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How it works

Using Custom Device States to control BLF lamps

February 17, 2011

Do you want to know how to use a custom device state to control the lamp on a programmable key of an IP phone? In this article I explain how to set up the hints and make any number of IP phones subscribe to a custom device state and how to switch the custom status from within the Asterisk dial plan. [...]

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Asterisk behind NAT

August 23, 2010

Scenarios in which NAT may adversely affect Asterisk SIP connections The Asterisk Server is behind NAT The Asterisk server could be on the LAN (or in a DMZ) with a NAT firewall between it and the Internet. When it communicates with external peers or devices, the network connections have to pass through the local NAT [...]

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Caller ID in SIP and Asterisk – Part 2

May 28, 2010

Caller ID, ANI, PAI, RPI, Privacy – what Asterisk does I didn’t plan on writing a “Part 2″ to this article, but since nobody has posted any answers to my questions in Part 1, I had no option other than to test it for myself. In some ways, the answers are quite simple, but there [...]

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Caller ID in SIP and Asterisk – Part 1

April 20, 2010

Caller ID, ANI, PAI, RPI, Privacy – can Asterisk cope? Equipment receiving calls, whether a humble handset or a sophisticated Call centre ACD system, likes to know the identity of the caller. It may simply display the caller’s number on an LCD display, look it up in a directory so the caller’s name can be [...]

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RTP pass-through mode in Asterisk

October 23, 2009

What is RTP pass-through mode in Asterisk? The speech for VoIP calls uses RTP (Real Time Protocol) to get from one end to the other and it is compressed using one of the many speech compression codecs available. Commonly used codecs include G.711 and G.729. When you call someone through an Asterisk PBX, there will be [...]

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High Availability and Failover options for SIP and Asterisk

May 29, 2009

Overview What’s the disaster we are trying to avoid? The assumed scenario is this: Some kind of centralised VoIP service is being offered to a number of users; the service operates on servers located at a data centre or office and the users each have a SIP client device, such as an IP phone, that [...]

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SIP Subscribe/Notify and Asterisk Hints Explained

March 6, 2009

The SIP SUBSCRIBE/NOTIFY mechanism – what it is and how it works The SIP protocol includes a standardised mechanism to allow any SIP client (an IP phone being an example of a SIP client) to monitor the state of another device. Details are provided in the SIP protocol document RFC 3265. Basically, it works like [...]

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Configuring and Using SIP Domains in Asterisk

January 28, 2009

What are SIP Domains? SIP requests delivered to a Proxy server or other SIP device must contain details of valid destinations and end-points that are to be reached or which are to receive responses. The address of a SIP device is generally referred to as its URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) – it has to uniquely [...]

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Asterisk SLA (Shared Line Appearances) – Part 4

January 14, 2009

Link to part 3 What is good and what is bad about the Asterisk implementation of SLA? Benefits of Asterisk Shared Line Appearances Replacement of legacy systems: The main reason for wanting to configure Shared Line Appearances in Asterisk is because the Asterisk system is replacing a traditional key and lamp telephone system. However, this [...]

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Asterisk SLA (Shared Line Appearances) – Part 3

January 14, 2009

Link to part 2 EXTENSIONS.CONF: Setting the Hints used by SLA The SIP SUBSCRIBE/NOTIFY mechanism – what it is and how it works The SIP protocol includes a standardised mechanism to allow any SIP client (an IP phone being an example of a SIP client) to monitor the state of another device. Details are provided [...]

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