Tuesday, June 21, 2011
VoiceAxis Asterisk Implementation
Saturday, June 18, 2011
ElastixWorld 2011
For the second consecutive year ElastixWorld will take place, this time the event that will bring together the whole Elastix community will take place in Mexico City on the 3rd and 4th of November.
ElastixWorld 2011 will consist of two days of high-level conferences; new advances made on our distro and the launch of new products will be presented as well as awards be given. This is the opportunity to share experiences between customers, manufacturers, resellers and developers worldwide.
Stay tuned, you will be able to sign in soon through ElastixWorld's official website.
"After testing Elastix with OpenVox hardware, we certainly recommend this good product for PBX projects"
Belief Mo
OpenVox Communications Co.
Hong Kong
Friday, June 17, 2011
Elastix inside an Alcatel Enterprise Network
C.A.G is a refrigeration company. This company provides some refrigeration elements all over Europe. They have several employees on site for commercial work, an others outside. It is a middle company with about 150 employees.
Elastix inside an Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise (OXE) Network with a Codian Bridge.
C.A.G
France
Author: Franck Danard - ECE
This company wants perform video conferences with their employees outside the complex easily. Due to the requirement to be connected at a video conference, every employee had an ISDN access and a video device (Video Phones, Video bridge system).
This company already has implementations with a Codian Bridge and an IPPBX network (Alcatel OXE), all over France (Some nodes in France, and some remotes A.C.T.). They dispose equally a Codian Bridge (ISDN & SIP) and a LAN network with a WAN access. The client has a SIP phone GrandStream GXV 3000 to make some test with the video conference and all the X-Lite extensions.
The client required to be able to make a video conference to the Codian Bridge from anywhere in France and Europe. He also required to be able to make an outgoing call to the Alcatel IPPBX OXE, and to be able to receive incoming calls from the Alcatel IPBX (from internal and an ISDN trunk).
The best system available to complete the requirement is a system based on Asterisk. We choose Elastix as the complementary solution.
The actual amount of concurrent calls between the Elastix, the Codian Bridge and the Alcatel OXE (across the WAN access) is 10. Maybe in the future, more SIP extensions would be added.
The technology used by every employee is an X-Lite – CounterPath softphone. This Softphone is free and provides lots of advantages including a complete list of audio and video codecs, video capability, easy installation process, Multi-OS (Windows, Linux). It’s also easy to use and has a good audio quality.
We used different technologies such as SIP and UA protocol (Alcatel standard).
The SIP technology is employed for the VoIP / ToIP, based on Ethernet OS. The UA technology is from Alcatel and is proprietary, based without IP protocol. These devices are connected on the UAi16 which will be able to receive 16 phones.
In addition, an ISDN trunk is included to make outbound calls to the operator and a SIP Trunk to make any call between the Alcatel OXE and the Elastix server.
Now, we are ready to add our Elastix server into the LAN network. This server is a simple personal computer with 40 GB of Hard-Disk, 1 GB of RAM, an Ethernet device 100 BT, and a CPU of 1.5 GHz.
The client gave us a free IP address for this server. We need a SIP trunk for OXE connection, and a WAN access for any remote user extensions (managed by the client). About OXE, we need to make a T2 trunk with a Qsig GF protocol, all on a SIP gateway. The IPBX Alcatel OXE needs some licenses keys to enable the SIP protocol, the SIP gateway, and the SIP user (Not free).
Apart from this there is nothing in particular about this implementation. The bandwidth is enough qualified for every calls with each codecs (Audio and video) until 10 concurrent's calls. More, if the users not use the video!
The selected bandwidth is enough to make 10 concurrent video calls. The bandwidth will be greater if the call does not use video.
Alcatel OXE can use 3 codecs: G711a, (G711µ for export series), G729, and G273. For this configuration, it was selected a G711a codec, (the best MOS quality). The OXE accept the ‘canreinvite’ (RTP direct) on the SIP trunk, very useful.
About SIP trunk part Elastix, it's very simple; the configuration is like this in (example #1). For test, no user and password is required. In the future, it will select a user with a secret code, and why not, a md5 authentication.
If you look at the example #1, you could see that the context is 'from-internal'. The trunk needs to use it to select this context to be recognized as an internal call. If the trunk uses another context like ‘from-pstn’ or ‘from-trunk’, every call then will be recognized like an external incoming call. This is very important.
About the dialplan with the Alcatel OXE, it must be common at least with the DID.
The Codian Brige is included like a simple SIP extension with the H263 and H263+ video codec and G711a (alaw) audio codec. Every X-Lite extension should have the same configuration, and same thing about the GrandStream GXV 3000 video phone.
