SysAdminMan Blog » SysAdminMan – Asterisk Hosting – Trixbox, Elastix, FreePBX, A2Billing

PBX in a Flash template updated to v2.0.6.2 Purple

matt — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 11:24:54 +0000

The PBX in a Flash (PIAF) template provided when ordering a SysAdminMan VPS has been updated to version 2.0.6.2 Purple.

This includes Asterisk 1.8.8.0 and FreePBX 2.8.

Please see here for more information on a hosted PBX in a Flash virtual server - http://sysadminman.net/pbx-in-a-flash-hosting.html

SysAdminMan Demo DDI number – 0203 455 6550

matt — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 12:43:04 +0000

SysAdminMan has launched a new demonstration DDI/DID number.

This is designed so that you can hear an example of a VOIP call to a SysAdminMan server.

If you dial the above number you will be presented with a menu where you can choose from the following options -

Test conference call for up to 10 callers
An echo test which will echo back anything you say
Current news read by Cpestral text-to-speech for Asterisk. See here for more into - http://cepstral.com/
Music on hold

You can also press * to hang-up.

This is also a good example of what can be achieved by created an IVR (auto-attendant) on a SysAdminMan server.

Give it a go by calling 0203 455 6550 from inside the UK, or 44 203 455 6550 from outside the UK.

A2Billing video guide Part 4 – Creating a SIP customer

matt — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 23:12:15 +0000

Part 4 of the quick start video guide for A2Billing shows how to create a SIP enabled customer. This could be used for residential where you are billing a customer connecting their handset directly to your system, or maybe a customer who is connecting another PBX to your system using SIP.

Please not that if you are enabling SIP calling you should check out this security post and make the relevant change - http://sysadminman.net/blog/2011/a2billing-blind-transfer-and-fraud-2823

We also have a quick look at some of the agi-conf settings that affect how this call is handled.

The system used was a clean install of a SysAdminMan virtual server. You can find more details about this here - http://sysadminman.net/sysadminman-freepbx-a2billing-hosting.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZEP0WtlLtw

A2Billing video guide Part 3 – Access DDI, customers, test calls and some agi-conf

matt — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:08:28 +0000

This is part 3 of the SysAdminMan video guide to getting started with A2Billing. In the previous videos we set up and trunk and a rate card. In this video we set up an access DDI number for calling card customers, we create a customer, and then place some test calls.

We also have a quick look at some of the agi-conf settings that affect how this call is handled.

The system used was a clean install of a SysAdminMan virtual server. You can find more details about this here - http://sysadminman.net/sysadminman-freepbx-a2billing-hosting.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPgrK8njZdc

A2Billing video guide Part 2 – Rates, Rate Cards and Call Plans

matt — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:53:28 +0000

This video guide shows how to set up A2Billing for calling card and SIP use and is split in to several parts. It follows on from a FreePBX setup guide which can be found starting here - http://sysadminman.net/blog/2011/freepbx-video-guide-part-1-creating-an-extension-3395

The system used was a clean install of a SysAdminMan virtual server. You can find more details about this here - http://sysadminman.net/sysadminman-freepbx-a2billing-hosting.html

The softphone used is called Blink, this works on both Windows and Linux and you can find more details on that here - http://icanblink.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx2zIS1fMno

A2Billing video guide Part 1 – Creating a trunk

matt — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:06:36 +0000

The system used was a clean install of a SysAdminMan virtual server. You can find more details about this here - http://sysadminman.net/sysadminman-freepbx-a2billing-hosting.html

The softphone used is called Blink, this works on both Windows and Linux and you can find more details on that here - http://icanblink.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frbj-_g1Kwo

IPv6 tunnel on OpenWRT using tunnelbroker.net

matt — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:02:05 +0000

I’m far from an IPv6 expert so this is more a detail of my experiences, rather than a detailed setup guide.

My ISP does not provide native IPv6 yet to their ADSL customers but I wanted to set up IPv6 on my local network, and be able to access the Internet using IPv6. To do this I’m using a free tunnel from tunnelbroker.net. The way this works is that your IPv6 packets are wrapped up in IPv4 and sent to tunnelbroker. There they are unwrapped and sent on their way, as IPv6 packets. Once set up this is transparent to you and you just treat it as a normal IPv6 network.

When you sign up for a free tunnel with tunnelbroker you will receive several pieces of information that you will need to set up your tunnel.

Here are my settings -

Server IPv4 Address - 216.66.84.46. This is where your router will sent your ‘wrapped up’ IPv6 packets for onward delivery.

Client IPv6 Address - 2001:470:1d14:154::2/64. This is the IPv6 address of the WAN side of your router

Routed /64 - 2001:470:1d15:154::/64. This is the IPv6 subnet that you will use on your LAN

Once you have these settings you can click on the Example Configurations page in tunnelbroker and, at least for OpenWRT, it tells you what commands to run on your router to install IPv6 and enable it for the tunnelbroker tunnel.

