Click-to-Call with your Asterisk@Home Box

 

It seems everyone is talking about Click-to-Call functionality these days. Google has announced they are going to do it, EBay will be doing it before too long, and there are other websites out there that I've recently noticed are offering this service.

Click-to-Call seems like it would be a complicated task to setup; enabling a website visitor to click a button to allow them to submit their phone number, and receive a call from someone a few seconds later, with no long distance charges for the visitor.
If you have an AAH or Asterisk box, it really is not that difficult to add such a feature to your website. A very simple PHP page hosted either on your AAH box, or another PHP-capable web server (that has TCP connectivity to your AAH/Asterisk box) is all you need. Last night I developed such a script, and though it is rather simple, it's effective. I plan on doing more with it later, but thought I'd share it will all of you so that you can begin playing with it, or customizing it yourself. This script was written for AAH, so it probably will not work with a regular Asterisk box without some modifications, or even a heavily customized AAH box. However, it's very straight-forward, and should not be hard to debug if you have problems with it.

To the expert PHP'ers out there, this was my first attempt at doing anything with PHP (I'm an ASP guy), so have pity on me!:)

Ok, here it goes.

I'm going to be explaining how to set this script up on an AAH box, but as I said before, it should work on any PHP server that can communicate with your AAH/Asterisk box. Also, I have only tested this on AAH 2.4, so I don't make any guarantees that it works on anything else. In fact, I don't make any guarantees that it works on any AAH 2.4 box besides my own, though it should. :) While I'm at it, I may as well also mention that if you decide to use this script, you do so at your own risk.

Step 1:

Login to your AAH box and enter these commands:

cd /tmp
wget http://downloads.voipjots.com/scripts/click-to-call.zip
unzip click-to-call.zip
mv click-to-call.php /var/www/html/click-to-call.php
rm click-to-call.zip

Step 2:
Now we have to slightly edit the script to get it to work for you.

cd /var/www/html
nano -w click-to-call.php

For a typical AAH box, you should only need to edit one line in the script. Change the line:

$strChannel = "IAX2/250";

to reflect one of your extensions. In my case, I am using my Idefisk IAX2 softphone that has an extension number of 250. For instance, if you have a SIP soft/hard phone that has an extension number of 1234, you would change this line to:

$strChannel = "SIP/1234";

Ok, at this point, we should have everything properly configure on our AAH box. Now we can try it!

Step 3:

In a web browser, go to http://my-aah-ip-address/click-to-call.php

You should see this:




While near the soft/hard phone belonging to the extension you specified above, enter a valid 11 digit phone number, and click on the Call Us! button.

The soft/hard phone should begin ringing, showing "Web Call " as the caller id. When you answer the call, you will briefly hear... nothing (something I'm going to be working on in the near future), but after a few seconds, you will hear ringing as it calls the number that was entered on the web page.

The click-to-call web page should now be this:




This script is very simple, and probably not best hosted on your aah box, but on another web server that hosts the site you would want to add click-to-call functionality to. However, I hope that this provides a good demonstration as to exactly how simple it is to implement click-to-call with AAH, and leave it to you and your creativity on exactly how you wish to offer this feature. The sky's the limit, really.

I hope this has been helpful to someone. If you have any ideas on how to improve the script, please let me know by leaving your comments. If you make significant improvements to the script, I would appreciate it if you shared them with all of us.

Enjoy!
Olin

VoIP Comes to the Rescue of 3G, with Skype already on the bandwagon

 

Going hand-in-hand with my previous post, this article talks about how VoIP is likely to help the 3G mobile operators. 3G is a relatively high-bandwidth mobile technology that has not yet taken off as well as many would have liked because of it's cost. However, with the increase of VoIP users desiring to use VoIP on their smart-phones and PDAs, 3G (since it provides the bandwidth needed for VoIP) could become more popular, making the service costs for it drop by increasing its subscriber count. The article also mentions that Skype has seen the potential in this and has already signed an agreement with Hutchison 3 Group to allow their software to function as a softphone on Hutchison 3G devices. Please click the link above to read the entire article.

