[Asterisk-Users] Phones that work well through NAT
Hi, everyone, We've been reasonably happy with Polycom SoundPoint phones, but we only have them installed on the LAN. I've read that they have problems working across NAT. So ... I guess I have a few questions. First, is there a way to get Polycoms to work well over NAT? If not, then are there phones of comparable voice quality that do work well over NAT? Without costing a lot more? Thanks! Jen ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Meet me conferencing without blind transfers ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Mojo with Horan Company, LLC wrote: rather than using the blind and attended transfer functions built into the phones, try asterisk's features.conf -- we use ** for attended and ## for blind. (always use blind for meetme conferences.) Thanks! Will try that! Jen ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
[Asterisk-Users] Meet me conferencing without blind transfers ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Hi, I'm using [EMAIL PROTECTED] and am having trouble using the conference bridge that comes built in. We're using Polycom phones. When we transfer the first person into the conference room (e.g. 8101) , they get into the room fine. When we try to transfer a second person into the conference room, they get dropped as soon as we finish the transfer. This is using Polycom SoundPoint 301 phones. Now when we use a Polycom SoundPoint 501 phone, we have an option to do a blind transfer when we transfer someone (appears the first time you hit the transfer button). When we do this, people stay transferred and everything works great. However ... we only have one 501 and the rest are 301s. So my questions are: * What's the difference between a blind transfer and a regular transfer? * Is it possible to do a blind transfer from a Polycom SoundPoint 301? * Is there another way to get this to work? Thanks! Jen ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
[Asterisk-Users] VoIP providers -- California, U.S.
Hi, Just wondering if people could suggest a good VoIP provider that can service the San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles area. I've tried race.com (recommended to me) but they're kind of hard to get ahold of. Any other suggestions? This is for a business, so reliability is key. I did see the recent thread about this, and while I saw a few mentioned, I didn't see anything about how reliable the different vendors are, or whether people are using them for business or personal use. Thanks! Jen ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
[Asterisk-Users] Motherboards and IRQs
Someone mentioned earlier (I can't find the message now) that they had a motherboard that allowed you to change IRQ assignments in BIOS. Does anyone happen to know how to identify motherboards that can do this? I'm going to put together a new machine now and I'm having trouble picking a motherboard for it (ordering from Dell or other online vendor is not an option, since I need this in the next couple days). This is to provide another avenue for avoiding IRQ conflicts with the Digium TDM400Ps. Thanks! Jen ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
[Asterisk-Users] Re: Motherboards and IRQs
Colin Anderson wrote: Get ye to a used computer store and get one of these: http://cgi.ebay.com/Compaq-Deskpro-EN-Desktop-550MHZ-128MB-6-4GB_W0QQitemZ52 33796857QQcategoryZ51114QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem [...] cat5 and setting up a telemarketer honeypot. Hey, for $50, what do you have to loose? Thanks! I might try that, although I'm not sure what my chances are of finding that particular model at a used computer store. Trouble is, I'm leaving for an out of town trip early next week and want to get things settled before then. So I was hoping to drop by the computer store tomorrow and pick up what I need, so was hoping to find the name of a board that could assign IRQs that would be popular enough that it'd likely be in stock ... Jen ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Small office setup/using analog lines w/ Asterisk
dbruce wrote: The solution to the IRQ issue is IO-APIC. Recompile your kernel with IO-APIC support (most new motherboards support IO-APIC)... If your board supports it, It WILL solve all your IRQ issues... If your board does not support it then it will make no difference. I've never heard about IO-APIC before, so I just did a Google search. The articles I found say that it's an Intel thing, and, since I have an AMD processor w/ ASUS motherboard, it's unlikely it'll work, right? Even so, it sounds interesting. But does it apply to single-processor systems, even if they're using they're using Intel processors and Intel chipsets? The articles say this is for SMP systems ... ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Small office setup/using analog lines w/ Asterisk
