≡ trixboxPro Install Best Practices part 1: Turn up.
I’ve been working with trixbox Pro and in general it’s proven to be a good, reliable, asterisk phone system.
The setup is easy enough, even for admins with no VoIP experience. Call logs, queues, voicemail, music on hold; It’s all there.
I’ve got a few good best-practice tips for new installs. Most of this information and some of the verbiage is pulled right off their Kb, but I’ve filtered down the content for simplicity. Also, some of these concepts could be applied to any asterisk roll out.
First things first…
ISOLATE YOUR PHONE NETWORK
It is easiest to have a dedicated private network and internet connection for your telephone system. Effectively, you should have a modem, router/firewall, your PBX and phones. I realize that in some situations this creates a tough sell, but the money saved when switching to an IP PBX needs to be partially reinvested in the longevity and quality of service you get out of it. Taking this step will pay off. Plainly.
SETUP THE PBX AS PRIMARY DNS FOR YOUR PHONES
Why you ask?
1. Because your PBX is smarter and faster
These servers maintain a local database resource (called a zonefile) containing the IP address of your PBX . This allows the PBX to respond quickly to responses from any of your IP phones without requiring a recursive DNS lookup to any external source.
2. It will improve IP phone reliability
DNS Responses (especially from Windows-based DNS servers) can be slow. If/when they are slow, your IP phones will not get a timely response for re-registration, and the registration timeout will expire, causing the phone to be unavailable to the PBX until the next registration period (typically 10 minutes). Some phones require a manual restart in order to re-register with the PBX after a registration timeout problem. When you use the DNS service in your PBX, these problems never occur, so you don’t need to worry about intermittent circumstances where you are unable to place calls, or inbound calls route directly to voice mail instead of ringing the extension.
Many networks use the DNS services provided to them by their internet service provider. If the internet connection is down, or if your ISP’s DNS servers become unresponsive - your IP phones will no longer be able to access your PBX over the local LAN. By using the PBX as a primary DNS server for your network, you eliminate this remote dependency, and allow your PBX to operate properly even during an internet access outage.
HOW?
Honestly, you are kind of on your own here. It should be easy to change the primary DNS for networked devices. Just change it to the internal ip of the PBX. If you’re lost at this point, it may be time to study up and go for that MCSE you’ve always wanted.
SET THE BOOT SERVER ON ALL OF YOUR PHONES
I’m not going to write this one up, the pro’s have already done-so here. Believe me, you will have a power outage and your phones will lose their configs. By all means, handle this automatically if you can.
TURN UP YOUR TRUNKS
As soon as your phones are registered and can dial between extensions, you should turn up your VoIP, PRI or analog trunks as soon as possible. Create a simple ‘Main Menu’ under the Autoanswer tab in the trixbox control panel, that plays a voice prompt. The pbx will automatically answer any incoming calls via the main menu at this point in the configuration. You can use the voice prompt as a confirmation that incoming calls are working. You will need a outside line to test, a cell phone works.
PLAY BY THE RULES
These systems are fairly flexible, but I’ve found them to be sensitive to certain configurations. Most specifically the following rules need to be followed during your implementation:
1. Use the standard dial-out prefix (9). If your call center agents accidentally dial 911, I suggest you ban them from free office coffee for 1 week. They won’t make the same mistake twice.
2. Use a 4 digit extension scheme that does not start with 0. Yes, I’ve seen it. No, I have no idea why one would make extensions starting with zero.
3. Protect your investment with a firewall. Use a whitelist to allow traffic to and from the trixbox vpn servers [ vp1.fonality.com + vp2.fonality.com] and your SIP provider’s IP only. If you need to add remote phones in the future, you’ll want to whitelist their public ip’s as well. You can get creative with Dyndns to keep things synced between your firewall and your remote extensions, but that is another article in itself.
4. As soon as you have configured and registered trunks, perform the following tests before worrying about anything else. These are the most common in-the-field issues that come up following a roll out, simply because they weren’t tested during the turn up.
- Dial out, connect audio, confirm caller id if possible. Complete local, long distance, international, and toll free calls. Learning that your provider doesn’t connect 866 calls properly three days into production is never fun.
- Dial in, connect audio, confirm caller id. Get a few confirmed calls from the outside world. Have a friend call, chat for 10 minutes, you should know quickly if things are working well or not.
- Dial out, navigate at least one touch tone menu on another telephone system. Call your bank and check your balance by phone. Again, most employee’s navigate touch tone menus regularly - This will come back to bite you. if you don’t personally test it.
