[voip] FreePBX and Cisco phones

[fiza]

I am just looking at experimenting with VoIP and I have some old Cisco 6921 and 7931 phones. Does anyone know if these phones will work with FreePBX? Never touched anything to do with VoIP so this is all new to me. With FreePBX do you need to buy add-ons to get extra functionality (voicemail, caller ID etc) or is it all built in?

[FN-GM]

We have the 6941 running on FreePBX and these are the big brother of the 6921. I have never used the 7931.

 

You can buy addons to make life easier. For example the Endpoint manager to manage phone configs. It is $25 a year. But to get a system up and running there is no need to buy any addons.

[fiza]

We have the 6941 running on FreePBX and these are the big brother of the 6921. I have never used the 7931.

Any guidance on how you got the 6941 working? I am hoping the 6921 is similar.

[mavhc]

If you have Cisco phones with SCCP software installed then update it to the latest before switching to SIP

 

Then setup dhcp to point to freepbx tftp server, and do https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/PPS/View+TFTP+requests+from+phones

 

You'll see the xml file it requires, create one and see if it works. The 7912 phones I have required chansip not pjsip, and shorter passwords than default, 8 chars I think.

 

However the logo file wanted to be a png, not a bmp

[fiza]

So before I start looking at the Cisco Phones I wanted to get FreePBX working internally with soft phones. I have installed FreePBX and updated all modules. Seems to be fine, no errors. I have created 2 extensions on FreePBX and I have installed X-Lite on 2 computers and managed to register with FreePBX. The phone software says it is registered but I cannot make any calls from one phone to the other. Is there a place in FreePBX where I can see the 2 soft phones I have registered? The phones register so why cant they communicate now?

 

Have I missed something?

[FN-GM]

If you have Cisco phones with SCCP software installed then update it to the latest before switching to SIP

 

I have never updated SCCP before installing SIP. 6 weeks ago I flashed a 12 years old 7911 with a 12 year old firmware with a band new update.

[mavhc]

So before I start looking at the Cisco Phones I wanted to get FreePBX working internally with soft phones. I have installed FreePBX and updated all modules. Seems to be fine, no errors. I have created 2 extensions on FreePBX and I have installed X-Lite on 2 computers and managed to register with FreePBX. The phone software says it is registered but I cannot make any calls from one phone to the other. Is there a place in FreePBX where I can see the 2 soft phones I have registered? The phones register so why cant they communicate now?

 

Have I missed something?

 

There's a status page, and the asterix logs, usually the best things to do are ssh into the server and tail -f the asterisk log, and look at the logs on the phone, can usually find them on the http on the phone, or in softphone case debug view/log, the old 3cxphone software has a decent debug view. MicroSIP is another one that's useful.

 

Sadly getting a phone registered is only the first part, you then have firewalls and ips, and nat, and codecs to deal with. Check you can phone in and phone out of an extension, check that after putting someone on hold you can resume, etc etc.

[fiza]

There's a status page, and the asterix logs, usually the best things to do are ssh into the server and tail -f the asterisk log, and look at the logs on the phone, can usually find them on the http on the phone, or in softphone case debug view/log, the old 3cxphone software has a decent debug view. MicroSIP is another one that's useful.

 

Sadly getting a phone registered is only the first part, you then have firewalls and ips, and nat, and codecs to deal with. Check you can phone in and phone out of an extension, check that after putting someone on hold you can resume, etc etc.

Just trying it internally at the moment so should it be hitting the firewall?

[mavhc]

Probably not

[speakercon]

You can view the status of the extensions/trunks on the 'Asterisk info' page, under the 'Reports' tab, then click ‘Peers'

 

Are the computers running the softphones on the same subnet/VLAN as the FreePBX server?

 

If they are on different subnets/VLANs you need to add each subnet/VLAN in 'General SIP Settings' under 'Local Networks'.

