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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
In Detail
The open source telephony platform trixbox CE is designed to implement a PBX system with features typically reserved for large enterprise businesses. trixBox allows an individual or organization to set up a telephone system with traditional telephone networks as well as internet-based telephony or VoIP. The task is time consuming and involves a lot of technical skills.
This book comes to your rescue to set up a VoIP system fast and easily using trixbox CE. It is the successor to the highly successful book; trixbox Made Easy, written by Kerry Garrison, the Community Director for trixbox CE.
If you are already familiar with Asterisk Open Source PBX, trixbox CE provides a comprehensive web-based GUI to make managing an Asterisk-based system much easier than dealing with confusing configuration files.
The book begins by introducing telephony concepts before detailing how to plan a telephone system and moving on to the installation, configuration, and management of a feature-packed PBX. This book is rich with practical examples and tools. It will give you all of the information and skills needed to implement your own trixbox CE PBX system for yourself or even to resell to potential clients.
Kerry's original book, trixbox Made Easy, made it possible for anyone to set up a trixbox-based telephony system. The emphasis of this book is to take an in-depth look at trixbox CE and expose all of the features to the typical user. By making the system easier to understand and use, trixbox CE users will have even more power available to them as they implement their own PBX solutions.
Learn from the creator of trixbox how to install, configure, and maintain a telephonic system with tips and tricks for every situation.
Approach
This book is a step-by-step tutorial with clear instructions and screenshots to guide you through the creation of a complete, cost-effective telephony system. With its "follow-along" style, you will start with installation, walk through the different features, see how to manage and maintain the system, and finally see how all the different pieces come together.
Who this book is for
If you want to learn how to install and configure either trixbox CE systems or Asterisk-based PBX systems, without struggling with confusing configuration files and cryptic scripts, this is "the" book for you. This book will also benefit readers who use trixbox CE and want to learn all its features, and how best to use them. It is ideal for any user wishing to set up a telephony system for small business usage. No previous knowledge of Trixbox or networking is required, although some basic knowledge of PBX and Linux would be an advantage.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009
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Table of Contents
trixbox CE 2.6
Kerry Garrison
trixbox CE 2.6
Copyright © 2009 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, Packt Publishing, nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: February 2009
Production Reference: 1190209
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847192-99-8
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Damian Carvill <[email protected]>
Credits
Author
Kerry Garrison
Reviewers
Alan H Miller
Bruce Letterle
David Merel
Jan Bjorkhaug
Kristian Kielhofner
Michael D Mosier
Acquisition Editor
Rashmi Phadnis
Development Editor
Dhiraj Chandiramani
Technical Editor
Mithun Sehgal
Editorial Team Leader
Akshara Aware
Project Manager
Abhijeet Deobhakta
Project Coordinator
Lata Basantani
Indexer
Monica Ajmera
Proofreader
Chris Smith
Production Coordinator
Aparna Bhagat
Cover Work
Aparna Bhagat
About the author
Kerry Garrison has spent over 20 years in the IT industry and was introduced to Asterisk by a long-time friend. After getting Asterisk running at home and finding the Asterisk@Home project to make doing installations even easier, Kerry began writing technical articles about using the system to run a business-grade phone system. After seeing the response to his talk about Asterisk@Home at Astricon in 2005, Kerry decided to write the first book about the system. Before the book went to print, the project was renamed to trixbox. After many rewrites to try to stay current, the first Trixbox Made Easy book was finally published with some additional help from Barry Dempster.
Shortly after the first book was published, Fonality, the sponsor of the trixbox project, hired Kerry as the trixbox project manager to work alongside Andrew Gillis to keep the project moving forward, and he worked as the Community Director at Fonality until January of 2009. Today, Kerry is doing consulting work again, and working on his new project (http://pbxtutorials.com).
