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Build your own UC Appliance
Want to get a taste of unified communications without spending much on it? We tell you how you can, using some basic hardware and Open Source software
Anindya Roy
Friday, June 29, 2007
Unified Communications or UC is a pretty new concept, but it's fast gaining
ground. We are seeing a lot of new UC products hitting the market. So much so
that, this is our third major story on the subject, in a span of six months. In
the first one, we talked about the concept of UC and related technologies. The
second was based on a survey that we carried out to know the state of UC
deployment in India. The survey revealed that in the given context, the biggest
challenge for the IT managers today, is to justify the costs for deploying UC.
So, we went to the market to check, if it's possible to build a UC appliance
in-house, in an easy and cost-effective way. And we found the way for you! Now,
if you think that ready-made products are either not fitting your needs or are
costly, then here's how you can build your own UC appliance.
Getting started
Before anything, let's first fix the components that we wish to have in our
UC appliance. The first thing that comes to anyone's mind is VoIP. Then, it
should also have a Chat server. One can also think of a Presence server in the
UC appliance. I think, this forms a decent wish-list. So, let's start with
making a VoIP IPPBX with Foreign eXchange Office (FXO) capabilities.
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But before that let's do some jargon busting. An IPPBX is essentially a PBX
(Private Branch Exchange) but differs from a traditional one because it is IP
based and works on digital signals. An FXO (Foreign eXchange Office) is
essentially a modem card which can be connected to any machine with a PCI slot
and can be used for terminating the PSTN line to the IPPBX. You can purchase the
card from the Internet (store.Trixbox.com) or you can get it from an Indian
reseller who imports them. We got our card from Troop Software, which is based
in Noida. You can have the full contact details from their website 'http://www.troopsoftware
.com/'. But while making the purchase just make sure that the card is compliant
with Asterisk, as it is the most well-known PBX systems today. Most FXO cards
support it very well. The card which we got was a Zaptel/Diginum TDM400P, which
was easily detected by Asterisk.
Pre-requisites
There is not a huge list of pre-requisites to build a UC appliance. The
software for this will be Open Source and the hardware requirement will be based
on how many users are there on your network and how many of them are going to
use the UC appliance. For instance, if you have a setup with about 100 users and
have a 100 Mbps network, then a standard P4 machine with 512 MB RAM will solve
the purpose. But if the setup is for 100+ to a few 1000 users, then we would
recommend a dual processor Xeon 3.0 based server with atleast 1 GB RAM.
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Zaptel FXO is a standard 4-port FXO
card used for terminating PSTN phone
lines to the IP- PBX |
Let's build it
Now, you are ready to install the IPPBX software. Burn the Trixbox 2.2 ISO
on a CD, from this month's PCQXtreme DVD. Boot the machine with this CD. A
standard Anaconda-based installation will start which will delete everything
from the hard disk of your machine and install Trixbox on it. So, please note
that if you have any important data on your hard disk, then take a backup of
that before installing Trixbox on it. The installation is pretty straightforward
and requires a couple of Enters and Reboots. Just make sure that the
installation continues even after the Anaconda is over, so you don't interrupt
the sequence unless you see the Login screen.
Once the installation is complete, login to the system with root username and
the password you have provided at the time of installation. Once you do so, it
will show you the http address from where you can access the configuration
interface of Trixbox. For that you can go to any machine on the same network and
fire up your favorite browser. Then, go to the link 'http://ip_addr_of_Trixbox_machine'.
The configuration interface will open up.
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Creating phone extensions
Believe it or not, your IPPBX is ready. Now, you will need to create some
internal phone extensions. To do so first go to the main page of Trixbox and
click on the 'switch' link at the top right corner of the window. The default
username for this will be 'maint' and password is 'password'. Once you provide
the password it will present you with a dashboard from where you can monitor the
status of the system. This includes regular information on what all services are
running, how many extensions are online and how many are offline. It also tells
you the vital data of the system such as the status of RAM usage and network
devices, etc. This dashboard was not there in the older version of Trixbox.
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