 

In order to use the 79xx and 69xx phones you need to flash them with the SIP firmware (available from the cisco website I think) and push out an XML configuration file which contains most of the phones settings (importantly server IP, phone extension/password). They also need a dialplan.xml which tells the phone when to process dialled numbers.

 

The easiest way of doing this is to put the SIP firmware files and XML config files in a folder on a PC/Server and setup a TFTP server program (such as Pumpkin) pointing to this folder.

 

Then use DHCP option 66 and enter the IP of the machine with the TFTP server on, in 'String Value', then when the phone boots assuming all the files are present and correct the phone will download them, reboot in SIP mode and register to the PBX.

 

You may already be using option 66 for pointing machines to WDS so ideally setup a new VLAN for voice, and set the option to the tftp server just on that vlan scope.

Edited August 24, 2018 by speakercon

[FN-GM]

You can view the status of the extensions/trunks on the 'Asterisk info' page, under the 'Reports' tab, then click ‘Peers'

 

The module is not longer installed by default on new FreePBX installs

 

 

The easiest way of doing this is to put the SIP firmware files and XML config files in a folder on a PC/Server and setup a TFTP server program (such as Pumpkin) pointing to this folder.

 

There is a FTFP server built into FreePBX Distro

 

 

@fiza did you get the softphones working? What port are you using? Try both 5060 and 5061

[fiza]

@fiza did you get the softphones working? What port are you using? Try both 5060 and 5061

@FN-GM Where do I assign the port numbers please?

[FN-GM]

@FN-GM Where do I assign the port numbers please?

 

No idea. It will depend on the softphone you are using. I haven't really used them much to be honest.

[mavhc]

FreePBX assigns, by default the default SIP port to pjsip, and 5061 to chansip, Cisco phones need chansip, so you need to tell them to use port 5061

[fiza]

No idea. It will depend on the softphone you are using. I haven't really used them much to be honest.

I am using x-lite and the default seems to be 5060.

[fiza]

FreePBX assigns, by default the default SIP port to pjsip, and 5061 to chansip, Cisco phones need chansip, so you need to tell them to use port 5061

I am just using soft phones at the moment just for testing. I want to use phones internally only without a SIP Trunk to begin with.

[mavhc]

"To change the destination SIP port of the X-lite softphone from its default of 5060, you need to modify the Outbound proxy to IP:port"

[fiza]

I need some help here. No idea what I am doing regarding how to enable TFTP server on FreePBX. I have the config files I need for the cisco 6921 phones (I think). I need to get these onto the Free PBX TFTP Server. I have tried connecting using WinSCP but the TFTP server is either not installed or not started as WinSCP fails at "Searching for host". I have no idea how to check or to start TFTP.

[mavhc]

Should already be there and running, copy the files to the server using scp with port 22 for ssh, then ssh in, move them to the /tftpboot folder, easier than uploading to tftp directly

 

https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/PPS/TFTP+server

[fiza]

It was working, I was just using the wrong login !!! Managed to upload everything. Reset one phone and saw it pick up the XML file but it still comes up as "phone is not registered". I must be missing a setting in the file.

[fiza]

Does anyone know if I have to pre-create an extension in FreePBX for the phone to register against it?

The phone has picked up the firmware correctly, its just not registering so something is amiss with the cnf.xml file.

[FN-GM]

Does anyone know if I have to pre-create an extension in FreePBX for the phone to register against it?

 

You will need to create the extension in FreePBX yes.

[fiza]

You will need to create the extension in FreePBX yes.

@FN-GM - Do you have a working cnf.xml file that I could take a look at please? I am missing something because the phone will not register even with a matching extension created in FreePBX.

[fiza]

After a few reboots the phone has registered and I have a dial tone!! Not sure why it didn't register first time though.

[mavhc]

Yeah, sometimes it's a bit weird. Chansip and 8 char passwords for cisco phones are the main things I needed to change for my 7912 phones, they're about 10 years old