Every SIP remote extensions should have the 'nat=yes' parameter to be able to make incoming calls with each internal phone to the OXE and be able to connect to the Codian Brige. It is important to remember that the router should forward every SIP port and RTP port to the Elastix server. This part is managed by the client.
The investments are not expensive at the Elastix side, but it could be increased by the license keys required by the Alcatel OXE. Every X-lite soft-phone is free. The server hardware is not expensive compared with the capabilities.
Service improvement
Every employee can participate at any video conference. Before the implementation it was difficult, and even impossible with the video and the client should have another video conference system or an ISDN video-phone. Today, with this solution and a WAN access, it's easier.
Every employee can make calls. (There is no need to pay any call to another operator. The outbound call is directly send from the siege).
Every employee can call any UA internal phones. (There is no need to use an operator).
With this configuration, the client:
Can receive incoming calls directly from ISDN with a DID number.
Can connect to the video conference from anywhere.
The implementation it’s easy to use, it can be improved on an already existing IPPBX, and be useful for every employees of the company.
Elastix Marketplace beta now available
Elastix Marketplace beta now available 
Now all the users can count with a space for adding new solutions fully compatible with Elastix. Elastix Marketplace will allow users to integrate third-party software to extend functionalities in the distro.
This feature can be found today in the addons module available in the 2.0.4 beta version. The main idea of this release is that with a simple process the user has access to new, easy to install applications, for an Elastix customization.
From now and on numerous software developers could offer solutions, to the installed Elastix server base, which will hopefully enrich the user’s experience with Elastix. We have developed this solution in the most intuitive way for the user providing easy installations and removals.
The only requirement prior to downloading a commercial addon is to register your Elastix. This registration will generate an installation id necessary to make transactions in the Marketplace.
Our main goal is that Elastix Marketplace could be a meeting place between developers and users, having Elastix as a platform.
We would like to thank the first certified addons:
- FOP2
- Visual Dialplan
- QueueMetrics
We are on the process of including more solutions and will continue to work on new versions to include a greater number of available solutions, your feedback is welcome as always.
Elastix MarketPlace purchase procedure
"After testing Elastix with OpenVox hardware, we certainly recommend this good product for PBX projects"
Belief Mo
OpenVox Communications Co.
Hong Kong
Elastix Beta with Asterisk 1.8 Available
Elastix Beta with Asterisk 1.8 Available As we announced at the end of April, we are launching today an update for Asterisk 1.8 in Elastix.
This update comes installed by default on 2.0.4-B4 our newest beta version of Elastix. There is an update available also for 2.0.3 version in the Elastix-Beta repositories, that can be can be activated at the Elastix Web Interface (System->Updates->Repositories). This update is available for all users of that version who want to test this new launch.
Elastix 2.0.4-B4 also includes Dahdi 2.4.1.2
Among the features you will find on Elastix are the following:
- Support for Secure RTP
- Support for IPv6
- Support for Google Talk and Google Voice
- Calendar Integration with support for CalDav, iCalendar, and others
Elastix 2.0.4-B4 - http://elx.ec/204beta4
We wait for your comments and feedback on this trial phase.
"After testing Elastix with OpenVox hardware, we certainly recommend this good product for PBX projects"
Belief Mo
OpenVox Communications Co.
Hong Kong
CATEG implements a Call Center with Elastix
CATEG implements a Call Center with Elastix CATEG, Guayaquil Electricity Company, needed bill processing and debt consultations from their clients through an inbound call center. They also needed to unify the dialing plan between headquarters and all of its branches with a High Availability solution.
CATEG
Ecuador
PaloSanto Solutions
Author: Alfredo Zambrano - ECE
The Solution was implemented in three CATEG agencies, two of them with an ELX-025 Elastix Appliance, and one agency with a cluster solution consisting of one ELX-3000 and one ELX-025. This solution works with a 2E1 Redfone, for the integration of 2 E1 PRI from the telephony provider.
The North agency initially had an ELX-025 with 25 concurrent calls capacity, but they saw a substantial increase in users and therefore integrate the ELX-3000 to expand the solution.
The objective of the three implementations was to allow the client to consult billing information at a new CATEG call center. To achieve this objective an IVR was configured to allow the subscriber to enter the invoice number and get the amount of the debt. When the customer enters the requested information, a connection is made with an Oracle database to get information and results. This database is managed by the system department of every agency.
According to statistics obtained by the reporting module, the demand for this application is around 100 to 150 visits per day.
"Elastix allows us to gain a stable platform that is fully compatible out-of-the-box with modern hardware such as PCI express and Serial ATA and allows proper use of interrupt management features like APCI. All of this without losing the PBX features you have come to love. In addition with Elastix you gain new features such as integrated HylaFax server, fully integrated communications and more flexibility through the Web UI"
Rhino Equipment Corp.