The following people have contributed code, their writing, and/or their inspiration to help make this new book possible:
My Family
Without the support of my wife and family putting up with my rants about "I swore I would never write another book", this new book would never have happened. Credits to the family would not be complete without mentioning my dog Lola, who sat by my side during the entire writing of the book and provided a nice break whenever she needed to go for a walk.
Andrew Gillis
While not his intention to help create a revolution in the telephony market, Andrew's little basement project made it simple for millions of users to learn how to use these powerful tools.
Tim Yardley
Known to the world as "Engineer Tim", Tim worked on the trixbox CE project during 2008 as the build engineer. His contribution of information on how to secure a trixbox system was a huge contribution to this book.
About the reviewers
Alan H Miller earned a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. He worked briefly in the materials science research field before moving into the area of computer application design, development, and product management. The telecommunications industry has provided him with stimulating and rewarding opportunities for the majority of his professional career.
The following is the Alan's list of employers:
Bruce Letterle has worked in the technology industry since 1979 with a variety of system integration firms. He founded Creative Web Technologies in 1996, a software integration firm that specializes in open source products.
David Merel is the founder and CEO of ThinkBright LLC (www.thinkbright.net), a cutting-edge Voice over IP carrier providing businesses of all sizes with sophisticated and low cost VoIP solutions.
David started ThinkBright in 2005 and continues to manage the company and its employees, all of whom are dedicated IT professionals. He acts as the company's chief architect, designing new technologies that have added significant revenues to the company's operations. During his years at ThinkBright, David has worked with the latest Voice over IP technology, including all VoIP equipment from major manufacturers such as Cisco, Polycom, Grandstream, and Aastra. He also works with customers ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies, and interacts with system integrators and IT consultants who call ThinkBright on a daily basis for assistance with all of the VoIP solutions that Thinkbright offers. ThinkBright manages hundreds of PBX systems, providing customers with PBX features such as Auto Attendants, Waiting Rooms, and Ring Groups, and also provides SIP or IAX services for customers managing their own PBX system.
David has many years of experience with trixbox and Asterisk, and has installed countless custom configurations and deployments using those solutions.
David earned a Bachelor of Arts triple majoring in philosophy, politics, and law from SUNY Binghamton. David holds a CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) certificate and is proficient in over 10 programming languages and databases, various operating systems, VoIP and related communication solutions, and other open-source business applications.
Jan Bjorkhaug was born in Bergen on the west coast of Norway, 49 years ago. He is happily married with four children ranging from 17 months to 25 years of age. He is the CEO of Omnipro, Netsecur, and VoIPtel.
During the last 15 years, Jan has established five IT ventures located in Norway, the Philippines, and most recently the VoIPtel Distribution Central located in Breda, the Netherlands.
He, Bruce, and Adelina, they are currently responsible for the VoIPtel CE and SE firmware used by the embedded open-source series of IP PBXs manufactured by Atcom Technology Co. Ltd. These small but powerful PBXs are made available through their webshop as well their network of international retailers.
For more information, please visit http://voiptel.no or http://blog.voiptel.no.
I would like to thank my son Bruce for his invaluable input during my review of this book, as well as my wife Aileen Joy and the rest of my family for their enormous patience and understanding when my work kept me away from them.
Kristian Kielhofner is VP, Systems Engineering for Star2Star Communications, developer of an end-to-end VoIP architecture. Kristian is responsible for the design and implementation of Star2Star's VoIP services. When he's not consulting or working for Star2Star, he enjoys tinkering with one of his FOSS projects—AstLinux, Runnix, or Recqual. You can find out what else Kristian is up to on his blog at http://blog.krisk.org.
Michael D Mosier started messing around with computers when he was 8 years old, on a TRS 80. He has a BFA in both Drawing/Painting and Graphic Arts and a minor in Computer Science. He has been in the IT business for over 20 years, working with setting up the first networks in several Graphic Design firms and Printing companies.
He started learning Asterisk and trixbox about four years ago as a way to teach himself IP-based phone systems. Knowing that technology was moving toward all IP-based systems, he thought it would be a great way to get his company and himself a jump on the new technology.