Mobile phone service not doomed by VoIP

 

There has been a lot of talk lately about all the Wi-Fi/VoIP capable mobile phones that are emerging into the market recently. I hadn't considered any of this news-worthy enough to post here, because most of these articles talked about how these phones are going to eliminate traditional mobile phone services, which I don't see as being the case. I do agree that having a wireless capable phone with softphone software as a huge feature, but not as a feature that's going to totally replace mobile phone service. At least not until many large metropolitan areas are covered with Wi-Fi mesh networks that are always available, or as this article mentions, it is done using 3G technology. People need their mobile phones everywhere, not just when a wireless network is available. This article, although not too terribly informative, is the first I've seen talk about these phones (specifically Microsoft's) and also about the fact that they don't pose a huge threat to mobile carriers. Please click the link above to read.

Idefisk IAX2 Softphone

 

The Asterisk Guru has had this IAX2 softphone available for awhile now, but in case you may not have heard of it yet, allow me to present it to you.
I've used this softphone with my Asterisk PBX for a few months now, and like it. It's very simple to configure, and works reliably. If you have a static IP and can port-forward the specified IAX2 port through your router to you asterisk box, you can use this phone anywhere you have an internet connection. This of course is not a SIP softphone, and only works with the native asterisk protocol, IAX2.

Running Asterisk on a Wireless Router

 

Here's an interesting article on how to configure and run Asterisk on OpenWrt running on a wireless router. Probably not a good solution for a production environment, but would still be something fun to play with, if you have the time. Click the link above to read the article.

Better quality VoIP calls over SSL VPN connections

 

Those of us familiar with networking realize that this makes perfect sense, but this is still a very interesting article concerning an experiment on VoIP call quality over SSL VPN connections at different speeds. This is a timely experiment considering how much importance (and rightly so) is being put on the security of VoIP networks lately. Please click the link above to read.
On a side note, in my opinion this is a huge, certain-to-be-lucrative, market that has barely been touched: producing software and hardware devices that aid in securing VoIP applications and networks. This topic is going to grow steadily in the next year or two, and just as we now have data network security experts/consultants, we are also going to have VoIP network security experts and consultants that businesses are going to begin to rely on in the design, execution, and maintenance of their VoIP systems.

The cost-saving potential of VoIP

 

Here's a good write-up about the cost-saving potential of VoIP by the Chicago Tribune. The general gist of the article is basically that if a person requires high-speed internet service, then VoIP is a no-brainer. This is especially true for small businesses. Click here to read more. However, I have been hearing rumors that VoIP calls are not going to be cheap/free for very much longer... More on that as I come across it.

Strange partnership between Intel & Skype

 

Intel and Skype have teamed up to provide 10-way conference calls and video calls. The catch is that you must have a computer with an Intel processor utilizing their latest technology, such as their dual-core chips. Is it really necessary to have a dual-core processor to handle a 10-way VoIP conference call? I doubt it. And why not allow support for AMD's dual-cores? Both Intel and Skype are justifiably catching a lot of heat over this. Read more about their marriage here.

Vonage IPO concerns

 

There has been a lot of talk lately about Vonage's attempt to raise $250 million through an IPO, but before we all go invest, here's a good article that brings up some very valid concerns.

Vonage to open up SIP credentials

 

Vonage has announced that they will open up SIP credentials to allow their users to configure their own software or hardware phones to work with their service. This new service may very well be all it will take to get me to switch from Packet8 to Vonage. This, as I'm sure everyone is aware, opens up a lot of potential for VoIP. Vonage trunks will then be able to be initiated directly from an IP PBX such as Asterisk, or sipX, circumventing the need to convert the line back to analog and using hardware to attach to the PBX.

People are looking to leverage the IP phones they already have with their VoIP service provider. Why wouldn't Vonage want to leverage the millions of Cisco IP phones and other SIP-based hardware phones out there? Additionally, Asterisk is a very popular open-source IP-based phone system that many Asterisk users have configured with SIP trunks for outbound termination. Vonage is shooting themselves in the foot by forcing the Asterisk community to use Vonage's competitors for PSTN termination.

Makes perfect sense.

Reader Submissions Enabled!

 

I've finished a form to allow you to submit VoIP related information for inclusion here on VoipJots. I hope it's heavily used so that we can all learn from each other. The form is here, and also available through the Share Knowledge link on the sidebar.

VoIP is still a relatively young technology, but one that's already being widely adopted. I think it's in all of our best interests to familiarize ourselves with the technology and news related to VoIP, in order to stay up with all the changes. All of VoipJot's readers know something about VoIP (or shortly will), or they wouldn't be here. If we can share our knowledge, think of how much we will learn!

So please, if you come across an interesting news article, discover a new software or hardware product, or come up with a new way to configure any VoIP related hardware or software, please take the minute to submit it so that we can all learn from it too. And now that I've gotten this functionality done and out of the way, I'll get back to submitting more posts myself!

