When I got home on Friday evening, freshly excited about the class, I grabbed the CUCM 7 media and fired up a new fusion VM. Settings are as follows:

1. If you have the iso, click Continue without disc and then select the disc image, otherwise insert the CUCM7 installation disc
2. The system will detect RHEL4 which is correct, press continue to use the disc, then continue again at the OS selection screen
3. Uncheck Use Easy Install (don’t we all wish), click continue
4. Click Customize Settings
   1. Sharing: Disabled
   2. Applications: Menu Enabled (don’t think this matters)
   3. Processors & RAM: 2 CPU 2048 RAM (this does matter)
   4. Display: 3D disabled (doubt it matters)
   5. Printers: Enabled, match default (doesn’t matter)
   6. Autoprotect: Disabled (doesn’t matter)
   7. Network: NAT (more on this later)
   8. Hard Disks: IDE Disk, 80GB, uncheck Pre-allocate disk space, check split into 2GB files (80GB is necessary, I think IDE is)
   9. Everything else, defaults
5. Start it up
6. Media Check: Your choice, I choose No and all was fine
7. vmware Found screen: Agree (a big thanks to Cisco for allowing this, they didn’t have to)
8. Product Deployment Selection: Cisco Unified Communications Manager – OK
9. Proceed with Install: Yes
10. Platform Installation Wizard: Proceed
11. Apply Patch: No (haven’t tried this yet)
12. Import Windows Data: No
13. Basic Install: Continue
14. Timezone Configuration: America/Denver for me
15. Auto Negotiation Configuration: Yes
16. MTU Configuration: No
17. DHCP: No
18. Static Network Configuration – This is where things get a little complicated. Start a terminal session and type ifconfig. Note the IP address for vmnet8. Mine was 192.168.223.1. This is the NAT network for Fusion. IP addresses .3-.127 are statically assignable. Thanks to Michael McLaughlin for this information. Note that if you do not setup the network correctly, the system will not install and will die with a Security configuration failed (1) error.
    
    1. Hostname: FusionCCM7
    2. IP Address: 192.168.x.3 where x is the third octet of the IP address you discovered in step 18
    3. IP Mask: 255.255.255.0
    4. GW Address: 192.168.x.2 where x is the third octet of the IP address you discovered in step 18
    5. Press OK
19. DNS Client Configuration: Yes
    1. Primary DNS: 192.168.x.2 where x is the third octet of the IP address you discovered in step 18
    2. Secondary DNS: blank
    3. Domain: cucm.local
20. Administration Login Configuration
    1. Administrator ID: ccmadmin
    2. Password: c123sco (a mix of letters and numbers is required)
    3. Confirm Password: c123sco
21. Certificate Information – Your locale information
22. First Node Configuration: Yes
23. Network Time Protocol Client Configuration: Yes
    1. NTP Server 1: 64.90.182.55
24. Database Access Security Configuration
    1. Security Password: c123sco
    2. Confirm Security Password: c123sco
25. SMTP Host Configuration: No
26. Application User Configuration
    1. Application User Username: ccmadmin
    2. Application User Password: c123sco
    3. Confirm Application User Password: c123sco
27. Platform Configuration Complete: OK

It took me about an hour for the full install and then I had my system up and running. Enjoy!

“How could that be?”, he asked.

“Well, Asterisk”.

I have been running Asterisk for about 6-months and wanted to give an update as to where I am today. I am now running 3-lines (home, business and other business) through Broadvoice and paying about $15/mo for all of it. The trick is custom ringing. Asterisk can interpret the custom ring and send the call to a different phone, create a different ring or even send it to a different voicemail box. Right now the home phone number goes directly to a voice menu that offers telemarketers option 1 (no, it doesn’t curse at them, it’s a pretty polite take-me-off-your-list-you-have-been-logged message).