He is one of the Principals at Select Phone Solutions in Houston, Texas. They have trixbox work all over the states of Texas and Louisiana. They have been successfully installing trixbox CE for over two years. He also holds the technician FtoCC.
Preface
trixbox CE is an open-source IP PBX system based on the Asterisk Open Source PBX (Private Branch eXchange) software. Using trixbox CE, you can set up a PBX system to run your business that will have features previously only available to companies with huge budgets. With the flexibility of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), a trixbox CE system can be extremely versatile and provide features such as remote users and branch office support.
This book will show you all of the features of trixbox CE with information about how to best utilize those features to create a system that will serve your needs as well as keep your incoming callers from being annoyed.
This book starts with the basics and works up through all the features, building on what you are learning, to enable you to build a feature-rich and well-laid-out phone system.
What this book covers
Chapter 1 introduces you to the basics of open source PBX systems, describes how they handle calls, how they connect to the existing telephone networks, and what the software is like under the hood.
Chapter 2 delves specifically into what trixbox CE is and how it is different from Asterisk or other open source PBX platforms.
Chapter 3 shows you how to install trixbox CE and goes through all of the main sections of the user interface that we will be using to configure the system.
Chapter 4 gets into the configuration of all of the primary features of trixbox CE including setting up of phones, extensions, and IVR menus.
Chapter 5 takes you through the planning of a successful deployment and how to properly structure a system for best results.
Chapter 6 takes you through hardware configurations such as TDM cards and hard phones.
Chapter 7 covers the different aspects of network issues that you need to take into account and how different network designs can affect the performance of your system.
Chapter 8 talks about advanced trunking methods for connecting multiple systems together for connecting business units, branch offices, and so on.
Chapter 9 is a complete overview of the PBX functions that are built into the system and shows how to add your own functions if you need to.
Chapter 10 covers the PBX features in detail with best practices on using the features for best results.
Chapter 11 covers general maintenance tasks and reporting functions.
Chapter 12 takes you through the steps of troubleshooting your system when things are not working the way they should.
Chapter 13 goes through some of the utilities that are included with trixbox CE to make using your system easier.
Chapter 14 will help you design a good call flow that accomplishes the needs of the company and keeps callers from hanging up.
Chapter 15 explains how to secure your trixbox CE system and keep unwanted people out of the system.
Chapter 16 shows you some of the features of the upcoming HUD (Version 3) that is coming to trixbox CE soon.
Chapter 17 introduces you to trixbox Pro, the big brother to trixbox CE that is a commercial PBX package.
What you need for this book
Anyone with enough technical knowledge to figure out how to burn a CD can install and configure a basic trixbox system; however, to properly manage and maintain a system, you will need a base level of Linux skills. Throughout this book, we will look at many of the Linux commands you will need to get started.
Who this book is for
If you want to learn how to install and configure either trixbox CE systems or Asterisk-based PBX systems, without struggling with confusing configuration files and cryptic scripts, this is "the" book for you. This book will also benefit readers who use trixbox CE and want to learn all its features, and how best to use them. It's ideal for any user wishing to set up a telephony system for small business usage.
No previous knowledge of trixbox or networking is required, although some basic knowledge of PBX and Linux would be an advantage.
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Chapter 1. Introduction to open source PBX systems
In this chapter we will look at:
What is a PBX?
Private Branch Exchange: A Private Branch eXchange (also called PBX, Private Business eXchange, or PABX for Private Automatic Branch eXchange) is a telephone exchange that serves a particular business or office, as opposed to one that a common carrier or telephone company operates for many businesses or for the general public.—Wikipedia
A PBX is the middleman between the phone company and/or Internet Telephone Service Provider (ITSP) and the extensions within your office. The PBX system provides all of the telephony features for your organization such as extensions, voicemail, music on hold, call transfers, call parking, and many other functions. Early on, the routing of calls was done by banks of workers (usually female) that would connect calls by plugging and unplugging wires to connect a caller to a phone that was connected to the system. Eventually technology improved and moved to automated systems to handle the call routing and extension management.