Formal Introduction

 

Hello All,
VoipJots.com has been online for awhile now, and getting a decent amount of visitors so I thought I'd formally introduce myself...

My name is Olin Hamilton, I work as a System Administrator for a small, independent phone company located in NE Kansas, almost in the exact center of the US.
Though my company does not yet offer VoIP services, the experience I've gained from working at a phone company has developed my interest in VoIP, made me realize its potential, and has instilled a desire to learn more. I truly do believe that VoIP is the future in the voice communications area of telecommunications.
I don't claim to be an expert on VoIP, but I'm a quick learner, and have picked up quite a bit in the past few months, and steadily increasing my knowledge on the topic.

The goal of VoipJots is to be an interesting and helpful source of information about VoIP. It will not be a focus on just one aspect of VoIP, but on many, such as: VoIP hardware, software, techniques, news, etc.
I know that it will be very difficult for a single person to accomplish this goal, which is why I am going to be working on a way for you to hopefully participate and help. Soon, there will be a method of submitting links to VoIP related articles you've found interesting. Techniques for configuring VoIP hardware/software that you've found helpful. Information about which IP phones and/or soft phones you've determined to work well, etc.
With a little help from all, this site will help all.
So please continue to stop by, make a daily visit to the site and see what's new. Much, much more is soon to come.
Best Regards,
Olin

AAH Sounds

 

If you have Asterisk@Home and haven't fully aquainted yourself with all the sound files that come with it, I would suggest you do. They have a sound file for everything, and some are quite entertaining. While I was exploring them, I created an extension to call and play the different sounds in different orders, and came up with the perfect combination to send all incoming calls from my mother. It involves the sound file named gambling-drunk.gsm.
If you're a Windows person as I mainly am, use winscp to connect to your AAH server, and easily browse the sound files in /var/lib/asterisk/sounds. Apple's QuickTime will play gsm files, or you could setup an extension on your AAH box to play the sounds by adding this to the /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf file:

;simple playback
exten => 298,1,Answer
; 298 is the extension, it can be changed to whatever
exten => 298,2,Wait(1)
exten => 298,3,Playback(gambling-drunk)
;replace gambling-drunk with another sound
file name w/o extension
exten => 298,4,Playback(vm-goodbye)
exten => 298,5,Hangup

Have fun!

Dial VoIP for Vulnerability

 

As impressive as VoIP technology is, it's important to realize that security is needed with voice networks, just as it's needed for data networks. One thing this article mentions is the benefits of separating your voice and data networks in order to prevent problems with one network affecting the other. Another good bit of advice from this article is to take the process of implementing VoIP slowly. Everyone knows about the cost-saving advantages of deploying VoIP, and wants to see effects of these advantages quickly - without thinking of the repercussions of a poorly designed and deployed voice network...
Read the article here.

Broadband/VoIP providers are killing Skype

 

This article talks about how Skype is losing the grip it had on the VoIP market share. When Skype was first released (around two years ago), I tried it for awhile, and ran into the same problem all technical people have when a new collaborative, technical product or service is released.... They don't know enough people who are actually interested in it to thoroughly try it out with. So, needless to say, Skype was uninstalled from my computer in a couple of months.
Anyway, I could never see Skype as a replacement for a traditional phone line, since it required you to be sitting at your computer with a headset on. Of course, we now have Skype phones, which have increased the possibilities somewhat, but still... In my opinion, the only thing that has saved Skype is EBay... And I don't think EBay has any intentions of using it for anything other than something similar to what Google is doing with their future Click-to-Call service.
Don't get me wrong, Skype was great at first. It was a leader and a definite force to be reckoned with two years ago (and I'm sure it will be around to some degree for awhile yet) but it's hard to stay on top in a super-aggressive market, and the VoIP market is nothing these days, if not aggressive...

NerdVittle's Soup-to-Nuts AAH 2.4 Installation Guide

 

NerdVittles.com is unstoppable! If you ever need to know anything about asterisk@home, there's the place to look. They've recently released a Newbie's Guide to Asterisk@Home 2.4. This guide is very inclusive, and tells you just about everything you need to know about AAH, and how to set it up. Enjoy.

Google announces Click-to-Call

 

Further news has been released concerning what Google has in mind with their recent dealings with Voip, Inc.
News article here, and an interesting Google FAQ about the new service here.