A customer networks and his Virtual PBX!
A customers network and his Virtual PBX!
Most the time we get new customers they configure their PBXs and we do not here from them again! Other times tickets go back and forth for days. We get the occasional ticket from existing client here and there but mostly new clients put in the most tickets.
Recently we got a new client, we installed the server with Trixbox upgraded it and handed the Virtual PBX off to the customer. They were having all kinds of problems and did not understand why. So we installed Elastix. At first they said they were having no issues and it was working. We resolved the ticket. Later on that day they were getting disconnected from the PBX phones would go offline and then come back online. We troubleshot the Virtual PBX from our end and did not see any connectivity issues, hardware issues, or software problems beyond configuration. The customer was getting very frustrated stating that it worked at their office fine etc. Then she had us install PBXinaFlash. Everything was working great for about six hours and BAM there was another ticket! We again asked a hundred questions and got very little answers. Finally the customer told us every time we reinstalled she had rebooted his router. She rebooted it again and the phones came back online. Keep in mind every time we did traceroutes to his network and his provider everything looked great from his Virtual PBX. His phone would connect then just show offline. She ended up buying a new router that was VOIP compatible. We could not ever get her to do a ping or traceroute to her virtual server. We left PBXinaFlash on the server as by default it installed fail2ban and iptables. She needs security I do not think she knows how to ssh into her virtual server but she can use the web interface webmin, freepbx etc!
Changing Internal networks or adding another internal network in Elastix, Trixbox, or FreePBX
Recently on one of the Elastix PBXs I host, I had to put up another internal network. Basically two sites were VPNed together so on the other end of the VPN were the new phones were there was another internal network. When someone would call out they could hear me but I could not hear them. This was caused by the sip_nat.conf not having the new internal network. This can also happen if you do not have the internal network and you are using a sip provider.
You have to setup the sip_nat.conf with the External IP and the Internal Network.
externip=123.123.123.123
localnet=192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0
They have 3 different networks so they have three entries for the localnet.
Here is what we did to make it work.
localnet=192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0
localnet=172.16.0.0/255.255.0.0
localnet=192.21.10.0/255.255.255.0
Once we did this all calls worked on all three networks…
Has Trixbox development stopped? Should you look for other Asterisk solutions like Elastix or PBXinaFlash?
Has Trixbox development stopped? Should you look for other Asterisk solutions?
Has Trixbox development stopped? Well I am not sure if it has stopped completely. For version 2.6 yes it does seem like it has stopped. Here are the most recent release dates.
Trixbox 2.8 latest release 2010-06-11
Trixbox 2.6 latest release 2009-06-22
We have a lot of customer that like Trixbox. We also have seen a lot of Trixbox servers get hacked in the past. Always update your server and patch exploits. Use APF, BFD, and Fail2Ban if you can. We recommend locking down your PBX (Trixbox, Elastix, or PBXinaFlash Server) to just the IP Addresses that need it. The IP Address of where your phones are connecting from, The IP Address of your VOIP Providers and the IP address of the Management Team managing your PBX (Trixbox, Elastix, or PBXinaFlash Server). One exploit that was brought to our attention recently in Trixbox is listed below.
The admin web interface can be accessed using the username of “wwwadmin” and the default Trixbox password, giving full administration privileges to the server including access to the extension and trunks settings. The versions of Trixbox affected are Trixbox CE 2.8.0.4 and below + Trixbox CE 2.6.2.3 and below.
We suggest that you fix this ASAP or completely firewall your Trixbox server from outside access.
You can remove the wwwadmin user completely from two files and use passwd-maint to change the default maint password which is password.
Secure your PBX and also take the time to update to the latest available version of Trixbox.
In order to secure your PBX remove the user “wwwadmin” from the following locations:
Edit the file /usr/local/apache/passwd/wwwpasswd using nano or vi from the command line
remove the line in
/usr/local/apache/passwd/wwwpasswd
that looks like
wwwadmin:40ig27asm87
Edit the file /etc/trixbox/httpdconf/trixbox.conf using nano or vi from the command line
remove wwwadmin from one line in
/etc/trixbox/httpdconf/trixbox.conf
Require user maint wwwadmin
You may find this wwwadmin user in both of these files. /usr/local/apache/passwd/wwwpasswd /etc/trixbox/httpdconf/trixbox.conf
Run the command passwd-maint to change the default maint password for accessing trixbox.
You will need to have access to the command line of your server locally or remotely using SSH and be able to login as the root user to complete this task.
We have been using Elastix since it came out. We have deployed up to 160 Phone on Elastix and Trixbox. Elastix gets the needed attention and has an updated feature set. A lot of people like PBX in a Flash as well. It is really preference as they are all originally based off FreePBX. Trixbox came from Asterisk@Home which was also based off FreePBX. Trixbox did fork into pbxconfig but don’t forget where they came from! Elastix has an unembedded version of FreePBX which lets you use all FreePBX’s features. Elastix also has new features that are only found in Elastix like faxing and many add-ons!
Any distribution could get exploited it is important to run security updates and lock your server down as much as possible.
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PBX Move
PBX Move
Moving an Asterisk PBX can be pretty easy. There are some things that you should look at. We recently moved a trixbox to a new subnet in a new building. One of the problems was no sound on calls. A lot of time this can be caused by incorrect configuration in the sip_nat.conf in /etc/asterisk once we added the new ips the sound started working. We also decided to use tftp as we have to roll out about 70 new phones. We always download the newest firmware and sip files. On polycoms you download the new files throw them into /tftpboot then you change the polycoms from FTP to TrivialFTP add the PBX ip as the server and bam your phone will grab the configs off the PBX. This particular PBX is trixbox. We used endpoint manager to make all the config files. You will want to make sure you have a server.cfg with the correct information. This is what we have in our server.cfg
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″ standalone=”yes”?>
<localcfg>
<server voIpProt.server.1.address=”172.16.0.100″/>
<SIP>
<outboundProxy voIpProt.SIP.outboundProxy.address=”172.16.0.100″/>
</SIP>
<SNTP
tcpIpApp.sntp.daylightSavings.enable=”1″
tcpIpApp.sntp.address=”172.16.0.100″
tcpIpApp.sntp.gmtOffset=”-18000″
/>
<localcfg>
Virtual PBX or Dedicated PBX?
A lot of customer constantly ask how can we possibly use a Virtual PBX over a Dedicated PBX? This really depends on how high your usage is and what your needs are. We have lots of customers using our Virtual PBX service as their primary PBX. Obviously if you are buying the cheapest package you cannot expect to much, 256 MB of RAM is really only good for playing around or making 1 or 2 calls at a time. However we have customers with more than 50 phones on a Virtual PBX. We have customers with less phones that cannot use anything but a Dedicated PBX. Their usage is much higher. Sometimes these types of customers have 10 people on the phones and 20 people on hold waiting in the queue. If you are going to have high call volume spend a little more and get a Dedicated PBX!
We always suggest that you start off with a Virtual PBX. Most of the time for small businesses the virtual pbx will do what you need! If you already have a PBX give your provider as much information as possible and let them direct you. Most providers will be able to point you in the right direction as they are experienced in these types of matters.