VoIP - Step by Step Implementation

1. VoIP - Step by Step Implementation Dr. Adeel Akram Telecommunication Engineering Department UET Taxila

2. Lecture Overview • Introduction • 12 Steps to VoIP • Case Studies • Asterisk • Trixbox • Brekeke • Free PBX • miniSipServer

3. Introduction • In 2004, with voice-over-IP capturing over 35% of all new enterprise voice shipments • Since then, most enterprises have begun their road to implement VoIP, ranging from new all-IP PBXs to service provider hosted solutions (IP Centrex).  • With the problems encountered by early adopters largely resolved and mainstream organizations moving from “If VoIP” to “When VoIP” decisions • Lets begin to layout a roadmap for successful VoIP implementation.

4. VoIP RoadMap • The lessons learnt from deployment of large data networks can help organizations in developing a roadmap to help guide enterprises to move to VoIP successfully.  • It is not a simple recipe to follow, but it outlines a thoughtful approach containing an admixture of the ingredients that make a successful plan.  • The skills and determination of the team leader and the team members (including vendors and service providers, at the right times), will determine the success of the overall project. 

5. 12 Steps to VoIP • The key success factor is building a plan to guide the implementation from initial brainstorming about what your enterprise can accomplish with VoIP through solution selection and implementation, closing with a measurement program to evaluate the benefits-to determine how successful your plan attained its objectives. • And how to evolve the initial implementation to further success over its lifetime.  • Successful users do not select a box, but have implemented a business solution that will provide increasing benefits over time to the enterprise.

6. Step 1 • Create and educate a cross-organization project team • telecom, datacom, • financial, planning, • business, marketing, sales, • customer support, maybe even customers, • business partners and suppliers, etc.

7. Step 1 (Contd.) • A committed interdisciplinary team is the key to project success.  • The goals of this team are to determine what to do, how to do it and to build performance benchmarks to evaluate progress and measure the value received from what will be a substantial investment over many years.  • The need for an interdisciplinary, cross-functional project team is critical. It must not only understand the technologies involved in convergence but, more importantly, ensure that the project will support and enable the business goals of your enterprise.

8. Step 2 • Survey capabilities and applications

9. Step 2 (Contd.) • Key areas of investigation will include: networking capabilities, system and device features and functions, open interfaces to business applications, multimedia messaging, web-based applications, mobility capabilities and, where appropriate, contact centers.  • Of emerging importance is employee presence (enabled by instant messaging) and its opportunities for improved collaborative work.

10. Step 2 (Contd.) • Conduct a survey of the breadth and depth of the capabilities being offered and planned by the various vendors. • Not just today’s availability, but a thorough look at multi-year solution roadmaps should be considered.  • Vendors who support both embedded systems evolution as well as new pure IP-systems should be considered. 

11. Step 3 • Determine how to apply VoIP within your enterprise

12. Step 3 (Contd.) • Understanding the business plan and future directions of your organization is an early gating step.  • As Benjamin Franklin (a very early VoIP planner) is credited with saying, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there!”  • Consider how the offerings of the various suppliers might be applied in your business today and tomorrow and where there are existing or potential opportunities to achieve business benefits.

13. Step 3 (Contd.) • Benefits include, for example: • Effectively manage geographical dispersion • Extend, coordinate or disperse contact centers • Support mobile/remote workers, road warriors and tele-workers • Manage acquisitions of new locations • Improve customer service • Reduce real estate costs

14. Step 4 • Audit data network (LAN and WAN)

15. Step 4 (Contd.) • Voice places special performance requirements on your underlying network infrastructure.  • Be certain that your infrastructure can support the real-time, quality, class-of-service and reliability needs of business voice communications.  • Fortunately, this is a service that most vendors and providers now offer and audits are conducted routinely and draw upon the many experiences learned during VoIP’s gestation period.

16. Step 5 • Find the business hook(s)!

17. Step 5 (Contd.) • Now that you know what VoIP offers and what are the likely additional capabilities coming down the road, your team needs to apply this knowledge to identify how your enterprise can benefit from a VoIP implementation.  • The questions about how and where to use VoIP solutions and applications need to be answered for your enterprise.  • And this view needs to be broad and multi-year.  • The implementation will not be static and, in many cases, will extend over several years.

18. Step 6 • Develop the business case(s) for your enterprise

19. Step 6 (Contd.) • To develop an analysis based upon a quantification of the benefits that your organization can achieve by implementing VoIP and each of the VoIP-enabled applications your team identified as having business value. • This evaluation of business value begins to point up the true value of having an interdisciplinary team charged with the overall VoIP analysis.  • All of the key organizations are represented, and they can apply their organizational knowledge towards making the analyses “real” and implementable.