Here’s how that works:

[from-broadvoice]
exten => 3030001234,1,Noop(Alert-Info -> '${SIP_HEADER(Alert-Info)}')
exten => 3030001234,n,Gotoif($["${SIP_HEADER(Alert-Info)}" = "<http://127.0.0.1/Bellcore-dr4>"]?jim_office,7200000000,1)
exten => 3030001234,n,Gotoif($["${SIP_HEADER(Alert-Info)}" = "<http://127.0.0.1/Bellcore-dr3>"]?otherbusiness,3030000000,1)
exten => 3030001234,n,Goto(incoming,s,1)

If they press 2, all the phones in the house (except my home office) ring with a double-pulse ring that my wife recognizes. No-answer goes to her very own voicemail box that lights the light on her good old Qwest Home Receptionist phone. Arguments over lost sticky notes with messages are a thing of the past.

Option 3 belongs to me and rings with a 3-pulse ring on every phone including my office (yes, I am that important), no-answer goes to my voicemail box which I am then emailed the attachment directly to my mobile smartphone where I can listen to it immediately.

Option 7 plays the traditional carried away by monkeys and weasels have eaten the phone with a bunch of monkeys screaming. It records the incoming audio to a wav file which I review from time to time so I can hear the callers reactions (no one except friends know of option 7).

My home office line rings in my office only. Pickup groups are great here because I can pickup any other phone in the house and dial *8# and it intercepts the call on that phone. The call detail recording is nice for my consulting business because I have an accurate record of all calls made and received. I paste that data into blinksale.com and there is no question about billed time.

I have call parking enabled so I can just hit flash 700 or #700 and I am read back which number they are parked on (always 701). They get a nice music on hold while I go do what I want or move to another phone. I can also transfer to my mobile for heading out the door.

Broadvoice is nice because of their BYOD (bring your own device) plan which is basically $9/mo. They port your number so you don’t lose your existing numbers. I have confirmed that they are the cause of my echo problems that happen from time to time. I use Voipjet.com as an alternate provider for outgoing calls and anytime I get echo, I can call the person back using voipjet (I dial 9 before the number to switch providers) and there is no echo. I would use voipjet exclusively if they could do number porting.

Once I explained all of this to the fellow from Comcast he was drolling to go home and try it himself. He thanked me for my time and wandered off to the next house. I have a feeling he wasn’t as enthusiastic when he knocked on the next door.

Could anyone else provide me this kind of service for this price? Nope. Asterisk Rocks.

 http://blog.carrel.org/2005/07/calling-features-with-asterisk.html

Over the next week I decided to pick it up. I went searching and low and behold found it as a downloadable PDF. I spent the next few days reading through it on my laptop and phone. Once I finished I decided it was time to give it a try. I started looking for hardware and the book had clearly recommended the Digium boards but didn’t mention anything else. I figured this out quickly and started reading reviews of other hardware for the SoHo option. I ran across an article talking about the Sipura SPA-3000 that was purchased from Voxilla that provided both an FSX and FSO (connection to the phone company and connection to a phone for those not into the lingo yet) for around the $80 mark. This was a good start so I searched and found the (now owned by) Linksys SPA-3102 on Voxilla on sale for about $75.
One week later I had the 3102 in my hot little hands, the thing that surprised me most was the size; it’s about the size of two decks of cards laid long-side to long-side. I headed down to the basement where all my hot and noisy computer toys are with the 3102 and a fistful of cables from the package. I plugged the Internet port into my gigabit switch and connected the phone-line to my Vonage Linksys TA and the phone side to my office phone. No sense in interrupting my POTS home-line just yet, my office phone could be the Ginny pig. Fired it all up and watched my logs for the MAC/DHCP IP address. Copied the MAC into my dhcpd.conf and gave it one of the statics out of my pool. Reboot and try to connect over browser, no-dice, no surprise, it’s a security risk. Like all Linksys devices, you have to connect to the LAN side port to get anything done at first. I ran up and grabbed my laptop and hooked it up to the LAN side. 192.168.0.1/admin like the manual says, hmm, nothing, ipconfig, 192.168.1.2 is the address is gave me, smart little thing, it must have seen that 192.168.0.* was the WAN side addressing and bumped a network so as not to conflict. Browsed to 192.168.1.1 and there is the admin interface. My goal was to disable the router function and control it through the WAN port but after an hour of fighting with it, I figured out that I was being stupid and had no firewall rule allowing me to get from my firewall (where I was testing) to the LAN, I could get out and packets could get through but I was only allowing SSH from the firewall itself. Not running upstairs to see if it worked from my desktop got me. On the good side, I learned a little more about the 3120 while I was fighting my own stupidity like that you can do most of the web admin functions by picking up the phone and dialing **** where a pretty decent IVR menu lets you configure the system. One problem I did run into was setting a password somewhere that caused the IVR to prompt me for said password which couldn’t be determined… factory reset. I can see it from the network, time for dinner and pick it up tomorrow.

