As promised, here are some more details about setting up an Asterisk system for a small office/home office. Last time we got a single hard line up and running, and this time we are going to add true VOIP functionality to our system.
You may have been reading about Vonage in the news a bit lately. Yes, they are under some serious attacks by the established telcos, but they offer a wonderful service -- easily the best quality VOIP I have tried. More to the point for this exercise, Vonage offers a service that interfaces nicely with Aterisk -- the softphone.
Vonage offers a softphone option for existing customers -- in Canada, at least, it's an add on to an existing service, and costs around $15.00/month. I understand it is less expensive elsewhere, but even at $15.00, it's fairly cheap.
I wanted to have my outgoing calls on the office network not be limited to the number of hard lines from our local telco; voip is, of course, a wonderful alternative to this, and (at least around here) Vonage's offering is every bit as good as a telco. At least none of my customer's have noticed the difference...
Here's how to set up the Vonage softpone as a trunk (inbound and outbound) on Asterisk (specifically on Trixbox).
1) Add a trunk. In FreePBX, choose Setup -> Trunks -> Add Trunk. Name the trunk whatever your softphone number is, i.e. 19995551212.
2) Outbound caller id - this appears to no have effect, but I set mine up anyway, i.e. "Caller id Inc" <19995551212>
3) For "Peer Details" I used this:
allow=all
auth=md5
canreinvite=yes
defaultexpirey=120
dtmfmode=rfc2833
fromdomain=sphone.vopr.vonage.net
fromuser=[vonage phone number]
host=sphone.vopr.vonage.net
insecure=very
nat=yes
port=5061
secret=[secretgiventomebyvonage]
type=friend
username=[vonage phone number]
Note that "secret" and "username" must be changed to whatever you got from Vonage. Also, the "square brackets" are not part of the peer details.
4) Under User Context, I entered this:
auth=md5
canreinvite=no
context=from-pstn
dtmfmode=inband
fromdomain=sphone.vopr.vonage.net
fromuser=[vonage phone number]
host=sphone.vopr.vonage.net
insecure=very
nat=yes
port=5061
secret=[vonage password]
type=friend
username=[vonage phone number]
5) For register string, I used this:
[phone]:[secret]@sphone.vopr.vonage.net:5061
For example, if your phone number is 1-999-555-1212 and your secret is abcd1234, you would enter:
19995551212:abcd1234@sphone.vopr.vonage.net:5061
Save, and your trunk is now active. Next, we need to add outbound routes.
Last time around, we added a context for dialing out by pressing 9. We are going to modify that so that by default, all outbound calls first go out through vonage, and if that fails or is too busy, then use the hard line. This is trival.
Modify your outbound route "0 9_Outside". Scroll down to Trunk Sequence, and use the drop down menus to select the first as being vonage, and the second as your hard line. Save, and you are done.
That was easy.
3) For "Peer Details" I used this:
allow=all
auth=md5
canreinvite=yes
defaultexpirey=120
dtmfmode=rfc2833
fromdomain=sphone.vopr.vonage.net
fromuser=[vonage phone number]
host=sphone.vopr.vonage.net
insecure=very
nat=yes
port=5061
secret=[secretgiventomebyvonage]
type=friend
username=[vonage phone number]
Note that "secret" and "username" must be changed to whatever you got from Vonage. Also, the "square brackets" are not part of the peer details.
4) Under User Context, I entered this:
auth=md5
canreinvite=no
context=from-pstn
dtmfmode=inband
fromdomain=sphone.vopr.vonage.net
fromuser=[vonage phone number]
host=sphone.vopr.vonage.net
insecure=very
nat=yes
port=5061
secret=[vonage password]
type=friend
username=[vonage phone number]
5) For register string, I used this:
[phone]:[secret]@sphone.vopr.vonage.net:5061
For example, if your phone number is 1-999-555-1212 and your secret is abcd1234, you would enter:
19995551212:abcd1234@sphone.vopr.vonage.net:5061
Save, and your trunk is now active. Next, we need to add outbound routes.
Last time around, we added a context for dialing out by pressing 9. We are going to modify that so that by default, all outbound calls first go out through vonage, and if that fails or is too busy, then use the hard line. This is trival.
Modify your outbound route "0 9_Outside". Scroll down to Trunk Sequence, and use the drop down menus to select the first as being vonage, and the second as your hard line. Save, and you are done.
That was easy.
