In my last post, I talked about the disappointing performance of embedded Asterisk on a mini router.
Today, I’m going to discuss Trixbox (formerly Asterisk@home). Trixbox is a handy little open-source software package containing a combination ready-to-go linux install combined with an install of Asterisk with all the bells and whistles. It makes installing an Asterisk PBX as simple as it possibly can be. You take your Trixbox CD, drop it into the CD Rom drive of a machine, boot off the CD, and off goes the install.
After answering a couple of questions about a password and the timezone I’m in, the install adds all the necessary packages, reboots a few times while it does its work, and comes up running Asterisk. At this point, you can either log in via the console or, preferably, open up a web browser and point it at the newly-installed machine.
Coming from a background of installing Asterisk by hand and hand-editing the configuration files to do what I wanted and how I wanted, I’ll admit that the web-based interface was a little confusing. Documentation can be found online (and is extensive) , although there’s a trick to finding it from the interface which I found a little odd. You have to click on ‘Forums’ and it brings up an online page which includes a tab for documentation. That could have been labeled a little better (or had a direct link), but overall, I found the layout to be pretty good.
I would not, however, call the interface transparent. While there are several different interfaces combined into one (system configuration, recording management, etc), they all assume some Asterisk and phone knowledge, as the terms, layout, and configuration options are all Asterisk-specific. One couldn’t, for example, with no prior knowledge, load up Trixbox and have a phone system running in a matter of hours. It’s just not that simple.
With some careful reading, however, and if one uses all the resources of the internet available, it’s very easy to set up a basic running system to the point that you could then easily add or remove additional phones and users, work with voicemail, and configure some important features one would expect from a full phone system: conference calling and conference bridges, call waiting, call forwarding, do not disturb, call transfers, etc.
For those with Asterisk experience already, however, the experience can be frustrating. I’ll admit, I had to avoid the urge to uninstall the whole thing and just go back to my old ways of manually editing the config files. It would have been easier for me, but I was determined to understand the Trixbox solution, so I often forced myself to plod ahead.
As an install for a newer user, however, Trixbox comes wholly recommended. It takes the guesswork out of setting up a PBX either for home or at the office. Supporting large numbers of users would be a breeze with the web-based interface, and managing all the system files and configurations could be done by practically anyone with only a little bit of training.
I installed Trixbox at home, hooked it up to my IdeaSIP account using the instructions on the Asterisk@home wiki, and connected a device with an FXO port so that all my incoming PSTN calls go straight to my Asterisk box. From there, it determines whether or not I’m home or at the office by ringing first my local extensions, and then my remote extensions. If I’m nowhere to be found, and it’s during the day, it will forward off to my cell phone using my IdeasOUT minutes. If it’s night-time (sleep time), it just goes straight into voicemail.
And since I’ve become somewhat of a VoIP aficionado, and have many different VoIP-capable phones around the home, from the Snom phone to the wi-fi SIP phone to the ATA connected to my Uniden phones, I’m able to easily manage them all graphically with the Trixbox suite of interfaces. It’s quite effective.
The only real disappointment from Trixbox isn’t a Trixbox problem at all, really. It’s just that it requires a separate computer to use, and that means power, noise, space, and heat — something I’d been trying to avoid with the embedded asterisk install.
However, I can say that the whole suite works effectively enough that it’s worth investing in a small, shoebox-sized computer with a fanless power supply so at the very least I can keep space and noise down to a minimum.
If you’ve been thrilled with your VoIP account, but had been wondering what the next step might be in its evolution, I urge you to give Trixbox a try — for work or for home.
For those who’ve not yet explored the world of Asterisk, I urge you to do so. Asterisk is open-source PBX software that more and more large companies are using to replace their old, expensive, and often horribly antiquated PBX systems. Why spend $50,000 on a Lucent system when you could buy a nice server for $5000, and get the same or better performance with far more customisation options? You don’t, though, have to be a huge business to take advantage of what Asterisk has to offer. Many run it at home to use it for voicemail, home businesses, or give themselves for free some of the features for which the phone companies charge.