Karl S. Katzke wrote: Next time, I'd actually buy a Dell SC420 or something similar. :-P Honestly, I'm really scared of Dell hardware. Some of the most messed up computers I've worked on have come from Dell. I hear their servers are better than their laptops and desktops, but having only experienced the bad, it's hard to imagine the good. Hardware RAID is mostly important if you're going to be doing a LOT of high-capacity read/writing, and want to be able to get another controller that speaks the same language in case the controller goes out. Semi-soft raid, the kind that's on the motherboard, isn't good because you lose your data if the mobo controller goes bad. Linux software raid would be just as versatile in this situation, and a lot cheaper. ;) I wouldn't reccomend it for an office with 50 or 60 or more people that's doing a lot of voicemail read/writes, but for your purposes... The main regret I have about hardware RAID is that the card is sharing an IRQ with one of the Digium cards. This whole IRQ thing is driving me crazy ... I disabled everything I could in BIOS and that freed up some IRQs, but there's no way to assign a particular IRQ to a particular device. I haven't had to think about IRQs in a long time, and it's very frustrating. I'd still like to hear about hardware suggestions that could avoid this or make this better in the future. Like, are there motherboards that let you assign IRQ to devices? I'm having some volume fluctuation problems with the SPA-841 phones, which I have as well. The next phone I'm ordering will be something that's a lot more expensive, so I'll let you know if that fixes it... but I'd put a nice network card in your *server before I'd replace all of your phones. I'd love to hear how the higher end phone does. If anyone else has experiences comparing phones, I'd love to hear them. Since I get echo and popping noises even when I'm dialing from one extension to another (no Digium card involved), I'm guessing that the problem is at least partly the telephones. Of course, the sound quality is better in other ways (e.g. both sides of the line are clearer), so maybe there are some problems with the Digium cards, too. Jen ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Small office setup/using analog lines w/ Asterisk
Dave Cotton wrote: This was your first experience with *, was it also the installers? Only sharing with the next busiest card in the machine the one feeding the IP phones. Yeah, I know, in retrospect it sounds really odd that we did that, but at the time he thought there was a chance it would work. I'm not sure why -- he's done several installs before. It might be because we ended up taking more time than intially planned to do the the install (Murphy's Law and all that). The hardware we have, by the way, is: AMD Sempron 2400+ 3Ware Escalade 8006-2LP (2 channel SATA RAID) Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe 1 GB RAM Jetway Radeon 9000 64MB 128Bit 4X AGP DVI/TV Out Dual Head We're using the on-board NICs. From what people have said, that could be a problem (in addition to the IRQ sharing issue), so I'm off buying Intel NICs now (I don't think the store has eepro 100s -- I think all the Intel cards they have are gigabit now, but that shouldn't make much difference should it?). I'm not sure if I can change the IRQ setting on the Radeon, but will try. Can the Digium cards change IRQs? Thanks! Jen ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Small office setup/using analog lines w/ Asterisk
Karl S. Katzke wrote: Ooh. Jenny, your problem might be the motherboard. (I should know, I run that same motherboard at home as my gaming machine.) It's a piece of crud. Oh, great. ;-) For next time, does anyone have recommendations for a particular motherboard or a particular type of motherboard? I wouldn't worry about the AGP running on there, but do make sure that X-windows isn't running on the box. If the consultant you hired installed a graphical environment, please give me his name and address so that I can drive over and kick him next time I'm visiting my sister. X isn't installed, so you can spend more time w/ your sister. ;-) Otherwise, yeah, what you've got is overkill. The Sempron and half a gig of RAM would be more than enough for you, and RAID is nice but you could probably have gotten away with software RAID or using the onboard softraid. I'm not even running RAID. This is for an office -- I figured that running hardware RAID would be the most likely to avoid downtime if a hard drive failed. How do most people handle this? My clicking went away after I rewired my PSTN boxes. The contractor that wired them put them in 2-up ganged boxes, (2 jacks in each box, 2 lines running into each box) and that caused far too much interference. Replacing the wiring from the punchdown to the boxes and then the boxes themselves not only eliminated the clicking, it cancelled a good half of the echo. I still have some echo and I just had a call drop out unexpectedly with 'congestion'... gotta figure out how to fix that. The phone lines are wired to a patch panel (RJ45). Plugging in cheap analog phones work great -- they get very clear sound. More on sound quality -- when making calls from one extension to another, the volume level is much, much better. However, we still get echo. So this might not be a problem with the Digium cards (or not only with the Digium cards). The clicking noises are intermittent -- they don't happen all the time. So the next thing to try might be to get better phones. Currently, we're using Sipura SPA-841 phones. I hear the Polycoms are much better. Does that apply to all Polycoms? For example, what's the sound diff. between a Sipura SPA-841, a Polycom SoundPoint IP 301, and a Polycom SoundPoint IP 501? Thanks! Jen ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
[Asterisk-Users] Small office setup/using analog lines w/ Asterisk