As the telephone network evolved and companies became more reliant on their telephone connections, the routing functions moved from the phone company to being inside the individual companies, first using the same switchboard technology, and eventually moving into large rooms full of switches and relays.
Traditional PBX
It isn't hard to spot a traditional PBX system; it's usually a large box full of mechanical switches and relays mounted on a wall in 'the phone room'. When a company needs additions, moves, and changes, they need to call out 'the phone guy' to make changes to the system.
With a traditional PBX system you would purchase your phone system and be locked into a very small number of telephone sets, always from the same manufacturer of the PBX system, and usually only a very small number of devices to choose from. Adding features like voicemail is usually an expensive add-on to the base system. Although some legacy PBXs now have options for network access and VoIP functionality, these options are often very expensive upgrades.
Hybrid PBX
A hybrid PBX combines the features of a traditional PBX system with VoIP (Voice over IP) functionality. In some cases the VoIP functionality may just be the way the PBX communicates with the phones, other VoIP functions may include the ability to have remote extensions or softphones, and still other VoIP functionality may include being able to use internet telephone service providers and not just the traditional public telephone network.
The Asterisk PBX system is a full hybrid system combining numerous types of connections to the public telephone network as well as VoIP functionality including:
Every business, large or small, needs some kind of phone system but many small businesses have never been able to afford all of the features and functions that a good PBX can provide.
With the advent of IP PBX systems based on open source software, the cost of creating a business-class PBX system has plummeted over the last few years. Since an IP PBX such as Asterisk or SIPx incurs only the cost of the PC hardware and the labor to install it, virtually any small business can now afford a PBX system with all of the features and functionality that only Fortune 500 companies could afford before.
Open telephony projects
There are a number of open source telephony projects available these days besides trixbox/Asterisk. A few examples of other open source projects are the following:
The open source dilemma
Using open source software is not for everyone; there are exceptionally good open source packages available and there are some really bad ones as well. Two of the biggest problems with open source software are a lack of commercial support and the project going stale because of lack of interest or lack of funding.
When looking at an open source package for use in your business, you should always look for a commercial support option as well as a means by which the project is funded. With trixbox, you have commercial support from not only Fonality but from many third-party support organizations. Secondly, since the project is funded by Fonality, the project has a dedicated development team that works on the project full time to create new features, fix bugs, and ensure system reliability.
While I am a big proponent of using open source software whenever I can, there is a time and a place for it. You have to use the right tool for the job. Unfortunately, projects like OpenOffice.org don't have enough compatibility with Microsoft Office products to really be a true alternative, while the GIMP, which is an image processing tool, is more than sufficient for most people who can't afford Adobe Photoshop.
Asterisk and trixbox are specific tools that interface very nicely with traditional phone circuits taking compatibility out of the loop. With the features it offers and the substantial cost savings, a trixbox telephony solution is a viable alternative to a traditional PBX system.
The PSTN
The Public Switched Telephone Network is the backbone of the world's communication infrastructure. This is the network that is controlled by the traditional telephone companies. This remains the primary network for calls placed and received around the globe and there are numerous interfaces into this network.
The trouble with the PSTN is that it is very static and in most countries it is strictly controlled by the telecommunications companies and even governments. If a business wants to make a lot of internal calls using the PSTN, it is by no means a cheap way to communicate. ISDN/T1/E1 circuits are most commonly found at the external interface of a company's communication network, with all the internal communications going through internal lines that are controlled by an internal telephone system.
Voice over IP
Now that we understand the basics of a PBX system it's time to look at how VoIP fits into the equation. In a modern IP-PBX system, VoIP can be used in the following areas:
Connecting phones to the PBX system:
This is usually done over the existing data network that the computers are using. This can be with either local phones or telecommuters.
Connecting to a VoIP service provider:
This provides the ability to get 'dialtone' provided over the Internet to your PBX system. The VoIP service provider then terminates your calls to the PSTN network off of their network.