I was playing around a bit this past weekend with embedded Asterisk — Asterisk running on a small, hackable router capable of running one of the third-party firmwares like OpenWRT or DD-WRT. I’d noticed the Buffalo WHR-54GS was on sale, so I picked one up with the intention of building an Asterisk box for the home that would be small, quiet, and use very little power.
Storage space on the little routers is always a concern, and the WHR-54GS has very limited space (4MB Flash, 16MB RAM). Some of the newer models of these little routers have additional built-in memory, but some manufacturers, such as Linksys, actually use less memory on the newer models than the older ones, making it difficult to find just the right router for the job. Another concern, of course, is speed. Little home routers are relatively simple machines, and therefore don’t need much in the way of processing power. Few homes have enough computers to really slow these routers down, so they generally perform quite well for their assigned tasks.
The problem, however, comes when you install a third-party firmware on it and load the router up with additional software packages. Some of the packages available run brilliantly. Some of them do not, as the computing power inside the router simply isn’t enough to handle it.
I’d heard differing stories about running Asterisk on one of these little boxes, with some saying it’s the perfect way to create a miniature PBX server, and some saying that there’s simply no way that Asterisk can run effectively because there’s not enough processing speed.
Undaunted by the naysayers, I set about the task of replacing my router’s firmware (I chose OpenWRT for the task, but there are others available) . This proved to be the most difficult part of the undertaking, as Buffalo makes it difficult to replace the firmware on their routers. One can’t simply use the ‘Firmware Update’ portion of their routers because their firmware update program requires the firmware to be encrypted in a special way that’s either illegal or too difficult to duplicate. Replacing the firmware consisted of sending the new firmware via TFTP at just the right moment of a maintenance boot cycle. Hold the recessed reset button down. Pull out the power cord. Plug the cord back in. Initiate the transfer of the firmware. Release the reset button. The whole process takes more arms than I have, so it required significant juggling.
Once the firmware was updated, however, installing Asterisk was easy. There’s a web server built into the router to manage the features, and one page included an option to add additional software. Asterisk was one of the options, along with modules to handle voicemail, additional sounds, additional features, etc. I ran into a problem briefly in which I ran out of space to install one of the modules I’d wanted to install, but other than that, the rest of it was pretty easy.
Configuring Asterisk is a daunting experience for those who are unfamiliar with its idiosyncrasies, however, there are numerous help files available on the web, and since I was connecting to IdeaSIP, I just started off with the IdeaSIP instructions from the faq and worked from there to customise things.
In minutes, I had a functioning Asterisk server running.
Unfortunately, in testing the server’s ability to handle incoming, outgoing, and internally-transferred calls, I noticed that the performance of the little router simply wasn’t enough to handle the traffic. I could easily forward calls in to the phones and bounce calls out through IdeaSIP, but the signal was choppy, and there were numerous errors from its inability to keep up.
While there are slightly more powerful home routers out there on the market from which I could choose, none of them really seem to meet the minimum specs for Asterisk to be able to actually handle calls effectively.
Coming soon: My experiences wrangling TrixBox (a Linux/Asterisk install with all the gizmos and easy-to-use web-based management tools built-in)
CompUSA, in a restructuring bid, is closing massive numbers of its stores across the US.
I happened to near a CompUSA in Atlanta this past weekend, so I thought I’d stop in and see if they had any deals. First off, I have to say, the store looked like it had been gutted. They’re obviously moving merchandise pretty quickly. Every single thing in the store is on sale, from DVDs to software to computers and peripherals.
That said, I scoured the store looking for a deal of some kind — anything I could see that indicated a bargain. I found nothing. Not one single thing in the store that I couldn’t find cheaper just about anywhere else in town or online. No wonder they’re closing almost 200 stores. I can’t imagine how they could compete.
And yet, with all these ridiculous prices, such as $250 for items that list at $199 (marked down to only $205!!!), I fail to see why all the merchandise was flying off the shelves. Bargain frenzy is the only explanation I could conjure. Absolute madness.
A list of store closings can be found here:
http://www.compusa.com/locations/closing_stores.asp