Hi, We recently tried installing Asterisk for a small office. We figured the safest way to go would be to buy from someone who sold equipment specifically for Asterisk and to use a consultant that they recommended. However ... it didn't turn out so great. Sound quality is terrible -- the echo is pretty bad, and there are popping noises, too. Callers say that people on the Asterisk end sound very faint, while people on the Asterisk end hear people maybe too loundly (might be related to the popping noises -- sounds like when you have stereo turned up too high). The reseller and the consultant both say that the most likely cause for this is using Digium cards w/ analog phone lines. Apparently, they say, sound quality can be pretty bad. I called Digium and they gave me some suggestions for settings, but nothing has worked well. So I wanted to ask others ... has anyone had good luck with using analog phone lines and Asterisk? Especially with Digium cards (we use the TDM400P)? Although from reading articles on the net it sounds like people do have a lot of echo problems, it also sounds like some people are using analog phone lines with some success. FYI, what I've mainly done is try changing echotraining, echocancel, echocancelwhenbridged, txgain, and rxgain in zapata.conf. I've heard from the reseller that what might work better is to trade the Digium cards in for VegaStream gateway. It's more expensive, but apparently has a DSP built in that should increase voice quality. Of course, they say there are no guarantees with this. They also mentioned (after the fact) that Asterisk systems don't necessarily save money. So far, the experience has been very frustrating and I'd love to hear some success stories from others (or more info on what I can realistically expect from an Asterisk system)! And, of course, some ideas on how I can get things to work better. One of the next tests will be using Asterisk with a VoIP provider to see what the sound quality is like with digital on both ends. PRI sounds like it'd be even better, but for an office w/ 5 people, it sounds pretty expensive. How do other people do this? Thanks in advance for any pointers! Jen ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Small office setup/using analog lines w/ Asterisk
Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions. I'm going to stop by the office tomorrow to try some of these out. Here's more info on the setup: We bought a brand new computer for this -- I don't have the specifics right now, but will look that up in the office tomorrow. We have two Digium cards -- a TDM04B and a TDM01B. This system supports two organizations sharing the same office space: 3 lines go to one org., the other 2 go to the other. The Digium cards actually are sharing IRQs with other devices -- the installer mentioned it could be an issue initially, but when he saw that the devices that the cards were sharing with were the network card and the video card, he said to just try and see if it works first. Sounds like some of the problems that we're having could be related to this, and it's probably the first thing I should try changing. I have tried using ztmonitor to adjust the txgain and rxgain. It was very frustrating ... changing the tx to higher or lower values did not necessarily change it in the direction you'd think. Also, changing rx sometimes affected tx and vice versa. In the end, I gave up because nothing I did increased sound quality -- although it wasn't so hard to make things worse. Any hints here? We're using Sipura phones. We realize these aren't has high quality as Polycoms, but this was what the manger decided to get based on the budget. We're spending more than originally anticipated now because of the problems we're having, but it seems like the Digium cards are a more likley culprit than the Sipura phones. However, if there's a way to isolate problems, that'd be great. I guess one thing is we could try more experiments with one extension calling another -- if the sound quality is a lot better, then it's unlikely a problem with the Sipura phones. If the sound quality is poor, I'll try hooking up the phones to a new network card. As for interference ... we don't have wireless devices, and the main phone we're testing with is about 10' away from the switch. I suppose there's still some possibility with interference, but I think it's something I'll prioritize a little lower. One additional question -- are VoIP lines generally easier to get going w/ good sound quality than POTS lines? One reason we went with POTS was for sound quality. Of course, we also figured it'd be more reliable than DSL, which was the main reason for going with POTS lines. Right now we use 5 POTS lines ... if VoIP sounds better, we were thinking of dropping three of those lines and getting VoIP lines, keeping the POTS lines as backup. Any thoughts on that plan? One thing I'm not sure about is how to select the POTS lines from the phone sets. I suppose we could assign a second extension to the phones (they support 2) and have the second one be POTS and the first be VoIP. Another thing I was wondering is whether we could get hunting to work properly with a mix of VoIP and POTS. I'll call the phone company tomorrow, but if anyone has tried anything like this, I'd like to hear about it. Also, are there any VoIP vendors that work particularly well with Asterisk? I've seen Broadvoice mentioned a bit ... are they a good company for this? I'd love a company that could do automatic failover -- if the VoIP line cuts out, transfer to an analog phone line (I know Vonage has a feature like this, but they're expensive and we don't need a lot of the features). Thanks again for all the suggestions! Jen ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