Connecting PBX systems together:
This is used for connecting branch offices together to allow interoffice communications without the cost of running phone lines between the offices.
It is important to note that VoIP connections for telephone service are not yet a complete replacement for traditional PSTN lines. A VoIP service is certainly an alternative way to connect to the PSTN as you can make and receive calls to the PSTN network through your VoIP service provider.
As the Internet grew, became faster and more reliable, it became apparent that it was possible, and in many cases, preferable to use the Internet for carrying voice as well as data. There were more than a few problems in making voice communication a viable alternative over the Internet. For example, data connections can tolerate a certain amounts of lag, packet loss, and jitter while voice communication will suffer severe quality issues under the same conditions. Network lag and jitter can result in symptoms such as echo, jitter, and garbled communication. If you have ever watched a news broadcast with an overseas reporter using a sat-phone and heard the drop-outs and choppiness, while this may be acceptable for a brief news report, having that same quality on your business-to-business phone calls is simply not going to be acceptable.
While we think of VoIP as being a new technology, we have been using VoIP communication over the Internet for well over two decades. The reason for the increased popularity is that being able to have remote workers with phones tied directly to the PBX system is now possible; the ability to connect remote offices is relatively painless, and being able to use VoIP service providers for call origination and termination is now a viable alternative.
The biggest problem with VoIP service over the Internet is that Internet Service Providers do not allow Quality of Service (QoS) packets to prioritize voice traffic over other data traffic. Due to this, VoIP over the Internet is very prone to problems that are outside of the control of yourself or your VoIP provider.
On the plus side, VoIP circuits can be very cost-effective, especially for long distance calls through large providers, which may mean your calls can be routed over the Internet to a termination point physically close to the location you are trying to call. Because of these kinds of network reach, very often long distance rates from VoIP service provides can be substantially less than when using PSTN circuits.
Asterisk—the brain of the PBX
Asterisk is the core piece of software that handles the call flow and PBX functions within the system. In essence, Asterisk is a toolkit that can be used to create different types of telephony-based applications such as a security system, conference room system, PSTN termination system, as well as the obvious PBX and IVR (interactive voice response) system that we will build with trixbox. With currently available PCI cards and external devices it is possible to create an enterprise-class PBX system using Asterisk, commodity PC components, and a few pieces of extra gear. Because most of the components are off-the-shelf computer parts and open source software, the cost of building an extremely powerful business phone system is only a fraction of what a traditional phone system would cost.
Asterisk is, simply put, 'just software'. Instead of using banks of dedicated processors, all of the call-flow and routing is done via software. This is really what makes Asterisk so popular; what used to take a wall full of mechanical switches and relays is all done on a regular PC using a piece of open source software. Since traditional systems are closed and proprietary, finding someone to manage and maintain a legacy system can be quite expensive.
Implementing the phone system functions entirely through software opens up countless possibilities for even more advanced features such as predictive dialing, database integration, and virtually anything we can imagine interfacing with or even controlling with a phone system. All of this and much more can be accomplished with a little ingenuity and a little bit of programming. We don't have to be a programmer to use an Asterisk-based PBX system, but being able to do programming and create custom dialplans can greatly increase the types of features you can create and implement. If you are looking for a very specific feature that hasn't been created yet, you can post bounties to the message boards to find someone who can create that functionality for you. Being able to easily find developers and coders to help add functionality is one of the key advantages of the open source model. This type of flexibility is basically unheard of with traditional systems. Developing new functions and features and giving them back to the community is a great way of contributing to the project and helping other people to share in what you have created. This is one of the core philosophies of the open source model. Not everyone will contribute their code that they develop back, nor is it a requirement (more on this later), and many companies have developed closed source software around the open source Asterisk code. Some VoIP service providers use Asterisk for their infrastructure and switching, and companies like Fonality and Digium have closed source commercial packages that use the Asterisk Open Source engine under the hood.
