Random IT Tidbits

Good article on gauging how much bandwidth and cpu cycles you need

http://www.thrallingpenguin.com/articles/voip-dimensioning-and-bandwidth.htm

I thought I had to install Speex in order to use it but it turns out that Trixbox 2.8.0.2 already has it installed. The following link has instructions on how to install and then on how to configure it properly.

http://www.trixbox.org/forums/trixbox-forums/trixbox-projects/howto-install-speex-codec

Came across a quick and informational blog on the different codecs used in Trixbox.

http://www.sureteq.com/blog/?p=8

After a fresh install of Trixbox 2.8.0.2 I could not get CDR to work in the PBX section. Took some digging to find out but well worth it. CDR is really an important feature. The following link helped me http://trixbox.org/forums/trixbox-forums/open-discussion/there-no-cdr-report-tb-2802-tb-2801

I finally reproduced this here. I updated from asterisk16-addons-1.6.0.2 to asterisk16-addons-1.6.0.3 and now it’s working.

yum update

reboot

Interesting read on how to balance a lot of extensions (around 1000) on multiple machines

http://www.trixbox.org/forums/trixbox-forums/open-discussion/load-balancing

I was thoroughly confused at first but this link really helped me http://www.freepbx.org/support/creating-an-ivr Interesting  excerpt for me was

• i: This overrides the
  default invalid choice behavior, which is to play a ‘invalid option’
  message and immediately replay the current menu. E.G. If you only
  have 1 2 and 3 defined, and caller pushes 4, it will jump to this
  destination.
• t: This overrides the default timeout behavior, which
  is to play the menu three times and hangup. A standard configuration
  is to go the operator, to handle customers that don’t have
  DTMF-capable phones.

Also http://www.freepbx.org/2007/05/27/ivrs-%E2%80%93-standard-abilities-tips-and-tricks was an interesting read.

Followed instructions on http://www.trixbox.org/forums/trixbox-forums/help/want-setup-fax-email with slightly modified settings. I am putting copying and pasting with my modifications in bold for Trixbox 2.8.0.2 (actually there is just one change )

<start paste>

To configure Asterisk to listen for faxes on an inbound route, go to the Inbound Routes page, pick any route on which you want to listen for incoming faxes as well as voice calls (so you can pick on a DID-by-DID basis whether or not to listen for incoming faxes), and configure the fax handling as follows:

Fax Extension: default (there is no FreePBX Default in the new version)
Fax Email:
Fax Detection Type: NVFax
Pause After Answer: 6

This 6-second pause is the length of time NVFax will sit and play ringback to the caller while listening for the ~0.5-second 1,100 Hz fax CNG tone that calling fax machines make about every 3.5 seconds; 6 seconds is the length of the North American ring cycle (2 seconds on, 4 seconds off), so this will just sound like one more ring to callers. So, even though your Asterisk box will have already answered and is listening for a fax machine, they won’t know that. Also, leaving the window this big is sure to catch them all.

Okay, back on track now: save your changes to the inbound route, then go to the General Settings page and set up the “Fax Machine” settings as follows:

Extension of fax machine for receiving faxes: system

Then, obviously, set the “Email address to have faxes emailed to” to whatever email address you want the fax PDF’s to go to.

Don’t forget to properly set the value for the “Email address that faxes appear to come from”; use a real email address such as your own, in case any messages bounce, among other reasons.

Then save your changes on the General Settings page

</end paste>

I did everything till this part and it STILL did not work! Next step I found out on another website http://www.trixbox.org/forums/trixbox-forums/help/trixbox-280-beta2-fax-success-both-incoming-and-outgoing

and the important info I am copying and pasting here

<start paste>

In your “/etc/asterisk/extensions.conf” file find section “[macro-faxreceive]”
find if you have line with text like this: “; exten => s,3,rxfax(${FAXFILE})”
change “rxfax” to “ReceiveFAX”
save/update file and reload asterisk

</end paste>

Hope this helps someone out!

interesting article…very helpful indeed

http://www.trixbox.org/wiki/how-configure-trixbox-remote-phones-complete-novice

Dont forget to add the wW options in the Asterisk Dial Command Options
w Allow the called user to start recording
W Allow the calling user to start recording

Also another helpful option to set in features_general_custom.conf is to add the line

featuredigittimeout = 2000
; Max time (ms) between digits for
; feature activation. Default is 500

so that you have enough time to press * and 1 during conversations

All recording conversations are saved in \var\spool\asterisk\monitor