USA
Elastix 2.0 has been released!
It has been over two years since we released Elastix 1.0. Almost from that same moment we began to plan and develop what would become Elastix 2.0. It was a long period of hard work, but the new distro is finally ready to see the light. Thanks to the whole community for the incredible support. Special thanks go to the beta testers mailing list, whose members tested the product for several months before its release.
Elastix 2.0 includes many suggestions received from our users as well as many new ideas around Unified Communications. The ability to extend new functionalities through add-ons will allow Elastix to adapt to the requirements of broad scenarios, while at the same time enabling the integration with third party applications.
There are lots of new functionality included in this release. We will highlight the most relevant in this article.
Renovated Dashboard
The new Elastix dashboard allows the user to be aware of the system state, its performance, missed calls, emails, news from Elastix and much more. The user can select what applets to show and how to organize them. The applets can be organized by drag and drop in the browser window itself without the need of a plug-in.
Add-ons
The new Elastix add-ons module enables the installation of Elastix-integrated applications in a straightforward and intuitive manner. This new functionality will also allow third party application writers to integrate their apps with Elastix very easily.
In addition, the user will be kept informed of any new updates as well as newly available add-ons.
Elastix Operator Panel
Elastix Operator Panel is an application embedded within Elastix which allows for the management of calls in real time as well as providing a snapshot of the current activity. The Elastix Operator Panel does not require a flash plug-in to be installed in the browser. Everything is drag and drop!
Elastix Conference Room
The Elastix Conference Room is ideal for virtual meetings. Currently, one can set up a voice conference, share presentations in several formats, establish a file repository and chat with meeting attendees at the same time.
Mail Module improvements
It is now easier to integrate Elastix with an external mail server. Just fill a form and the integration would be ready without the need to edit a single text file. Another improvement is the integration with the Mailman mailing-list engine so one can create a mailing list straight from the Elastix interface.
Web-based Faxing
Starting in Elastix 2.0 users can send faxes directly from the web interface. Users can write the fax content directly in the web interface or upload files in PDF, TIFF or plain text format.
DHCP Module improvements
The DHCP server now allows the user to see the list of assigned IPs and their MAC addresses. Also, Elastix now has the capability of assigning static IPs based on the MAC address of the IP phone.
Automatic Backups
Backups can now be scheduled in advanced so they can occur daily, weekly or monthly. In addition, the interface now allows for a file to be uploaded or downloaded with all data and configurations to/from an external FTP server with drag and drops.
Agenda Module improvements
Agenda events can now be organized and downloaded in iCal format. The user can also move the events or modify their duration by drag and drop.
The complete detail of the changes in Elastix 2.0 can be viewed in the changelog. Elastix 1.6 will be mantained for bug correction and security issues only. However, there will not be any new functionality added to the 1.6 versions in the future.
Download:
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Rhino Ceros line moves to Elastix
Rhino Ceros line moves to Elastix
Last Friday, the Rhino team published the following news:
“Starting in January 2011, all Rhino Ceros systems will ship pre-loaded with the Elastix Unified Communications Server. Based on customer demand, we have decided to install Elastix by default. Elastix boasts over 1 million downloads and is in production environments around the world. With dedicated developers working to provide a stable, professional integrated communications environment, you can rest assured that the system that is stable today will be stable tomorrow and for years to come. Elastix also has a large community of active members providing support, tips, and advice to ensure users get the most from their Elastix systems.
With the native branding features of the Ceros line and the professional unified look of Elastix you can take your sales to the next level. […]”
See More…
Elastix has been collaborating closely with Rhino in the past, and we are including this partner in the Hardware Certification Program we have been performing this year.
We would like to welcome this initiative and continue working closely with Rhino.
"After testing Elastix with OpenVox hardware, we certainly recommend this good product for PBX projects"
Belief Mo
OpenVox Communications Co.
Hong Kong
IP Telephony Implementation at Villa Maria National University
Villa Maria National University is an education organization established at Villa Maria city in Cordoba State, Argentina. Two years ago directives of the university order the transfer of the existing telephony network to an IP platform, with a preliminary evaluation of technical and economical feasibility.
Universidad Nacional de Villa María
Argentina
Mariano Martín
Villa Maria National University is an education organization established at Villa Maria city in Cordoba State, Argentina. Two years ago directives of the university order the transfer of the existing telephony network to an IP platform, with a preliminary evaluation of technical and economical feasibility.
Different versions of Asterisk were analized in several Linux distributions at virtual environments. At the end the solution chosen was an integral/complete distribution.