I wanted my router, a TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND, to hand out IPv6 IP addresses to my LAN clients so I also needed to install the following packages -

opkg update
opkg install 6in4
opkg install 6to4
opkg install ip6tables
opkg install kmod-ip6tables
opkg install kmod-ipv6
opkg install luci-proto-6x4
opkg install radvd
opkg install wide-dhcpv6-server

Detailed instructions for setting up IPv6 on OpenWRT can be found here - http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/ipv6

To test the tunnel is working you can ping ipv6.google.com from the router

To test the LAN/DHCP is working you can ping ipv6.google.com from your PC

I struggled a little to get the LAN/DHCP side working. Here are my relevant config files -

/etc/config/dhcp6s

config 'dhcp6s' 'basic'
option 'enabled' '1'
option 'interface' 'lan'
option 'config_file' '/etc/dhcp6s.conf'

/etc/dhcp6s.conf

option domain-name-servers 2001:4860:4860::8888;

interface br-lan {
address-pool pool1 86400;
};

pool pool1 {
range 2001:470:1d15:154:0:0:0:1001 to 2001:470:1d15:154:0:0:0:2000 ;
};

/etc/config/radvd

config interface
option interface 'lan'
option AdvSendAdvert 1
option AdvManagedFlag 1
option AdvOtherConfigFlag 1
list client ''
option ignore 0

config prefix
option interface 'lan'
list prefix ''
option AdvOnLink 1
option AdvAutonomous 1
option AdvRouterAddr 0
option ignore 0

config route
option interface 'lan'
list prefix ''
option ignore 0

config rdnss
option interface 'lan'
list addr ''
option ignore 0

config dnssl
option interface 'lan'
list suffix ''
option ignore 1

/var/etc/radvd.conf

interface br-lan
{
AdvSendAdvert on;
AdvManagedFlag on;
AdvOtherConfigFlag on;

prefix 2001:470:1d15:154::1/64
{
AdvOnLink on;
AdvAutonomous on;
AdvRouterAddr off;
};

RDNSS fe80::b248:7aff:fede:267e
{
};
};

Once everything is set up and working you should run the IPv6 portscan from the tunnelbroker web site. This will port scan a machine on your local network. This is very important as your machine is now directly connected to the internet, with no NAT happening on the IPv6 connection.

You should run a port scan to ensure that your firewall is blocking inbound connections over IPv6

TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND OpenVPN performance on OpenWRT

matt — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:58:10 +0000

This is a brief follow-up to this post – sysadminman.net/blog/2011/openvpn-sysadminman-asterisk-tl-wr1043nd-3431 – which details OpenVPN on a TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND running OpenWRT.

I used iperf to max out my ADSL link which will run at 8mb. This showed around 35% CPU usage on the TP-LINK so it looks good, at least for my line speed.

Here is the iperf report -

[ 3] local 10.10.10.248 port 56167 connected with 10.20.0.1 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.1 sec 9.25 MBytes 7.65 Mbits/sec

and CPU usage by running ‘top’ on the TP-LINK -

CPU: 17% usr 8% sys 0% nic 63% idle 0% io 0% irq 9% sirq
Load average: 0.00 0.00 0.00 1/35 1194
PID PPID USER STAT VSZ %MEM %CPU COMMAND
1154 1 root S 4516 15% 34% /usr/sbin/openvpn --syslog openvpn(sa
1194 1188 root R 1376 5% 0% top

OpenVPN with a SysAdminMan Asterisk VPS and TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND

matt — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:05:49 +0000

There are several potential benefits to setting up a VPN to your Asterisk server. All traffic is encrypted and you don’t need to open lots of ports in the firewall. Also there are no issues with SIP and NAT as traffic is routed over the VPN tunnel.

This is a pretty advanced setup but here is a walkthrough for setting up a SysAdminMan VPS as an OpenVPN server and then connecting to it with a TP-LINK router running OpenWRT.

Specifically this router is used - http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?model=TL-WR1043ND. I paid around £40 from Amazon, an absolute bargain for something that will run OpenWRT.

Setting up the router

First you need to flash OpenWRT on to the router. This replaces the original firmware. Here are some instructions for this TP-Link router - http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr1043nd?s. I got version 18 of the router and flashed Backfire 10.03.1-rc6 version of OpenWRT.

Next the router was connected via the WAN port on the TP-LINK to my home network. The WAN side of your TP-LINK should be given an IP address from your network DHCP server. It will use this to connect to the Internet.

