Blog

It seems as much as we try to do without it, there are times when we just need to fax something. Maybe it's something that's legal or that needs a signature. Whatever, we need to fax. But, we sure don't want to invest in a fax machine! Digium and Asterisk to the rescue! Today we'll go through the steps to install Digium's Free Fax for Asterisk and get it all configured within FreePBX. Our base system is Certified Asterisk 11 with FreePBX 2.11.

If you haven't had a chance to use the Digium IP phones, I highly recommend that you give them a try! They are a great phone, and super-easy to set up and use. When working with Asterisk, they can be made even easier to use with the DPMA module (Digium Phone Module for Asterisk). In this entry, we will go over a minimal setup of the DPMA module for a simple FreePBX setup.

Getting together is important. Information is shared when people get together, and deals are made. But, we all know that it can be expensive to bring people physically together. How fortunate that modern technology allows us to get together electronically! For many phone systems, this can be an expensive option, but not with Switchvox. Switchvox includes three distinct options for conferencing:

Being directly exposed to the Internet can wreak havoc on a server. It seems that people will attempt to crack any machine that has Internet presence, so it's important to lock that server down as much as possible. Most software has configurable settings that can minimize the risk footprint. FreePBX, for example, under Settings/Adsterisk SIP Settings gives the administrator the option to set both "Allow SIP Guests" and "Allow Anonymous Inbound SIP Calls" to "No" (which is highly recommended, once a server is up and running, though they can be useful in debugging a newly-created server).

As anyone who has done much work with Asterisk knows, there is a lot of churn in the main Asterisk branches. And, that is exactly why the Asterisk team has started providing Certified releases. These releases occur only about 3 times a year, and presumably, they get more testing than the average releases get, making them more suitable for production or near-production equipment. In this article, I'm going to outline the steps involved with getting FreePBX 11 running with Certified Asterisk 11 on CentOS 6.4.

The Cisco/Linksys E2500 is a decent firewall and access point, but it's not perfect. Mine likes to be rebooted on occasion for SIP to work properly. Not a problem when I'm in the office, but can be a pain when I'm away from the office. Here I am, out of town, but still needing to make and receive calls, and the firewall is blocking me! Fortunately, the firewall doesn't seem to have an issue with SSH, so I can use that to access a server inside the firewall, and then use everyone's favorite command-line URL getter, curl, to force the firewall to reboot. Here's the code that works for me:

One ringie-dingie, two ringie-dingies. Ah, memories of the old-style switchboard like Lily Tomlin used to use. The operator switchboard changed its appearance over the years, but didn't really change in functionality. That is, until the Switchvox Switchboard came along! Imagine transferring calls with a simple drag and drop of the mouse. Imagine not needing a phone as wide as a bus at the operator's desk. Imagine integration with common software like Salesforce.com or SugarCRM. Imagine the Switchvox Switchboard!

When the term "soft phone" is mentioned, I envision a lot of people imagining a fuzzy, plush phone that a child might play with. While such a phone might be nice on those lengthy, imaginary calls, they are completely lacking in functionality. But, what if a mobile work had a Bluetooth headset and a software application on their laptop, and that was what they used as a phone? First, wouldn't that be so cool? Second, since it was a phone based solely in software running on a general purpose computing device, might it be called a soft phone? The answer to both is a resounding yes!

The term "phone apps" has been a buzzword ever since the advent of smart phones. They are a great way to personalize and extend the functionality of one's phone, making it even more functional and valuable. What if a desk phone could be similarly extended? Maybe something that integrates with a CRM, or provides severe weather notification, or simply provides data from an RSS feed?

I don't know if there is another industry to has a more rapid flow of acronyms than that IT industry. There have to be several dozen new ones introduced every day! Unfortunately, this can result in a lot of confusion and poor understanding, which is unfortunate. So, let's look at VoIP and understand it's advantages.