Asterisk 1.6

Table of Contents

Asterisk 1.6

Credits

About the Authors

About the Reviewer

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code for the book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Introduction to Asterisk

What is Asterisk?

What's new in Asterisk 1.4?

What's new in Asterisk 1.6?

Asterisk is a PBX

Extension-to-Extension calls

Line trunking

Telco features

Advanced Call Distribution

Call Detail Records

Call recording

Call parking

Call barging

Asterisk is an IVR system

Asterisk is a call center system

Asterisk is a voicemail system

Asterisk is a Voice over IP (VoIP) system

Asterisk 1-2-3

Asterisk scalability

Asterisk does not run on Windows

Is Asterisk a good fit for me?

Trade-offs

Flexibility versus ease of use

Graphical versus configuration file management

Calculating total cost of ownership

Return on Investment

Summary

2. Making a Plan for Deployment

The Public Switched Telephony Network (PSTN)

Connection methods

Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) line

Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN)

T1 or E1

Voice over IP connections

Determining our needs

Terminal equipment

Types of terminal devices

Hard phones

H.323

SIP

IAX

Soft phones

Analog adapters

Another PBX

Choosing a device

Features, features, and more features...

Requirement elicitation

Requirement prioritization

Requirement documentation

Phone testing

Determining true cost

Compatibility with Asterisk

Sound quality analysis

Usability issues

Recording decisions

How much hardware do I need?

Choosing the extension length

Preparing a test environment

Summary

3. Installing Asterisk

Preparing to install Asterisk

Obtaining the source files

Installing DAHDI

Installing LibPRI (optional)

Installing Asterisk

Getting to know Asterisk

Summary

4. Configuring Asterisk

DAHDI interfaces

system.conf

Lines

Terminals

chan_dahdi.conf

Lines

Terminals

SIP interfaces

IAX interfaces

Voicemail

Music on hold

Queues

Conference rooms

Summary

5. Creating a Dialplan

Creating a context

Creating an extension

Creating outgoing extensions

Advanced Call Distribution

Call queues

Call parking

Direct Inward Dialing (DID)

Automated attendants

System services

Summary

6. Quality Assurance

Call Detail Records

Flat-file CDR logging

Database CDR logging

Monitoring calls

Recording calls

Legal concerns

Summary

7. Making Asterisk Easy to Manage

Trixbox

CentOS

Trixbox preparation and installation

What is FreePBX?

FreePBX preparation and installation

FreePBX System Status Dashboard

Tools

Setup

Trixbox maintenance section

Reports

Asterisk Recording Interface

Flash Operator Panel (FOP)

Flash operator configuration files

Web MeetMe

Setting up and accessing Web MeetMe through Trixbox

Flexibility when needed

A simple one-to-one PBX

Extensions

Trunks

Routes

Summary

8. What is asterCRM?

Installing asterCRM

Automatic installation

Manual installation

Introducing asterCRM

Import

Statistic

Extension

Customer

Dialer

System

Survey

Summary

9. Case Studies

Small office/home office

The scenario

The discussion

The configuration

system.conf

chan_dahdi.conf

musiconhold.conf

voicemail.conf

modules.conf

extensions.conf

Conclusions

Small business

The scenario

The discussion

The configuration

system.conf

chan_dahdi.conf

musiconhold.conf

agents.conf

queues.conf

sip.conf

meetme.conf

voicemail.conf

extensions.conf

Conclusions

Hosted PBX

The scenario

The discussion

The configuration

system.conf

chan_dahdi.conf

musiconhold.conf

sip.conf

voicemail.conf

extensions.conf

Conclusions

Summary

10. Maintenance and Security

Backup and system maintenance

Backing up configurations

Backing up voice data

Backing up log files

Backup scripts

Time synchronization

Adding it all to cron

Back up Asterisk with FreePBX

Back up Asterisk with Trixbox

Rebuilding and restoring the Asterisk server

Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

Asterisk server security

Internal access control

Host security hardening for Asterisk

Integrity checker

Rootkit detection

Automated hardening

Role Based Access Control (RBAC)

Network security for Asterisk

Firewalling the Asterisk protocols

SIP (Session Initiation Protocol)

H.323

IAX

The Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP)

Controlling administration of Asterisk

Asterisk scalability

Load balancing with DNS

Support channels for Asterisk

Mailing lists

Forums

Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

Web sites

Digium

Summary

Index

Asterisk 1.6

David Gomillion

Barrie Dempster

David Merel

Asterisk 1.6

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.

