Connecting Asterisk to ekiga.net

From Ekiga

Introduction

Assuming that you have connected your Ekiga to Astreisk as described in another note, sooner or later (sooner, I would guess) you get tired of talking to yourself, so now is the time to make it possible to talk to other people on Ekiga.net. This note will give the necessary steps to do so.

Outgoing calls to ekiga.net

First let us assume that you want to able to call other people on ekiga.net. The next section will describe the steps to be taken in order to receive calls from ekiga.net.

In sip.conf add the following:

;outgoing to ekiga.net
[ekiga]
type=friend
username=YOUR_EKIGA_NAME
secret=YOUR_EKIGA_PASSWORD
host=ekiga.net
canreinvite=no
qualify=300

If you're using asterisk-1.2 add:

insecure=very ; required for incoming ekiga.net calls

If you're using asterisk-1.4 add:

insecure=port,invite  ; required for incoming ekiga.net calls

Here YOUR_EKIGA_NAME and YOUR_EKIGA_PASSWORD have to be replaced with your own values. We use type=friend here because that will allow us to easily change the setup to also accept incoming calls.

In extensions.conf add this:

; Call a number at Ekiga.net
exten => _9.,1,Dial(SIP/ekiga/${EXTEN:1},20,r))

This means that you can call anybody with an ekiga.net number (or name) by simply entering the number or name in Ekiga prefixed with a 9 e.g.: sip:9543211 or sip:9peter. This will make a call to 543211@ekiga.net or peter@ekiga.net.

The above introduces a prefix system that can be very handy, especially if you have several SIP providers. In that case you can use prefix 9 for ekiga.net, 8 for Free World Dialup, etc. Alternatively, if you have many providers, you can use a two digit prefix: 90 for ekiga.net, 91 for FWD, etc. If you choose to do that, you should change EXTEN:1 above to EXTEN:2.

Incoming calls from ekiga.net

The above setup makes it possible for you to call your friends at ekiga.net but so far they cannot call you. In order to achieve this you must set Asterisk up to accept incoming calls from ekiga.net.

First you have to tell ekiga.net where it can find you on the Internet. You do this by entering a register statement in the general part of sip.conf:

; register with Ekiga.net
register => YOUR_EKIGA_NAME:YOUR_EKIGA_PASSWORD@ekiga.net/101

Here YOUR_EKIGA_NAME and YOUR_EKIGA_PASSWORD have to be replaced with your own values. 101 is the extension that will receive incoming calls, in this case your Ekiga as we defined it previously.

Furthermore, since the ekiga.net server cannot authenticate against your Asterisk, you will have to add this line to the [ekiga] definition above:

insecure=very ; required for incoming ekiga.net calls

or if you're using asterisk-1.4:

insecure=port,invite  ; 1.4 no longer uses "very"

Now that all your friends at ekiga.net can call you at any time of the day, incuding times where you may not be around, wouldn't it be nice if Asterisk could answer on your behalf and make it possible to leave a message for you? Well, this is one of things that Asterisk is very good at: voicemail. This note will describe how to go about it.

Bent 16:54, 14 November 2006 (CET)