I could have probably setup the software earlier but I wanted to wait until I had the hardware in-hand. First step is to choose what flavor. There are so many choices; I found AsteriskNOW, Trixbox and regular Asterisk. Turns out the first two are full systems including the OS. I already have a server I recently built with Fedora 7 that’s running firewall, email, dhcp and dns for my network. I was previously running all of these services on an old Pentium II 300 with a whopping 128MB of RAM but after adding antispam and antivirus, it just wasn’t enough. I happen to have a few server class machines and ended up using a Sun V20z to replace the old box. This thing runs 2 x AMD Opteron 248 (64-bit) 2.2 GHz procs and has 4GB of RAM so it should be up to this task as well.
Now I have hardware, software and time. I am a huge fan of yum and rpm, it’s not that I’m too dumb to compile my own stuff; it’s just that I am lazy and hate tracking down dependencies. At first glance, I don’t see any RPM’s out there so I downloaded Asterisk 1.4.13 from the Asterisk web site, untared it and copied it to /usr/src. A less on the README is no big surprise, make clean, make, make install.

[root@irongate asterisk-1.4.13]# make****
**** The configure script must be executed before running ‘make’.
**** Please run “./configure”.
****
make: *** [makeopts] Error 1
[root@irongate asterisk-1.4.13]# ./configure
checking build system type… x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking host system type… x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking for gcc… no
checking for cc… no
checking for cl.exe… no
configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH
See `config.log’ for more details.

Oops, no compiler. Easily fixed, yum –y install gcc and try again.

checking how to run the C++ preprocessor… /lib/cpp

configure: error: C++ preprocessor “/lib/cpp” fails sanity check

See `config.log’ for more details.

They wonder why I like yum better. Ugg, google tells me I need c++ too, yum -y install gcc-g++. Take 3.
 

config.status: creating include/asterisk/autoconfig.h

               .$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$=..     

            .$7$7..          .7$$7:.   

          .$$:.                 ,$7.7  

        .$7.     7$$$$           .$$77 

     ..$$.       $$$$$            .$$$7

    ..7$   .?.   $$$$$   .?.       7$$$.

   $.$.   .$$$7. $$$$7 .7$$$.      .$$$.

 .777.   .$$$$$$77$$$77$$$$$7.      $$$,

 $$$~      .7$$$$$$$$$$$$$7.       .$$$.

.$$7          .7$$$$$$$7:          ?$$$.

$$$          ?7$$$$$$$$$$I        .$$$7

$$$       .7$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$      :$$$.

$$$       $$$$$$7$$$$$$$$$$$$    .$$$. 

$$$        $$$   7$$$7  .$$$    .$$$.  

$$$$             $$$$7         .$$$.   

7$$$7            7$$$$        7$$$     

 $$$$$                        $$$      

  $$$$7.                       $$  (TM)    

   $$$$$$$.           .7$$$$$$  $$     

     $$$$$$$$$$$$7$$$$$$$$$.$$$$$$     

       $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.               

configure: Package configured for:

configure: OS type  : linux-gnu

configure: Host CPU : x86_64

Well now isn’t that pretty and a good sign that I got it right on the 3rd try. Now I run make and after a spew of work on my session I get:

+——— Asterisk Build Complete ———+

 + Asterisk has successfully been built, and +

 + can be installed by running:              +

 +                                           +

 +               make install                +

 +——————————————-+

Ok, if you insist, I guess I will make install.