Now connect a PC to a LAN port using a network cable and you should be given an IP address in the range 192.168.1.0/24

Now make the following changes on the router using a web browser. This will install the OpenVPN software and assign a new IP address to the router. If you use a different subnet you will need to change some settings below to match -

Assign a password
Change the LAN network address to 10.10.10.1
In OpenWRT go to System / Software and click on Update Lists
Click Available Packages and install OpenVPN
Click System / Administration and enable SSH on the LAN interface
Click System / Startup and Enable and Start OpenVPN
Reboot the router

On the SysAdminMan VPS

For this to work you will need a TUN device assigning to your VPS. Please open a support ticket to request this.

First we’re going to install OpenVPN. This will install from rpmforge, which is set up as standard -

yum install openvpn
cp -r /usr/share/doc/openvpn-2.2.0/easy-rsa/2.0/* /etc/openvpn/
chmod +x /etc/openvpn/*
cd /etc/openvpn

Now, if you’d like you can edit /etc/openvpn/vars and change the settings at the bottom to some sensible defaults. This is not required, but will make creating the certificates easier.

Next we’re going to set up some certificates for OpenVPN. You should run these commands one at a time and answer the questions that are asked -

. ./vars
./clean-all
./build-ca
./build-key-server server
./build-key tplink1

Now create a file called /etc/openvpn/server.conf with the following settings -

port 1194
proto udp
dev tun
ca /etc/openvpn/keys/ca.crt
cert /etc/openvpn/keys/server.crt
key /etc/openvpn/keys/server.key
dh /etc/openvpn/keys/dh1024.pem
server 10.20.0.0 255.255.255.0
ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt
client-config-dir ccd
route 10.10.10.0 255.255.255.0
keepalive 10 120
comp-lzo
user nobody
group nobody
persist-key
persist-tun
status openvpn-status.log
verb 3

Now we’re going to tell OpenVPN to route traffic to our LAN behind the TP-LINK router -

mkdir ccd
echo "iroute 10.10.10.0 255.255.255.0" >> ccd/tplink1

Now fire up OpenVPN -

chkconfig openvpn on
service openvpn start

Next we need to allow the OpenVPN traffic through the local IPTables firewall -

iptables -I INPUT -i tun0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 1194 -j ACCEPT
service iptables save

ON THE TP-LINK ROUTER VIA SSH

Next from your PC we’re going to SSH on to the TP-LINK router at 10.10.10.1 and run the following. This will copy the certificate files we created earlier to the router. X.X.X.X should be replaced with your VPS IP -

cd /etc/openvpn
scp X.X.X.X:/etc/openvpn/keys/ca.crt .
scp X.X.X.X:/etc/openvpn/keys/tplink1.key .
scp X.X.X.X:/etc/openvpn/keys/tplink1.crt .

Now create a copy of the original OpenVPN config file -

cp /etc/config/openvpn /etc/config/openvpn.orig

Next we’re going to edit that file and change some settings from the default. These settings start half way down the file under the client configuration settings. Finally reboot the router -

vi /etc/config/openvpn

option enable 1
list remote "X.X.X.X 1194"
option cert /etc/openvpn/tplink1.crt
option key /etc/openvpn/tplink1.key

reboot

ON THE TP-LINK ROUTER VIA THE WEB GUI

First we’re going to create a new interface that includes the tun interface created by OpenVPN

Network / Interfaces / Add New Interface
name – openvpn
protocol – unmanaged
interface – tun0

and now we’re going to allow traffic through the TP-LINK firewall to the VPN -

Network / Firewall / Zones / Add
Input / Output / Forward = Accept
Tick lan in Destination and Source zones

and now Reboot the router.

And we’re done!

If you used the settings above then VPS should be accessible on the IP address via the IP 10.20.0.1. You should be able to get to the FreePBX web interface on this address and also use it for your phone configuration.

This is definitely not for the faint hearted as it’s pretty technical and could require some troubleshooting if things don’t work immediately. It’s pretty cool though and should allow for multiple VOIP handsets to be plugged in to the TP-LINK router and connect to the VPS without any worry of NAT problems (as there’s no NAT happening across the VPN).

I’ve done a few test calls which worked well, but I’ve still got to do some speed tests to see how well the TP-LINK performs.

FreePBX video guide Part 3 – Inbound Calling

matt — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:05:34 +0000

This is part 3 of the video guide for getting started with FreePBX. This follows on from Part 2 which can be found here - http://sysadminman.net/blog/2011/freepbx-video-guide-part-2-outbound-calling-3414

The system used was a clean install of a SysAdminMan virtual server. You can find more details about this here - http://sysadminman.net/sysadminman-freepbx-a2billing-hosting.html

The softphone used is called Blink, this works on both Windows and Linux and you can find more details on that here - http://icanblink.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0DYpt5umkE