Open source telephony systems are making big waves in the communications industry. Moving your organization from a lab environment to production system can seem like a daunting and inherently risky proposition. Building Enterprise Ready Telephony Systems with sipXecs delivers proven techniques for deploying reliable and robust communications systems.
Building Enterprise Ready Telephony Systems with sipXecs provides a guiding hand in planning, building, and migrating a corporate communications system to the open source sipXecs SIP PBX platform. Following this step-by-step guide makes normally complex tasks, such as migrating your existing communication system to VoIP and deploying phones, easy. Imagine how good you'll feel when you have a complete, enterprise-ready telephony system at work in your business.
Planning a communications system for any size of network can seem an overwhelmingly complicated task. Deploying a robust and reliable communications system may seem even harder. This book will start by helping you understand the nuts and bolts of a Voice over IP Telephony system. The base knowledge gained is then built upon with system design and product selection. Soon you will be able to implement, utilize, and maintain a communication system with sipXecs. Many screenshots and diagrams help to illustrate and make simple what can otherwise be a complex undertaking. It's easy to build an enterprise-ready telephony system when you follow this helpful, straightforward guide.
Chapter 1 introduces some important telephony concepts to establish some necessary background information and an overview of sipX Enterprise Communications Server (sipXecs), its features, and its functionality.
Chapter 2 covers data collection about the existing systems, equipment selection, and the planning for phone system programming.
Chapter 3 covers steps involved in completing the cabling requirements, network infrastructure requirements, and installing sipXecs. In this chapter we learn to install the base PBX operating system and software. We also learn some important testing steps for verifying DNS and DHCP functionalities.
Chapter 4 covers creating and managing user accounts, managing the extension pool, utilizing user groups, and importing users. We also explore how to use phantom users for voicemail-only mailboxes and for some advanced call routing needs.
Chapter 5 covers the typical day-to-day functions that a communications systems manager needs to perform. The reader gets a good basic knowledge of adding users and phones to the system in this chapter.
Chapter 6 covers adding managed and unmanaged gateways, setting up the Session Border Controller, and working with Dial Plans.
Chapter 7 covers the configuration of sipXces server features. sipXecs has several server-side features that provide additional functionality. These functionalities are not otherwise available in the phones themselves. Many of the basic features will be covered in this chapter while some of the more advanced features will be described in Chapter 9.
Chapter 8 covers all of the information needed as an administrator to help the users acclimatize to their new communications system.
Chapter 9 explores the built-in conference services provided by sipXecs and then explores some more advanced sipXecs call routing features. It also covers some call routing tricks that will find use with the sipXecs installation.
Chapter 10 covers the configuration of ACD services. It also covers how to enable and monitor their operation.
Chapter 11 explores various system maintenance tasks and steps that can be taken to keep the phone system secure.
A glossary is also included at the end of the book. This appendix includes all the important words and terms used throughout the book.
sipXecs can be installed from a single CD installer. The recommended system should have the following components:
Two or four (or dual/quad-core) processors operating at 1.8 GHz or better
2 gigabytes of system memory (RAM)
32 gigabytes or larger SCSI hard drive
Single Ethernet adapter (100 Mbps or 1000 Mbps)
This book is written for network engineers who have been asked to deploy and maintain communications systems for their organizations.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "The nslookup tests are combined."
A block of code is set as follows:
;; Query time: 0 msec ;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1) ;; WHEN: Thu Nov 27 07:00:37 2008 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 103
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
> set q=srv
> _sip._tcp.xyzcompany.com
Server: sipx.xyzcompany.com
Address: 172.16.1.2
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
nslookup
>set q=srv
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Under Quick Links on the right side of the page is an Add Line hyperlink."
Note
Tips and tricks appear like this.
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply send an email to <[email protected]>, and mention the book title via the subject of your message.
If there is a book that you need and would like to see us publish, please send us a note in the SUGGEST A TITLE form on www.packtpub.com or email <[email protected]>.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book on it, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration, and help us to improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/support, selecting your book, clicking on the let us know link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata added to any list of existing errata. Any existing errata can be viewed by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.
Piracy of copyright material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works, in any form, on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or web site name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
Please contact us at <[email protected]>with a link to the suspected pirated material.
We appreciate your help in protecting our authors, and our ability to bring you valuable content.
You can contact us at <[email protected]>if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.