+—- Asterisk Installation Complete ——-+

 +                                           +

 +    YOU MUST READ THE SECURITY DOCUMENT    +

 +                                           +

 + Asterisk has successfully been installed. +

 + If you would like to install the sample   +

 + configuration files (overwriting any      +

 + existing config files), run:              +

 +                                           +

 +               make samples                +

 +                                           +

 +—————–  or ———————+

 +                                           +

 + You can go ahead and install the asterisk +

 + program documentation now or later run:   +

 +                                           +

 +              make progdocs                +

 +                                           +

 + **Note** This requires that you have      +

 + doxygen installed on your local system    +

 +——————————————-+

That’s it, I have it installed. Wait there’s more; a quick look at some other guides suggests I should get:

·         asterisk-addons-1.4-current.tar.gz

·         asterisk-core-sounds-en-gsm-current.tar.gz

I choose the gsm because they talked about gsm in the book a lot, I might need a different package but I will see.
It was time to dive into configuration, I remember the book was very thorough so I started going through the steps there. Back in the asterisk source directory, I did a make config to create the Fedora/Redhat style startup scripts. I also did a make samples to get the /etc/asterisk directory populated. Next I needed to get my 3102 configured so I used the Voxilla Configuration System to get the basics setup. I copied each of the suggested sections into the corresponding configuration files and then hit the Install Configuration button to handle the 3102 side of things. I was getting excited to I checked the Registration State field in the web voice configuration section and it said failed. I would hope so since we need to actually start Asterisk. I started Asterisk at the console with /usr/sbin/asterisk –cvvv. So far, so good. While I was fiddling around trying to figure out how to force the 3102 to register, I saw

*CLI> — Registered SIP ’101′ at 192.168.0.206 port 5060 expires 3600 in the background.

A quick check of the Voice Status page also showed

Registration State: Registered.

I edited the /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf and added an example from the book:

exten => 611,1,Answer()
exten => 611,2,Echo()

Note that this will be under the [home] heading instead of [internal] as the book shows since the Voxilla configuration sets the context to home. I also made a change to the dialplan on the 3102 to allow 611 [2-579]11<:@gw0> instead of [2-79]11<:@gw0>. Dialing 611 from my office phone put me into echo land like it should have. The sky is the limit from here; I am going to move on with voicemail, fwd and some of the examples in the book on my own.
It was a much shorter journey then I expected which I think is good. I always say start with a very basic working configuration and then add one little thing at a time. Good luck in your ventures with Asterisk.

I started looking around and ran into the ADSL Bandwidth Management HOW-TO. After playing with this one for a while, I realized that I didn’t have the proper imq device listed in the prerequisites. However, this gave me some great background on how it works. There was a tiny nugget of guidance in the related links section pointing to dsl_qos_queue which said no kernel patching. I downloaded the package (precompiled) and it already had the libipq compiled as part of it. Wow!

There is a serious lack of documentation with this amazing product but through some digging in the source code, I was able to find switches to point it to eth1 for my outbound interface instead of the default eth0. (to find the help, it’s dsl_qos_queue -h, not –help or -? or /? or anything I guessed on the first try) On my first attempt, it worked perfectly for giving me low-latency VoIP for my Callvantage but it really choked my upstream speed for everything else. Back to the switches I found that there was a cap rate switch that would allow me to specify my max outbound rate in kB/s. DSL reports was telling me that my uprate was about 690kbps, 690000/8 gave me 86250 bytes per second. I changed my switches around a little bit and came up with a start line of “dsl_qos_queue -i eth1 -d -r 96000″. I updated the ipt_rules script to call this after added the marking rules and added one more for my Callvantage box. I then copied the whole shebang to my /etc/shorewall/tcstart file (traffic shaping for shorewall) and modified the shorewall.conf file and set TC_ENABLED=yes which makes shorewall automatically call the tcstart file when I start up my firewall. I also set CLEAR_TC=Yes to clear out the rules on startup, even though it’s already part of the script. Here is the modified ipt_rules file copied to tcstart for your reference.

