sounds deeper
3) Buttons - have more of tactile feel - don't feel cheap anymore
4) Speaker phone - louder (no improvement is sound quality)
5) Sidecar - all the SPA phones now support the new and old 32 button sidecar - you do not need a "receptionist" phone anymore - anyone of them can be turned into one - all have the AUX expansion
6) Configuration Interface is more polished - looks modern (same options though)
7) Line/nav buttons and MWI are smaller now
8) Unit is a little heavier - seems more solid

Overall a nice improvement - if you don't need g722 and louder speaker phone your better off getting an SPA942 while they are still available since there is such a huge price difference.

Cisco SPA8800 Video

This is just a small video of the SPA8800 configured with one analog phone and Asterisk. Notice the status lights on the Gateway. The silver box provides a number of ways to mount it - except no brackets - so no rackmount.

Its a very nice looking gateway with black plastic in the front. Testing with an Aastra 9116P - analog phone - although no benefit using "P" version as the gateway does not provide power using the 3,4 pair.

The MWI led works out of the box - you do not need to configure anything special. The speaker phone also works equally well. There is no auto answer option so receiving Intercom and Paging will not work with Asterisk. You can however initiate intercom and paging as there are many buttons that can be programmed for the feature codes. No BLF or any kind of line appearance. It is however a good "nortel" looking phone that a lot of clients expect phones to look like.

Linksys/Cisco SPA962 with SPA932 Sidecar

Here is a little video of the Cisco/Linksys SPA962 with SPA932 sidecar all lid up. Also with a Panasonic 3.5mm headphone. The sidecar left buttons have been programmed for speed dial, BLF, and call pickup. The right side buttons have been programmed for intercom for each extension.

Asterisk SIP Channel Driver & DNS - it's broken!

One of the most frustrating things about Asterisk is that it can't handle simple problems. These are problems that you would think have been solved by now. I'm talking about DNS issues and the SIP channel driver.

You would think that if your internet connection went down that you would only lose your VOIP trunks or remote extensions. Well think again! When you lose the internet or better yet DNS access your Asterisk SIP Channel driver comes to a halt. That means that your local SIP extensions will also not work. In fact a lot of things just seem to halt until your internet or DNS is functioning again.

Why is this happening? Certain things should time out! My local SIP extensions and local SIP gateway should still work. I expect the internet to go down - I expect DNS resolution failures. I don't expect that after all this time the SIP channel driver is still broken.

I've looked in the Asterisk mailing list and this has been pointed out many times before - nobody wants to fix this.

I have developed ways around this that don't require code changes but this is something that should be fixed at the root cause.

A Bunch of Gateway Reviews

One of hardest things to find in VoIP hardware is a good low cost FXO gateway. The FXS gateways and ATA’s are easy to locate. Finding an equivalent FXO has been a never ending task. I have tested Patton, Audiocodes, Linksys/Cisco, and Grandstream gateways.

The Patton products are just way too complicated – someone needs to go back and put an easy mode on these things. The price is just a bit high for every situation I have encountered in deploying them.

The Audiocodes are not as expensive as the Patton products but they also have their own strengths and weakness. It takes a lot of effort to fully utilize or understand the full routing potential of these products. Once you master the configuration you can do all sorts of cool stuff. I have been able to deploy these products in a number of locations. They can work very well with Asterisk if you can match up the right version numbers (for both the gateway and Asterisk.)

The Linksys/Cisco SPA400 has been a real price gem for me. For locations that need a couple of FXO ports and money is an issue you can’t go wrong this device. Note that I have specifically tested a certain firmware version for my deployments. This product is intended to work with the LVS9000 but can be configured to work with Asterisk. The sound quality is good – not great. Good enough for the low end installations.

The Grandstream FXO gateways are a piece of junk – not worth a single penny because they cannot be deployed anywhere. I have tested with the current firmware and they continue to break what was working or cannot fix the long list of outstanding bugs. How many tries does it take guys to fix the caller-id issues? You Grandstream owners should know that you are missing many calls – hope you are not using these devices for your business.

Finally the best for last – I have purchased a Welltech 3804A because this Taiwanese company said they supported Asterisk. The price was right, the features were good, and the sound quality was actually very good. The main problem with this gateway is that it can’t detect a dial tone. This kind of limits the use for this anywhere with multiple lines and hunt group configurations.

Welltech’s latest gateways do support dial tone – I just wished I knew about this little issue prior. What gets me though is not dial tone aspect but that I was able to brick this product with configuration changes. At some point all the FXO ports went amber, I reset the device to factory defaults and it never came back! So much for confidence in this companies products.

I am currently testing the Cisco SPA8800 which is a 4 port FXS and 4 port FXO. Everything looks good so far but I can’t make a recommendation if this product is ready for any clients yet.