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First published: September 2009

Production Reference: 1160909

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-847198-62-4

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Raghuram Ashok (<raghuram.ashok@gmail.com>)

Credits

Authors

David Merel

Barrie Dempster

David Gomillion

Reviewer

Justin Thomas Zimmer

Acquisition Editor

Louay Fatoohi

Development Editor

Swapna V. Verlekar

Technical Editors

Conrad Sardinha

Neha Patwari

Copy Editor

Sanchari Mukherjee

Indexer

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Hemangini Bari

Editorial Team Leader

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Project Team Leader

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Project Coordinator

Ashwin Shetty

Proofreader

Chris Smith

Graphics

Nilesh Mohite

Production Coordinator

Shantanu Zagade

Cover Work

Shantanu Zagade

About the Authors

David Merel is the founder and CEO of Thinkbright LLC a local/long distance telephone company as well as a cutting-edge Voice over IP carrier, providing businesses of all sizes with sophisticated and low cost VoIP solutions.

David started Thinkbright (www.thinkbright.net) in 2005 and continues to manage the company and its employees, all of whom are dedicated IT professionals. David acts as the company's chief architect, continually designing new technologies that have added significant revenues to the company's operations. During his many 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 the VoIP solutions that Thinkbright offers. Thinkbright manages its own PBX system, providing customers with PBX features such as Auto Attendants, Waiting Rooms, and Ring Groups, or assists customers in managing their own PBX network while providing these customers with the service for incoming and outgoing calls.

David has many years of experience with Trixbox and Asterisk, and has installed countless custom configurations and deployments using those solutions. He also reviewed Trixbox 2.6, which is an excellent complimentary book to Asterisk 1.6.

David earned a Bachelor of Arts triple majoring in Philosophy, Politics, and Law from SUNY Binghamton. David holds a CCNA (a Cisco Certified Network Associate) certificate and is proficient in over 10 programming languages and databases, various operating systems, VoIP and related protocols, and other business applications.

I would like to thank Samantha Brinn and Tony Shi who have helped in producing this book. Samantha Brinn, who assisted in much of the grammatical and style editing, and Tony Shi who conducted research on many of the Asterisk installation steps discussed in the book.

Barrie Dempster is currently employed as a Senior Security Consultant for NGS Software Ltd, a world-renowned security consultancy well known for its focus in enterprise-level application vulnerability research and database security. He has a background in Infrastructure and Information Security in a number of specialized environments such as financial services institutions, telecommunication companies, call centers, and other organizations across multiple continents. Barrie has experience in the integration of network infrastructure and telecommunication systems requiring high-caliber secure design, testing, and management. He has been involved in a variety of projects from the design and implementation of Internet banking systems to large-scale conferencing and telephony infrastructure, as well as penetration testing and other security assessments of business-critical infrastructure.

David Gomillion currently serves as Director of Information Technology for the Eye Center of North Florida. There he orchestrates all of the technological undertakings of this four-location medical practice, including computers, software (off-the-shelf and custom development), server systems, telephony, networking, as well as specialized diagnostic and treatment systems. David received a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Science from Brigham Young University in August, 2005. There he learned the theory behind his computer experience, and became a much more efficient programmer. David has worked actively in the Information Technology sector since his freshman year at BYU. He has been a Networking Assistant, an Assistant Network Administrator, a Supervisor of a large Network and Server Operations unit, a Network Administrator, and finally a Director of Information Technology. Through his increasing responsibilities, he has learned to prioritize needs and wants, and applies this ability to his Asterisk installations.

About the Reviewer

Justin Thomas Zimmer has worked in the contact center technology field for over 10 years. During this time, he has performed extensive software and computer telephony integrations using both PSTN and IP telephony. His current projects include system designs utilizing open source soft switches over more traditional proprietary hardware-based telephony, and the integration of these technologies into market-specific CRM products.

As the Technical Partner of Unicore Technologies out of Phoenix, AZ, Justin is developing hosted contact center solutions for the low-end market. Unicore's solutions present contact centers with low startup costs in a turbulent economy, and allow those centers to scale their business while maintaining a consistent and familiar user interface.

He has worked on countless software user manuals and instructional guides for both internal and customer usage. He has reviewed the book, FreePBX published by Packt Publishing.

He has also worked on The Hopewell Blogs—a science fiction adventure novel that will be released chapter by chapter online and available in print once the final chapter has been released.

I'd like to thank the countless community contributors who have provided enough online documentation to make this book as accurate and helpful as possible. And I'd like to thank my wife Nicole for putting up with the extra hours spent reviewing this book, as well as my boys Micah, Caden, and daughter Keira for giving up some of their daddy-time for this project.

Preface

Asterisk is a powerful and flexible open source framework for building feature-rich telephony systems. As a Private Branch Exchange (PBX), which connects one or more telephones, and usually connects to one or more telephone lines, Asterisk offers very advanced features, including extension-to-extension calls, queues, line trunking, call distribution, call detail rerecords, and call recording. This book will show you how to build a telephony system for your home or business using this open source application. Asterisk 1.6 takes you step-by-step through the process of installing and configuring Asterisk. It covers everything from establishing your deployment plan to creating a fully functional PBX solution. Through this book you will learn how to connect employees from all over the world as well as streamline your callers through Auto Attendants (IVR) and Ring Groups.

This book is all you need to understand and use Asterisk to build the telephony system that meets your need. You will learn how to use the many features that Asterisk provides you with. It presents example configurations for using Asterisk in three different scenarios—for small and home offices, small businesses, and hosted PBX.