20. Step 7 • Develop a detailed functional and implementation plan

21. Step 7 (Contd.) • While the business case(s) are being developed, a plan to implement the solution(s) needs to be developed.  • A good idea might be to develop the implementation plans in parallel with the business case(s).  • These detailed implementation plans will identify the key dependencies and major work programs that will be needed for your organization to obtain the benefits proposed by the applications posed in the business cases.  They are two sides of the same sheet of paper: • What can be achieved, and • The steps to get there.

22. Step 7 (Contd.) • The implementation plan serves two additional purposes: • It develops a prioritization of what can be accomplished over what time frames. • It develops a view of the resources required to implement the solutions. • Both of these plan elements are critical to the success of obtaining executive buy-in to the plan and identifying and receiving the required budgetary commitments.

23. Step 8 • Obtain internal commitments and budget

24. Step 8 (Contd.) • Because we have already evaluated the overall impacts on the organization--the costs, benefits and financial implications (investment dollars over time and the returns on those investments) • Budgetary approvals, while certainly never easy for a major technology investment, are certainly more likely to be obtained if the team making the recommendations represents all of the involved and affected organizations, have identified both the benefits and costs and proposes a timeframe that the decision makers are likely to view as both reasonable and prudent. 

25. Step 8 (Contd.) • It is likely that only the first few elements of the overall project may be approved in the initial request, and that the full plan may require several budget cycles to be fully approved.  • Because of the focus on infrastructure upgrades, it is also likely that the early approval elements may not have the best return on investment.  • This also shows the value of having undertaken a full, multi-year plan. Your organization will be making an investment with returns that become realized only after several phases are implemented.

26. Step 9 • Implement your plan, and be prepared to adjust

27. Step 9 (Contd.) • Having obtained the approvals to proceed, implement the plan developed earlier.  • This should include making the technology choices and vendor acquisition decisions, business process and systems re-design, as required. • Since it may have been some time since the earlier network assessment (Step 4) was conducted and changes may have been made to applications or volumes, etc., an update assessment should be included as an early part of the implementation.

28. Step 10 • Make feedback loops built into your roadmap, and adjust appropriately

29. Step 10 (Contd.) • Frequently overlooked is the ability to monitor progress and adjust the roadmap as things progress • We all know from experience that major projects generally take more time than estimated, cost more than budgeted and often return less than expected. • Having appropriate feedback embedded into your process makes the required adjustments less dramatic and more manageable than when not anticipated and folded back into the implementation program. • Such additional forced communication across the organization can serve to improve the quality of results.

30. Step 11 • Determine how well the benefits track the expectations

31. Step 11 (Contd.) • Taking the time to do this evaluation is an important step that should not be overlooked.  • This is especially true if the project was broken into several phases for implementation.  • The next-phase results need to be based upon a good understanding of the results of the prior implantation phases.

32. Step 12 • Celebrate your success

33. Step 12 (Contd.) • Having successfully brought VoIP into your enterprise, take a little time to celebrate your successes. • But be careful to not celebrate too much...or you may need to enroll in another kind of 12-step program

34. Case Studies Step by Step Practical Implementations of VoIP Solutions

35. Asterisk • The Linux based Open Source Software Asterisk has become the de facto standard in modern VoIP PBX systems. • Because of its powerful and flexible structure Asterisk is also being used as the VoIP engine in commercial PBX products, partly because some PBX manufacturers have realized that it would not make much sense to compete against the development momentum of this open source project and end up having an expensive look-alike that no one wants to write interface software for.

36. Asterisk • The flexibility of Asterisk comes with a price, though. There is no user friendly interface included and the command language and syntax have a very steep learning curve. • Even though some VoIP enthusiasts are configuring their Asterisk PBX box from the command line interface, this is not practical for a commercial product. • Managing a PBX system this way would be just as absurd as trying to sell a fax machine that needs a computer science diploma to operate.

37. Asterisk • O.K, this fax machine comparison is not quite fair because PBX systems in general need much more complex configuration, but this is why the Asterisk PBX Manager Web GUI was developed. • It allows configuring and operating an Asterisk based VoIP system as conveniently as with conventional PBX boxes but leaving the door open for much more sophisticated telephony and interface functions.