With so many companies using Asterisk to run their businesses on, a wide range of common functions and external features have already been developed and are available for everyone to use.
What Asterisk isn't
Asterisk by itself is not an easy system to set up and configure. Just getting basic services up and running requires an in-depth knowledge of Asterisk configuration files that need to be edited and maintained. By default, there is no built-in interface available to set up and configure Asterisk. Moreover, the few available management tools typically have to be manually installed and configured separately. However, the benefit of trixbox is that much of this is hidden away from the user, and with the aid of this book, it should be very easy to get a system up and running with a very little effort. Asterisk on its own is not:
While Digium does offer a Business Edition of Asterisk, the open source version does not come with any technical support. Being an open source project, we need either to be able to troubleshoot ourselves, turn to community forums for support, or hire a consultant to help us out.
If we are fairly proficient with Linux, we are well ahead of the crowd that typically looks at the trixbox system. While Asterisk is just another software package that runs on almost every Linux distribution, trixbox is a distribution of its own, which abstracts some of these often complicated layers from us. So at some point, Linux skills may be helpful for optimizing the system or troubleshooting; certainly many people with no previous Linux experience have been very successful in rolling out trixbox systems. As we will see, trixbox can make many of the potential issues much less of a concern and more straightforward.
You can't install Asterisk on your standard PC and then plug into any PSTN interface you choose without the correct hardware. If we want to access the PSTN (which is not a requirement if you want a VoIP-only system), we may want to get services from an ITSP (Internet Telephone Service Provider) or install hardware in our server in order to provide access to our POTS, ISDN, or other line types.
Config files—the barrier to entry
One of the biggest hurdles that Asterisk faced in getting massive deployment was that you have to learn how to set up all of the different configuration files. It is true that if you are a config file master, you can make Asterisk do things that are
simply not possible in the trixbox GUI as trixbox is limited to only those features it has been programmed to configure for you. The good news is that very few companies ever need features that aren't included in trixbox.
The following example shows the screen used in trixbox to create a simple extension and the corresponding configuration file.
[500]
type=friend
secret=500
record_out=Adhoc
record_in=Adhoc
qualify=yes
port=5060
nat=yes
mailbox=500@device
host=dynamic
dtmfmode=rfc2833
dial=SIP/500
context=from-internal
canreinvite=no
callerid=device <500>
call-limit=50
While trixbox CE does make using Asterisk dramatically easier, it is certainly a good idea to really get in and learn all you can about the Asterisk configuration files. The more you know about how the system works under the hood the easier it will be for you to troubleshoot problems and even add features to your systems that aren't available in trixbox CE.
Additional Asterisk information
Without a doubt, the most complete source of information on using and configuring Asterisk is the book Asterisk: The Future of Telephony written by Jim Van Meggelen, Leif Madsen, and Jared Smith. The printed version of the book weighs in at a hefty 444 pages and covers everything you would need to know to configure an Asterisk system from scratch using manually-coded configuration files.
As a bonus, the book is also available as a free PDF download which can be found at http://asteriskdocs.org.
The history of Asterisk
Asterisk is the brain child of Mark Spencer and began life as a simple project to use traditional PC hardware to interface to regular phone lines. A few years and countless lines of code later, Asterisk is currently the leading open source PBX software.
Asterisk is written in C for Linux-based systems and has a wealth of features that any business owner would love to have. The following is a very incomplete list of some of the Asterisk's many features.
Current versions of Asterisk support some very interesting technologies such as storing voicemail in IMAP folders or ODBC connections, Dictation and Follow-Me applications, and much improved jitter buffers and many other new things being added all the time.
The problem is that Asterisk is not easy to install and get running and many people got turned off early on by the complexity of the config files. It was only a matter of time before people started putting together graphical user interfaces to create the complex dialplans. The first of these was the Asterisk Management Portal (AMP) , which later became FreePBX. Digium and many Asterisk purists always believed that the right way to build a system was using config