Over the course of ten chapters, this book introduces you to topics as diverse as the Public Switched Telephony Network (PSTN), Voice over IP Connections (SIP / IAX), DAHDI, LibPRI, through to advanced call distribution, automated attendants, FreePBX, and asterCRM.

With an engaging style and excellent way of presenting information, this book makes a complicated subject very easy to understand.

What this book covers

Chapter 1:Introduction to Asterisk introduces you to Asterisk and goes over certain basics such as its capabilities and features, requirements, scalability, and cost of deployment. In addition, it covers the trade-offs of Asterisk, its benefits, and how to determine whether it can fit your needs.

Chapter 2: Making a Plan for Deployment goes over the planning of equipment needed such as phones and adapters, the phone service you will use to power your Asterisk server such as PSTN lines or a SIP service from a VSP. Other planning such as hardware requirements and conducting a sound quality analysis are covered as well.

Chapter 3: Installing Asterisk shows you how to install Asterisk using the source files. A step-by-step tutorial will take you through the entire process.

Chapter 4: Configuring Asterisk shows you how to connect your Asterisk server with either your phone service (through PSTN or SIP, among others) as well as how to deploy some basic PBX features such as queues, voicemail, and music on hold. Other advanced features such as faxing, video conferencing, and using conference rooms are also covered in this chapter.

Chapter 5: Creating a Dialplan focuses on creating your dialplan that determines how your calls are routed through the Asterisk server. You will learn how to create extensions, distribute calls in an orderly manner using queues, and present callers with a greeting using automated attendants (IVR).

Chapter 6: Quality Assurance tells us everything regarding monitoring calls, recording calls, and capturing detailed call logs. Here you learn how to install and use these features.

Chapter 7: Making Asterisk Easy to Manage shows you how to integrate third-party applications that make Asterisk easily manageable all through a web-based interface. The chapter will show you how to install FreePBX as well as give you an overview of its capabilities.

Chapter 8: What is asterCRM? tells us about a useful business application a customer relationship management system (CRM) called asterCRM. Given its open source nature, Asterisk is compatible with many other business open-source applications. This chapter goes over installing and using this application, which can help streamline your business operations.

Chapter 9: Case Studies discusses several case studies to give you real-world examples of how one would deploy Asterisk. The examples will give a summary of the deployment as well as the asterisk configuration code used to carry it out.

Chapter 10: Maintenance and Security is an important chapter as it focuses on keeping your Asterisk system running smoothly as well as keeping it secure. The chapter covers security precautions, network deployment recommendations, as well as maintenance tips such as backups and preparing disaster recovery plans.

What you need for this book

Even though this book will provide you with step-by-step instructions, it is best if the reader has a basic understanding of Linux and its commands. For implementing Asterisk, you will need a PC with a P4 CPU or higher, 1 or 2 GB of RAM, and a hard drive of no less than 60 GB, 7200 RPM. Please note that it is possible to run Asterisk on lesser requirements; the configuration mentioned is simply a recommendation.

Who this book is for

This book is aimed at anyone who is interested in building a powerful telephony system using the free and open source application, Asterisk, without spending thousands of dollars buying a commercial and often less flexible system.

This book is suitable for the novice and those who are new to Asterisk and telephony. Telephony or Linux experience will be helpful, but not required.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: Asterisk provides a number of defaults and we can configure additional ones in the /etc/asterisk/indications.conf file.

A block of code is set as follows:

[default]

mode=files

directory=/var/lib/asterisk/music-on-hold

random=yes

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

#!/bin/bash

$ tar xjvf asterisk_backup.tar.bz2

$ cp -R etc/asterisk /etc/asterisk

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: Once installed you will find the Backup & Restore module located under the Tools section of the GUI .

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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Downloading the example code for the book

Visit http://www.packtpub.com/files/code/8624_Code.zip to directly download the example code.

The downloadable files contain instructions on how to use them.

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Chapter 1. Introduction to Asterisk

In this chapter, we will look at what Asterisk is and what it can do for us. As we explore features, we can make note of what features will help us to accomplish our goals.

What is Asterisk?

This is a fascinating question—what exactly is Asterisk? There are a number of answers, all of which are accurate.

First, Asterisk is a symbol which is denoted as *. The symbol represents a wildcard in many computer languages. This gives us an insight into the developers' hopes for Asterisk. It is designed to be flexible enough to meet any need in the telephony realm.

Second, Asterisk is an open source software package. Hundreds, if not thousands, of developers are working every day on Asterisk, extensions of Asterisk, software for Asterisk, and customized installations of Asterisk. A big portion of the product's flexibility comes from the availability of the source code. This means, we can modify the behavior of Asterisk to meet our needs.

Finally, and most importantly, Asterisk is a framework that allows selection and removal of particular modules, allowing us to create a custom phone system. Asterisk's well-thought-out architecture gives