Trixbox for a New Start-Up
Filed under: Trixbox UK Config — blacksheep @ August 29, 2007 11:43 am
We did a small Trixbox installation yesterday for a start up over in Worsley who have just moved into an empty office. They are a training firm and its just a three man operation at present. Trixbox was a really good fit to get them up and running as fast as possible but providing lots of features for when they expand . The installation was pretty smooth in fact the only problem we had was the fact BT had managed to screw up the provision of the analogue line which carries the Broadband! After that was sorted we had them up and running within about an hour. The handsets were two Snom 320’s, VoIP is an IAX trunk from Gradwell and the Broadband is from Zen. The router was a Vigor, Trixbox is version 2.2.3 running on a BritTrix SoHo PBX. We put an analogue card in the PBX to provided a fallover route for emergancy calls.
Vigor Routers - Our preferred choice!
Filed under: Trixbox UK Config — blacksheep @ August 28, 2007 12:04 am
Vigors are our preferred choice of router. Can you use a different router? Of course you can. We only recommend the Vigor because frankly you just plug it in and it works! You don’t need to be a geek to configure a Vigor. I’ve worked with some router / firewall combinations where I have literally given up trying to configure the thing, thrown it back in the box in disgust and shipped it back to the supplier smart-ish! Forgot that! Vigors just work. They are extremely simple to configure and rock solid reliable. We’ve got them deployed at over 40 customer sites and in four years we have never had even one hardware failure. They might not be the most sophisticated routers on the market but its not sophistication we’re looking for here its reliability. Currently we are using the Vigor 2800 range.
VoIP - Why You Need A Dedicated ADSL Connection.
Filed under: Trixbox UK Config — blacksheep @ August 21, 2007 10:46 am
Yikes! We can hear your cry of horror already! “Why do I need another ADSL line! I’ve already got an internet connection, I’m not paying for another one!”. One of the main benefits of Trixbox /Asterisk is to reduce call charges and line rental from traditional analogue and digital lines by routing some or all of your calls over the internet. If you have “light” use of your existing ADSL line for internet browsing and email then you can probably get away with using it for VoIP as well. So if your not trying to upload 100mb Cad drawings all day long or you’re just a two man operation browsing the web, then yep you may be fine.
The point is we’ve done some extensive testing and we still think you’d be much better off having a dedicated ADSL line just for VoIP! Lots of businesses simply underestimate how much they actually use their existing internet connection. You don’t want those huge PDF’s you are uploading to a supplier to interfere with your phone calls!
Lets face it you have more than a couple of incoming numbers you are probably already paying out for numerous dedicated analogue and ISDN telephone lines which you can now think about reducing! Replacing ISDN lines with VoIP is very, very cost effective. Last time we looked the line rental for a BT ISDN 2e line is ÂŁ93(ex VAT) per quarter. We think these days that’s just a crazy price to be paying for the privilege of making phone calls especially when you can have an additional ADSL connection for just ÂŁ20 - ÂŁ25 a month. You can make that ADSL connection carry 4 or more simultaneous calls (depending on the your line speed).Â
If you work on the basis of 64K of bandwidth used per VoIP call we are seeing something like the capability of 4 simultaneous calls even on a very poor performing Rate Adaptive (RADSL) connection in our local area. The shorter the line length to the exchange the better upload speed you should see. If your exchange is enabled for SDSL (i.e simultaneous upload and download speeds) then you may find paying the extra cost worth while to get a faster upload speed. You can also play about with the Codec used for your calls which can potentially decrease the bandwidth used by each call, the trade-off will be decreased audio quality, you just need to find a balance you’re happy with.
Who supplies your internet connection can be fairly critical as well. If you go for the cheapest deals then don’t expect great reliability or line contention ratios. If you skimp in this area then believe us, your experience of VoIP will not be a happy one. You’ve saved so much in other areas it just not worth dredging the bottom of the internet supplier barrel on this one! We can heartedly recommend Zen, Demon and Andrews & Arnolds just as we wouldn’t touch Tiscali, Virgin and Orange with a barge pole (That’s simply from personal experience, there are always exceptions!) UK domestic cable connections are not really suitable for VoIP connections either. Although they tend to have much faster download speeds than ADSL their upload speeds actually tend to be a lot slower than ADSL lines! In this area we are seeing cable upload speeds as low as 110K.
A great place to do a line speed check on existing ADSLÂ / Cable connections is http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html.
To find out what services are available on your local exchange go to www.samknowns.com (which is an absolutely invaluable resource!)
Maybe your worried about reliability, well its now possible to get virtually the same service level agreements on a ADSL line as a traditional phone line. If someone chops the line, or the ADSL has a fault at the exchange you can get the same fix times just like you had on your traditional phone line and compensation if they’re exceeded. Of course its an additional expense but if your business depends on it its worth while.
A 100% VoIP solution is not for everyone. A lot of our customers choose to maintain a fall back option via an analogue or digital interface card in the PBX to the PSTN . If the internet goes down we can automatically route calls via the cards until the internet connection is restored.
Before you start - Get the right tools for the job!
Filed under: Trixbox UK Config — blacksheep @ August 17, 2007 2:29 pm
Like many of us installing and configuring Trixbox for the first time I am much more used to using a Windows based system then Linux. I’ve years of experience in all aspects of Windows installation, setup and programming but I’d never really done anything with Linux. Which makes some aspects of getting your Trixbox install behaving the way you want it to extremely frustrating to achieve.
If you want to do it the easy way, believe me you’ll now want to head over to www.winscp.net and download the WinSCP application and install it on your nearest Windows machine pronto!
It’s a totally free download (its an Open Source Application) and I’ve found it essential. Basically it allows you to connect to the file system on your Trixbox with a windows explorer like interface. You can use all the usual cut and paste and click to edit features your familiar with from Windows Explorer. (If you’d rather do it all from the Linux command line and Linux based text editors then good luck to you, I know what I find easier!)
There are some other tools that might come in handy but in the main I’ve found I’ve managed to get by pretty well using WinSCP and the stuff Trixbox installs itself.
Resources:- WinSCPÂ - download it from www.winscp.net
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