38. Asterisk • Asterisk is basically a a complete PBX engine in software. It runs on Linux, BSD and Mac OSX and provides all of the features you would expect from a PBX and more. • Asterisk does voice over IP in many protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware. • Even though it behaves as a classical voice exchange there is a major difference in dataflow when using the popular SIP protocol for connecting telephones:

39. Asterisk • In principle there is no difference of a telephone being external or internal. • This means that a person using a mobile IP telephone, for example a SIP softphone installed on a notebook or pda, this telephone will ring no matter where it is globally located. • When using the popular SIP protocol it is even possible to have all voice or video data flowing directly between caller and callee if both are located somewhere external to the Asterisk PBX.

40. Installing Suse Linux 10 and Asterisk • Here we show you how to install a complete VoIP Server, including Linux, Asterisk and PBX Manager - Step by Step. • Suse 10 Linux Installation • Preparing Linux for Asterisk • Install MP3 Support • Asterisk Installation Procedure • PBX Manager Installation

41. Suse Linux 10 Installation • Download your all five Suse 10 Open Source CD images and burn CDs from these ISO files. Alternatively you may buy a single DVD from Novell. • Insert CD #1 (or the Novell DVD) and install Linux to your local hard disk. For realtime performance reasons be sure to install only the minimal text based Linux operating system and no graphicai user interface such as GNOME or KDE. • Other than that, the basic installation steps are quite straigthforward and all proposed default settings can be accepted.

42. Preparing Linux for Asterisk • After booting from hard disk log on as user root at the command line. Now we have to use the installation tool yast to install a C Compiler and some additional modules. • You may do this interactively by calling yast without any parameters or by entering the following commands: • yast -i ncurses-develyast -i zlib-develyast -i glibc-develyast -i gccyast -i kernel-sourceyast -i openssl-develyast -i samba

43. Preparing Linux for Asterisk • The Samba Server comes in handy to access the Linux file system directly from any Windows PC over the network. • In order to get Samba working you have to configure /etc/smb.conf, which can be done with the vi editor: • cd /etc/sambavi smb.conf • Look for the line workgroup = xxx and replace it with the name of your Windows Workgroup or Microsoft Domain, for example: • workgroup = uettaxila

44. Preparing Linux for Asterisk • At the end of this file add the following lines: • [root]path = /valid users = rootpublic = nowritable = yesdirectory mask = 777 • Save the edited file and leave vi by pressing the following keys exactly as noted: (Esc):wq(Enter). • To leave vi without saving any changes enter: (Esc):qa!(Enter)

45. Preparing Linux for Asterisk • Now we need to add root as a valid Samba user, give him a password and ensure that Samba runs automatically at system start: • smbpasswd -a root (you will be prompted for a password)chkconfig smb onchkconfig nmb on • In order to access the Linux partition over the network you have to modify or shut off the Suse Linux firewall. • Use yast, go to Security.. / Firewall, stop the firewall and set its startup mode to manual.

46. Preparing Linux for Asterisk • After your Linux Server is restarted by entering reboot or shutdown –r now you should be able to see the root share in the Network Neighborhood of any Windows PC on the local network. • If not, try to map a network drive similar to: \\192.168.1.100\root, replacing 192.168.1.100 with the IP Address of your Linux server. • Use this drive to copy the downloaded Webmin installation file to /usr/src and install it according to the following example (adjust the version numbers accordingly): • cd /usr/src/webmin-1.260-1rpm -i webmin-1.260-1.noarch.rpm

47. Preparing Linux for Asterisk • Now you are ready to administer your Linux server from any Web Browser on the LAN. • By entering the following URL: http://192.168.1.100:10000 Again, replace 192.168.1.100 with the actual IP Address of your server.

48. Install MP3 Support • In order to play Music-On-Hold (MOH) Linux needs to be able to decode and handle the MP3 file format. • This can be done in two different ways: • by installation of the classic mpg123 module or • by using the new format_mp3 module contained in Asterisk Addons. • Be sure to install only one of these solutions and not both! • Follow the procedure in next slide to install either of the above modules:

49. MP3 playback with mpg123 • This is a proven and reliable solution. • Without applying the patch below there is a known security issue, but the most serious drawback is the fact that mpg123 is not being actively maintained any more. Download both the latest mpg123 installation source and security patch, copy both to /usr/src und install them as follows: • cd /usr/srcrpm -i mpg123-0.59s-513.i586.rpmrpm -i mpg123-0.59s-513.i586.patch.rpm

50. MP3 playback with format_mp3 • This is a new light-weight mp3 module found in Asterisk Addons V.1.2.3. • This is a solution with a more promising future, even though it is not quite ready for production yet. • The author states that is has only been tested with Solaris 2.6 and there are known issues with MP3 files encoded with LAME that may lead to Linux crashes. • You should also make sure to convert your mp3 files to 8 kHz Mono format in order to avoid high CPU load. • For latest installation instructions see the README inside the Asterisk Addons package.