Loopback Filter with Truman Boyes

I have a virtual machine running Asterisk 1.6.2.x which will act as a backup PBX/SIP proxy for our existing pbx that hosts voip extensions for about 20 friends. While I had looked at Freeswitch as a replacement for Asterisk, I still found that voip for me is a hobby, and I am pretty happy with the features in Asterisk for basic call control. I have had a few Asterisk PBXs running 1.2 for about 3 years or more; I figure it’s about time to update them. There are few things that I want to do with the management API and some AGI, and things have changed pretty fundamentally between the releases that it just made sense to take the plunge and try to migrate without too much fuss.

There were some issues with setting caller ID as I used a deprecated method that was pulled in 1.4. Now I set called ID like this:

exten => _1NXXNXXXXXX, 1, Set(CALLERID(all)=”Truman Boyes” <17325551212>)

Setting your caller ID is very handy when forwarding numerous extensions through a PBX. Some of the extensions should have different DIDs, and I want to make the extension appear to be regular PSTN phone. Another benefit to setting caller ID is when call forwarding is enabled and the preservation of the “A party” is important. Say you forward some calls to your cell phone, it would be handy to have the original caller ID forwarded on to the cell phone.

I am happy to say that I really do like my iPhone 3G, that I have had for over a year or so now since I picked it up in New Zealand unlocked on the Vodafone NZ network. I use it on Telstra and Tmobile when in the appropriate country and I find that it serves the needs of what I would want in a phone, a small portable computer, and basically a communications tool. Recently we took a drive up to Toronto, ON, Canada, and a few weeks before the trip I downloaded the Tom Tom USA/CAN maps applications and it really impressed me with not only the GUI, but the functionality and featureset within the Tom Tom application. We were able to find all the places that we wanted to see and basically keep driving instead of looking up maps and googling around for places to stay or dine. Combine this with Yelp (reviews on basically everyplace), and we were very happy to cruise around places that we would otherwise not have stopped.

A month or so back I noticed that my iPhone was lasting only 3/4 of the day, and it perplexed me on how it changed so drastically that I started to look into it. While on Tmobile I use EDGE services so I negated the issue with 3G taking more battery, and I usually keep the GPS active (I think it goes dormant when not running an app that uses it), and of course WIFI is active at my house and most places that I visit. So why did the battery die so quickly? It appears that the issue was with notifications being enabled in applications. They constantly keep data communication going which drain the battery quickly.

Face it, I don’t need to know immediately when someone sends a message on Facebook or some other unimportant application. I am more than happy to launch the application and ’single task’ my way over to retrieve the message. That’s just me. So after making the changes to disable notifications my battery was lasting a whole day or more. Still, there are plenty of times that I have been out and realized that my battery is low and wishing that I had some spare juice to keep it going to check on something on Safari or send an email. I picked it up this weekend: The Mophone Juice Pack Air. It’s basically a case for the phone that has an additional battery in it, it gives another 270hrs of standby, and 4.5Hrs of talk on 3G or 20hrs of audio playback. It’s black, sleek, and works really well when charged via USB. It will even passively charge your iphone and the case at the same time. So far, I am very happy in having some more battery time when I am in a jam or taking a long flight that doesn’t have USB power onboard.

In other news, I have been using Google Docs again (yes they own you), but it’s very convenient and I think the negatives are far less than the positives that Google provides. I remembered thinking that there was a beta offline mode for docs; so I downloaded google gears and then realized that google gears (on mac) only supports Firefox. Surprising that they don’t support Chrome; so anyway after getting the google gears pluging installed I found out that google has pulled support for offline modes on google docs (for now, at least they disabled support for google gears), and they plan for full HTML5 methods in having offline viewing of docs.

So where does Google Gears work? So far it’s working good with Google Reader.

Also I updated the SIP peerings that I have with Teliax to the NYC SIP proxy from the Denver, CO proxies. Local calls from the east coast should now have a lower latency.

Finally the local number port (LNP) from Tmobile2GO was ported successfully to my voip carrier that offers DIDs; and now my 212 NYC number is ringing into the IPPBX, which is happily forwarding calls to Australia over another SIP trunk. Next step is going to be setting up FreeSwitch as I want to get a handle on migrating most of the current calling functions (SIP signaling, media, rating engines, conferencing, and codec translation). One thing that I need to verify is that I can have a function similar to Asterisk DISA; I tend to use dial-in authentication quite a bit as a way to create my own calling card-like service when traveling. The best part of using DISA was when I was in the US and had Tmobile FiveFave plan (or something like that) and I was able to associate my VoIP DID as one of my “friends”, which I would be able to dial for free, then authenticate, and dial again using only voip minutes. It’s a good way to dial internationally as well from a mobile.

Finally got around to setting up ENUM support in my dialplan on Asterisk. The real benefit to using ENUM is that it is pretty seamless from a user perspective; at least when it is configured correctly. ENUM works by performing lookups on the destination number, which is typically stored in a few DNS servers. The goal with ENUM is to provide a set of protocols and standards that link the telephone system numbering (e.164) to internet standards, with the use of DNS NAPTR records.

Instead of providing my own lookups, I use Sip Broker to provide the ENUM service for me and so far it is working pretty good.