Hi everyone,

It’s been a while, but I’m back to writing on more regular basis. There are many changes and features in the newest software version, and we have a lot to talk about! Lets get started!

-Dave.

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So, you don’t have the trusty old butt set to do your troubleshooting for you with VOIP, so what’s a phone guy/gal to

 do?  First thing is some planning.  When you put in a VOIP systems, it’s important that you build yourself some test points in the network, so you can insert, or extract data to do troubleshooting.  Remember, its not as simple as pressing the bed of nails on the wire and listening anymore.

But, there are some other need tricks that you can do.  For example.  Ethernet switchs have a feature called Port Mirroring.  Make sure the switches you install have Port Mirroring.  Here is how it works.  Lets say a phone you are having problems with sits on port 20 of your ethernet switch.  And, lets say that you have your laptop on port 24.  In the switch, you port mirror port 20 to port 24.  Now, every packet to and from port 20 will also be sent to port 24, where you can see it on your laptop.

This is important, because on your laptop, you are going to install your newest best friend in networking – Wireshark.  Wireshark is a packet capture program that grabs every packet on the line, and classifies them for you by protocol, IP address, port, you name it.

So, getting back to that telephone with issues.  What you want to do it start wireshark and start capturing packets on the phone with issues.  When wireshark opens, go to the Telephony tap on the menu, and scroll down to VOIP and click on that option.  IT will open a new box that will allow you to follow the VOIP calls on the system.  Now place a call to reproduce the issue you are trying to resolve.

Your call will appear in the Telephony/VOIP box, and you can select it and graph it, which shows the session and each step of the call setup and teardown, and you can also listen to the audio portion of the call as well, either incoming, outgoing, or both.

Clicking on a record in the graphic mode will open the actual packet from the trace to let you drill down further for details.  This is a great opportunity to see exactly what your call is doing or not doing.  Don’t forget, you can trace another port that doesn’t have the issue to see what a good call looks like as well, so you can do a stare and compare of the good call versus the bad call.

This is a great tool, that can save you a ton of lost hours troubleshooting on VOIP systems.

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Hi everyone,

I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with beta testing recently, and I’m pretty excited about some new product that will really make customer management easier. Interested? Read on…

First things first. This application lives in your Windows toolbar and works with both your Outlook and your Polycom phone. There are also plans to have it integrate with some common database systems (CRMs), so you can log call numbers and times, customer support information, and case notes from your workers.

It makes all your dialing as simple as typing part of a person’s name. It’s actually just like having all of your contacts on speed dial! When you receive a call, your computer uses the CallerID number to find and display the Outlook contact information, so you will know exactly who it is. It can also flash up a window with the contact’s details when you receive a call, which will let your customer support workers greet each caller in a well-prepared fashion. It’s also only one click to call people back!

Also, it can interact, work, and integrate with Google Maps. If you enter contact info that is not in Outlook, you can perform a search without opening your browser. Once you choose the correct hit, you can call them with only one click. When you’re done, you can create a new Outlook contact, including a clickable link to Google Maps, which will autofill to save time and effort.

The plan is to make this available upon request within the next month. Just email the Sutus sales team and they’ll contact you when it goes live!

-Dave.

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Althought even that is probably not accurate, since the data is from January, 2009.  A full year later, I suspect we are looking at even greater numbers.  But even still, 1 out of every 5 PBX’s on the market today is Open Source.  That is incredible.  Read the article from No Jitter

The data also points out that its not the large integration companies that are providing the open source products, but the smaller companies.  Go figure, businesses are finding the lower cost of equipment, the lower cost of labor, and the highly responsive and reliable small business telephone companies are delivering the goods.

 

“For Open Source to be the success it is, might suggest the largest VARs were early to seize a nascent business opportunity, and could justifiably take credit. That’s not the case. Working with a list of the largest 500 VARs, we began one series of interviews working our way down the list from the top, only to conclude that smaller VARs deserve more credit for the growth of Open Source. So far, large VARs have been largely under-accounted-for in the Open Source PBX market.”

 

This is great news for the small mom and pop shops out there that service small and medium business’s from their home.  Your business is intact, as long as you grow and keep pace with it.  This web site is here to help you stay up with the Open Source Market.  Send us an email and see how we can help you transition your current legacy PBX customer to a new Open Source system that is cost effective, reliable, and robust.  It will give your carreer a new lease on life.

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Open Source Enterprise UC Solution, OpenUC, From eZuce http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/ eZuce, a company formed by the creators of SIPFoundry, Dr. Martin Steinmann and Jerry Stabile, announced a enterprise grade UC solution, last month. Since I was away from blogging for almost a month, I missed the opportunity to present them to my readers. SIPFoundry was one of my favorite projects and in fact...

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China Requires ID for Cellphone numbers http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/ Sighting that more than 320 million cell phone users who are unidentifiable and the growing numbers of mobile spammers, pornography and fraud, Chinese government has began to tighten the knot. Most Western countries too require an ID and / or credit card information when purchasing a Cellphone or a SIM card to be used on a...

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