#!/bin/bash
# add MYSHAPER-OUT chain to the mangle table in iptables - this sets up the table we'll use
# to filter and mark packets.
killall dsl_qos_queue

DEV=eth1

# Reset everything to a known state (cleared)
iptables -t mangle -D POSTROUTING -o $DEV -j MYSHAPER-OUT 2> /dev/null > /dev/null
iptables -t mangle -F MYSHAPER-OUT 2> /dev/null > /dev/null
iptables -t mangle -X MYSHAPER-OUT 2> /dev/null > /dev/null

#if [ "$1" != "install" ]
#then
# exit
#fi

iptables -t mangle -N MYSHAPER-OUT
iptables -t mangle -I POSTROUTING -o $DEV -j MYSHAPER-OUT

# add fwmark entries to classify different types of traffic - Set fwmark from 20-26 according to
# desired class. 20 is highest prio.
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p tcp --sport 0:1024 -j MARK --set-mark 23 # Default for low port traffic
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p tcp --dport 0:1024 -j MARK --set-mark 23 # ""
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p tcp --dport 20 -j MARK --set-mark 26 # ftp-data port, low prio
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p tcp --dport 5190 -j MARK --set-mark 23 # aol instant messenger
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p icmp -j MARK --set-mark 20 # ICMP (ping) - high prio, impress friends
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p udp --dport 123 -j MARK --set-mark 20 # NTP should be low-lag
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p udp --dport 53 -j MARK --set-mark 21 # DNS name resolution (small packets)
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p tcp --dport ssh -j MARK --set-mark 22 # secure shell
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p tcp --sport ssh -j MARK --set-mark 22 # secure shell
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p tcp --dport telnet -j MARK --set-mark 22 # telnet (ew...)
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p tcp --sport telnet -j MARK --set-mark 22 # telnet (ew...)
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p ipv6-crypt -j MARK --set-mark 24 # IPSec - we dont know what the payload is though...
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p tcp --sport http -j MARK --set-mark 25 # Local web server
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p tcp -m length --length :64 -j MARK --set-mark 21 # small packets (probably just ACKs)
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -p tcp --sport 3389 -j MARK --set-mark 23 # windows remote computer connection
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -s 192.168.0.211 -j MARK --set-mark 20 # Callvantage box traffic should be high-prio
iptables -t mangle -A MYSHAPER-OUT -m mark --mark 0 -j MARK --set-mark 26 # redundant- mark any unmarked packets as 26 (low pri

/root/dsl_qos_queue/dsl_qos_queue -i eth1 -d -r 85250

This works great and I hope it gives you AT&T Callvantage, Vonage and other VoIP users a good starting point for traffic control through Linux.

I called up Vonage and requested the line be cancelled, I was glad to finally get to call customer service instead of technical support because the hold times are alot better. Suprise, suprise, I was transferred to tech support because the number I was cancelling was the “primary” on the box and the MTA would need to be reprogrammed. I can’t wait to see what they do next.

Luckily everything seems to be moving along with AT&T, they are sending me assuring emails that my transfer is on target for 12/23 and the MTA is in the mail. I am looking forward to calling Vonage and just cancelling the whole deal.

Wish me luck!

I set Melissa’s line back up with Qwest for $25/mo with a waived activation fee for returning from a competitor and decided I would give AT&T Callvantage a try for my business line. I do a lot of long distance so this would be a good cost savings. However, this time, at the first sign of crappy quality, I am leaving this VoIP ship and going back to a good ol’ “TiVo-can-dial-up-I-can-send-faxes-works-when-internet-is-down” hardwired phone line. Also luckily for me, Vonage was so incompetent that they never transferred my service fully away from Qwest so porting was easy this time with my line. I look forward to receiving my MTA and calling Vonage and telling them to get lost in the next week. Stay tuned and I will let you know how it goes.