Voip server

jamster · 19th March 2006

Hi all,

I've been having a play with Voip over the past few days; got an Asterisk@home server up and running but it's not the most intuitive thing in the world to say the least - still haven't managed to get it talking to sipgate.

Anyone got experience in this. I'm just playing at the moment, but I wonder what those serious about setting up their (small) office use for this kind of this? Asterisk seems a bit like overkill but there's no doubt that voip would be useful for a small office (voicemail, connecting from home etc etc.)

Chris.

samb · 20th March 2006

I've been using Asterisk for a couple of years now and it's superb. The ability to have telephone extensions anywhere with an internet connection is superb, especially for me recently as I'm in Manchester one week and London the next.

Asterisk isn't overkill at all - just because it has a lot of features doesn't mean you have to use them all!

chrismarks · 21st March 2006

We use it to route our (& clients) calls. You talking to sipgate, you mean to use one of their inbound numbers or to make calls out via their service?

I use sipgate so my girlfriend and I can have "home" numbers (aka I have a Derby number, and she has a Cardiff Number) so our families & friends can call us locally - as we're living in Exeter at the moment.

Sipgate's service is pretty **** to be honest with you, I've complained so many times - their latest excuse is their adding new servers within a week to cope with their load. Last 4 times their services have been unuseable, it was due to their "carrier".

Anyway,

Registering with their service (sip.conf):

register => 2898230:PASSWD@sipgate.co.uk/2898230 ; Chris (sipgate.co.uk)

^ Registers with the user 2898230 and Password PASSWD at sipgate, and passes it through to "2898230" as the extension (the /2898230 bit).

in extensions.conf :

[incoming]

exten => 2898230,1,Macro(incoming,100,SIP/chris,Derby Number)
exten => 1006483,1,Macro(incoming,101,SIP/ellie,Cardiff Number)

Just an example of who I use sipgate for my own, and Ellie's own number.. I use a macro to call internal extensions mind, but you could simply have (in whatever context)

exten => SIPGATE-EXTENSION,1,Dial(SIP/user,30,twW) ; (allows transfer, and recording)
exten => SIPGATE-EXTENSION,2,Voicemail(u1) ; after 30 seconds has gone by, send the dialing user to voicemail (user "1", with their unavaliable message).

Outgoing wise:

Once you've created the user context you (if memory serves me correctly need to have insecure=very (or perhaps its yes?) for it to work - there's an example in their support section on their site. I don't have a config at hand to show you, as I don't use them for outbound calls anymore.

Note: I don't use A@H, I did a source install - but its along the same lines anyway.

jamster · 21st March 2006

Cheers Chris, that's helpful. I had a play around and got the same setup working, it works well.

I think the mistake I made originally was to use the asterisk@home distro; once I ditched that (too confusing for a new user; i think you need to know some of the principles of asterisk first), used astlinux and got in to editing the config files directly with your tips and the asterisk handbook as a guide, it works great.

I got the sipgate incoming number working, and voipcheap as the outgoing sip server, for free calls.

Just playing really, probably won't use it, but it's an interesting application.