Asterisk + Cisco = VoIP For Everbody

This thanksgiving, I have something special to be thankfull for. I finally got that darn Cisco 7960 working with our new Asterisk VoIP system. Now our new phone system is the slickest piece of technology I have seen in a long time.

Note: this post might be a bit dry for general audiences, but if you are looking for a new phone system, you should take a long look at the Asterisk. I hope you can benefit from our Asterisk experience.

The journey started five months ago when we started to shopping for a new phone system. We got bids from the usual suspects; AVAYA, Nortel, NEC, Mitel and others. The big decision; take the leap into VoIP or stay digital for a few more years. Each vendor had a different take on the right path. There was no consensus.

Before spending the big bucks on VoIP, I wanted to try it and see what all the hubbub was about. Of course you can't try before you buy with a phone system. Then I came across Asterisk, a free open source VoIP PBX. At first I was leery, sure we use open source web applications, but for a mission critical app like a phone system? All the commercial phone vendors I asked scoffed at the idea of an open source PBX.

Then I learned of Asterisk's PHP interface to write custom apps. Sold cool and versatile, oh and free, won out over my need to be commercial. Not ready to jump head first into the bleeding edge, I viewed the system as an experiment we would run beside our existing system. I justified spending time in such an experimental technical endeavor as a hobby. I would work in my spare time at night.

So I bought a custom server for $900 (3.4 GHz Dual Core, 2GB RAM, 160MB RAID 1 Harddrive) and a Digium Analog interface card for $800. I did buy the business edition ($895) of Asterisk, but ended up opting for the TrixBox installation since the business edition was not compatible with numerous 3rd party features.

I did cheat some on the setup. I hired some consultants to get me started but what they delivered was far from a full working phone system. It was up to us to connect the system to the telco, do the networking and configure the phones.

I bought three phones to try out a Grandstream 2000, Polycom 501 and Cisco 7960. The Grandstream and Polycom took under an hour to configure. After four hours with the Cisco, I was still at square one, trying to change the TFTP address to point to our Asterisk box. I really like the Cisco and decided to shelf the project till I could spend some real time researching the phone.

Last week one of my IT guys and I dusted off the system and got the major kinks out system. We still couldn't get the Cisco to work, so we decided to deploy a test system with the Polycoms.

After about eight hours on Saturday, we had a working system with all the bells and whistles that would rival any company's phone system. HUD lite was probably the coolest feature. It is a desktop app that allows you to view the status of all phones on the system and move calls around via drag and drop.

Today I gave the Cisco one more shot. This time that grayed out edit button went black. I could change the TFTP server! Why didn't that happen before? I concluded it is some crazy unlock timeout feature of the phone.

The next step: load and rework all the firmware upload files. After solving about six different types of file errors, the Universal Application Loader loaded. Two more fixes to get the registration to validate. Then the TrixBox logo appeared on the phone. A beautiful site, but I got a Call out INV when dialing out, close but no cigar. Ah, the NAT configuration wasn’t set (I still don't get how the phone got to the Asterisk TFTP server with out the NAT config but couldn’t get to it for call control, but these are not things for us mortals to know).

Reboot - the X's went off the line appearances. I dialed my assistant; Come here Watson. OK, I made that part up but the phone worked. Then I spent the next hour boring everybody in the office with my tail of high-tech intrigue. That is one of the cool perks of being the boss, everybody has to politely listen to your war stories.

Granted we have only been using the system for three days (with the Polycoms), but so far it has performed well beyond expectations. Asterisk definitely has a learning curve, abiet greatly shortened by the TrixBox version with the FreePBX browser interface. It is, however, fairly intuitive once you get your head around the call plan paradigm.

I plan to deploy it to all our staff using Cisco 7940s and a few 7960s next week. Chalk another one up for open source.

I did have one person ask me if we planned to get into telephony consulting. My reply; an resounding "No".