The initial tests were performed on Elastix v1.2 32 bits in a real server using Digium clone cards (modems with Motorola/Intel chipset) with FXO ports connected to the PSTN. At this stage Softphones and IP phones were use for users.
Once the tests concluded, the authorities of the University took the decision of change the platform in their policies.
A Network adjustment was made in order to work with VoIP, also a there was a replacement of some switches by others with Power over Ethernet.
The infrastructure of the main Communication server was installed in an Intel Xeon/ HD 500 GB server with Elastix v1.3 32 bits.
At first we install 10 extensions using Grandstream IP Phones model GXP2000. We also used a Sangoma A200 card with 4 FXO ports to access the PSTN. This implementation was executed at one of the extensions of the University Campus.
In the next stage we include a Sangoma A200 telephony card with echo cancelation to expand the telephony integration to a total of 24 FXO ports. With this expansion we create more users to the system that include 100 extensions at the Dean Headquarter using different IP phone models (GXP2000, GXP1200, GXP280, and BT200). We also added console operators for more than 100 BLF indicators.
In addition to the 100 users, 10 Grandstream GXV3000 IP VIDEO phone where included. For this purpose, we enabled video support and all necessary codecs.
In the following stages the University incorporated a new Elastix v1.3 de 32bits server with the same hardware characteristics. for the Central Campus The telephone integration was made with a Sangoma A200 card with 24 FXO ports. Both servers were interconnected with IAX2 Trunks and a dedicated wireless link with 22Mbps and 100 extensions where added.
The main goal of having two servers with their own access to the PSTN is to avoid the lack of communication between the extensions if the link failed at some point.
For this functionality we create 15 users and used telephone adapter switches (ATA) for Fax machines. After that we created 20 virtual FAX (Hylafax), all of them redirected to several emails. There is also an access to FAX from the PC with Winprint Hylafax.
Some of the following features where enabled:
A freepbx CUSTOM-CONTEXT module was installed to manage different access to the PSTN for internal groups.
Conference Call, Call transfer, Call Pick-up, Call forwarding, Ringing groups, IVR, etc…
A call billing feature was enable, this was possible by including a destiny code to the bill. A2Billing was configured in order to work with different users with a billing process and prepaid call system.
Currently there is a development in AGI-PHP to use a text to speech application to allow teachers and students to make consultations of a database. This prototype is already working.
This implementation is part of a project that includes a complete implementation of IP telephony and Unified communications at the Villa Maria University which include a lot of work and further conclusions.
Some load data where obtained by creating modifications in the PHP code of the following module to reports and graphics in Elastix:
/admin/common/graph_hourdetail.php
This made possible to obtain the MAX LOAD value of the server in concurrent calls. We modified the code to obtain that value in a regular day and then for a complete month. We got the following results:
Dean Headquarter IP-PBX Server
Here you can appreciate that January is the month with the lowest activity due to the summer vacations and the higher activity was detected on December 2009 with 21 concurrent calls registered in the Principal server and 14 concurrent calls registered in the Campus server.
Elastix allowed us to reduce the implementation times. It is also useful to the system administration allowing the addition of more users with an easy training thanks to the information available.
At the moment of the publication of this case we have 4 servers interconnected with IAX2 and SIP.
The total number of extensions is 250 and we are working on a main project that will include VoIP platforms of other Argentinean public Universities to our system through a Proxy SIP Server.
The coordination of the telephony network that includes 18 Nacional Universities is performed at The Villa Maria National University and San Luis.
PaloSanto Solutions silver sponsor at Asterisk World
PaloSanto Solutions silver sponsor at Asterisk World Elastix and PaloSanto Solutions will be present at the next ITExpo East on the 2nd of February, 2011.
ITExpo is part of a dual event that TMC develops in Miami and Los Angeles, at the beginning and midyear, respectively. ITExpo gathers the most representative exponents of the telecommunication industry with keynote conferences and product exhibition.
Elastix will be present and you will have the opportunity to visit our stand and talk with important members of the Project and Gold Resellers of the region. See exhibitor list.
As part of our participation we will make the launch of some products, enlist the certified hardware available at the moment and will announce the 2010 community awards winners.
Elastix is also Silver Sponsor for Asterisk World, a collocated event inside ITExpo and dedicated to this important telephony distribution. We will present a keynote there the 3rd of February at 12h30 Miami.
http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/digium-asterisk-world/east-11/
Join us at this event, we will be at Booth #1009. For a free pass to visit our booth you can register here
We hope to see you all
Sincerely
"Elastix is a stable, reliable and flexible system, built to serve both: integrators and end users. For these reasons we chose it as the default operating system in our IP-PBX solutions, and market feedback confirms this was a good decision."
Eran Gal - CEO
Xorcom Ltd