Comments on: Asterisk is Great

By: carlos medina

carlos medina — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:33:09 +0000

hey guys i want to build something like this but i will have 3 fxo lines how do i go by that what all do i need

By: Ricardo

Ricardo — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 02:47:45 +0000

Hellos,

I have a problem with a 7960 IP phones. When i register this IP phone to asterisk, the setup buttom of conference call (3-way call) in the phone dessapear. I use SCCP config.

Can you help me with this ??

By: jgoerzen

jgoerzen — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 18:31:25 +0000

There are several ways to do it.

First, SIP or IAX hard/softphones should have the feature to engage 3-way calling built in. (On my SPA-841, there’s a “conf” button. There may be a special code to dial or button to press.)

The other way is the Asterisk teleconference feature. You transfer everybody that is going to be participating to a certain extension, and it conferences them all together. This scales up to n-way conferencing. (That is, handles more than 3 people).

See the Meetme option in your Dialplan.

By: gcleaves

gcleaves — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 17:45:17 +0000

I’ve installed Asterisk in my home but haven’t been able to find a 3-way calling option anywhere. Are you accomplishing this by using the feature on a hardware phone? Or have you created a custom dial plan that allows this? The free IAX soft phones don’t seem to offer this feature and default Asterisk doesn’t either.

Thanks,
Geoff

By: jgoerzen

jgoerzen — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 21:03:12 +0000

Thanks for the note, Richard. I wasn’t in any great hurry for the unit, but it would have been nice to have just a 2-sentence note explaining the situation. It helps out greatly with the comfort level when trying a new vendor for things.

By: Rich Bodo

Rich Bodo — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 18:36:44 +0000

This is my internal telephonyware review of the SPA-841 product mentioned in this article. In general, any Sipura product will be the most configurable in it’s class. I once had a SPA-3000 on site tha I had to configure the electrical interface of the FXO port to run on less than 48 volts to work with a paging system. The configuration option was there! I think the Sipura products are amazing.

”’SPA-841 Review”’

Overall: The best value in a VoIP phone : sub-100SUD price range for casual users.

The 841 has a couple quirks:

* The initial setup has all the buttons mapped to line 1 and port 5061
used for line2.

* At least in firmware 0.9.1, the ALC or echo cancellor or something really drops my volume when there
is background noise. This happens when I’m on speaker or handset but not headset. Far end complains of echo , even with newer firmware. Have to reduce the volume to almost minimum to eliminate that. Firmware updates will probably fix this. Sipura is still shipping very old firmware, so upgrading is a must.

* When I’m on headset, the far end tends to get more echo than when I’m on handset or speaker.

* The spelled CallForward CallFoward. Ebonics lives.

* I have no idea what the button that has a little icon picture of a hand
means/does. In keeping with the ebonics theme I’m thinking it’s a
high-five. Ah, I see, it’s the hold button – NOT normally an icon. Hold is a small word.

* Rubber buttons stick to the sides of their recesses if not pressed straight in.

* When attempting a hook flash transfer, the phone for some reason tried to use line 2 to make the outbound call! That is an unusual default behaviour.

* When you are on headset, and put someone on hold, there is no way I can tell to pick back up on headset, you pick back up and you get put on speaker.

Firmware 0.9.5 Update

* The Sipura doesn’t seem much improved with the latest firmware. I still get reports of echo and volume variations during a call. Some of my early complaints were unjustified, but the biggies are still there. Rubber buttons = bad. Echo = bad. Weak ALC = bad. Default settings don’t make a hell of a lot of sense to me either, but I’m not the target audience. Note: there are now newer firmwares.

”’SPA 841 Upgrades”’

”’Firmware:”’

This can be found at: http://www.sipura.com/Documents/spa841-0.9.5.zip, along with the windows upgrade executable and ringtone generator.

You can upgrade via TFTP, HTTP or windows executable.

Via TFTP:

1) make sure a regular user can grab the latest firmware from the /tftpboot directory on your workstation

2) go to the url:

http://the.sipura.ip.address/upgrade?/tftpboot/the_firmware_file

Via HTTP:

The HTTP upgrade process is initiated automatically on phone reboot upon configuration changes to the upgrade rule in the SPA web interface. This is not a one time upgrade method, but rather a rule to instruct the phone as to how and when it should be upgraded. Please see the SPA-841 Administration Guide for detailed instructions.

Via Windows Executable [From the Sipura SPA FAQ]

4: How do I upgrade SPA’s firmware?
A: The latest Firmware file(s) can be downloaded from support area.
The files are packaged in zip compressed format. It contains a windows binary “.exe” and
the raw firmware “.bin” file. Upgrading your SPA can be done via two methods:

1. By running the windows executable from windows machine.
When run, it will ask for SPA’s IP-address. It will then try to identify the SPA,
and perform the upgrade. Please don’t power off at this time.

2. Alternatively, you can put the raw firmware image “spa.bin” to a reachable tftp server,
Goto your web browser, and type in:
http://spa-ip-address/upgrade?tftp://tftp-server-ip/spa.bin
With our current firmware 1.0.30 and above, you can use http in place of tftp method.
At any time during the 40-seconds upgrade process, please don’t unplug the power.

”’Line Appearances:”’

Telephonyware need only obtain MAC addresses, send to Sipura, and get the license key and instructions for the four line

By: Richard Bodo

Richard Bodo — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 18:22:09 +0000

John, on behalf of telephonyware, I apologize for lying about shipping. In our defense, we only passed that particular lie on because your product was drop shipped. No excuses, though. Occasionally we run out of a product and drop ship from a partner company. Other vendors have arrangements like this with telephonyware, and we help them out with drop shipping when they run out of product. Until we can grow a little more, we will sometimes be subject to factors out of our control. Give me a call for a free Sipura SPA-1000 for your trouble. Again, we’re sorry for the error.

By: jgoerzen

jgoerzen — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 01:46:50 +0000

Our Internet VOIP provider, BTW, is LiveVOIP. Best deal out there I’ve seen yet, and works great, too. For a small user, they probably expect you to be a good do-it-yourselfer and get it going on your own… the best service is probably reserved for those people that buy the 1-million-minute plan :-)