I've got a question for VoIP pros and developers out there...
The other day, I flashed an antenna for one of my colleagues, as a newby he asked me if all the phone numbers for his AREDN phone were now stored in there (of course not..). But - a few days later, I gave the new UI a try and saw that you can now enter a "phone" info in the services section. Wouldn't that be a great starting point for a "data collector," like a service that regularly surveys the network for nodes with phone numbers, which would save them along with the node name and IP address, in best case in one of the XML import phone book formats of the most common phone types (Cisco, Yealink, etc.). Like this you could get rid of a PBX (which is also called a single point of failure...), as only direct IP calls would be used.
What do you think of this idea?
Hi, Kurt:
I don't care for it, but a buddy of mine in the next county likes IP dialing
more than dialing PBX extensions and more than SIP:<hostname> dialing.
:-|
I think everyone willing to share their VoIP telephone should advertise their phone as
<callsign>-phone
What do you think of this idea?
73, Chuck
Hi, Kurt:
I don't have a phone book in my phone either.
I can dial by hostname from Linphone.
I just enter SIP:nc8q-phone and Linphone looks up the IP address from the AREDN DNS server and dials.
On my PBX, I program 'dial-by-callsign' so that I, again, do not need a phone book.
" Even if you would have one, you couldn't be sure which of the phone numbers were actually on the air at the time. "
Yes, even with a phone book or an advertised hostname, you are never sure if the phone is active.
"collecting both the PBX telephone number and their IP address"
You can collect a current IP address via DNS and this allows the VoIP phone to 'move around'.
If one collects a phone's IP address, sometime later it could change and your phone book would be in error.
A while back my neighbor that likes to dial-by-ip moved his phone.
He then needed to send emails to to his friends announcing his phone's new IP address.
I replied, I do not dial-by-static-ip-address,
I dial by your phone's published host name and I already have your new number. ;-)
73, Chuck
have a 'phone number' if it is a subscriber to a service (PBX, google-voice, ANVEO, VoIP.ms,...).
Can (any,your,their) IP phone store an IP address in its 'addressbook' and then dial by that IP address?
If there was a ' direct IP data collector' would this also be a 'a single point of failure'?
AFAIK, my phone can only IP dial manually.
73, Chuck
Chuck, (or anybody else) would you like to provide your phones IP so I can try it? Mine is 10.193.213.231
David
At present I can reach your phone, but the latency is very poor.
gelmce@HP-Laptop:~/Pictures$ traceroute -q 1 k9lmr-voip
traceroute to k9lmr-voip (10.193.213.231), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 localnode.local.mesh (10.46.133.185) 1.691 ms
2 mid26.NC8Q-HAP-AC3 (172.31.87.182) 208.720 ms
3 dtdlink.NC8Q-OHIO.local.mesh (10.109.45.37) 208.794 ms
4 mid1.AA3JC-HAPAC3-SUPERNODE (172.30.64.208) 408.477 ms
5 mid8.N2MH-Supernode-NJ (172.30.64.199) 408.565 ms
6 dtdlink.N2MH-hAP-SoCal.local.mesh (10.214.122.18) 408.569 ms
7 mid6.AI6BX-2-haP-ac2-Tunnel-Sever (172.31.107.116) 408.663 ms
8 dtdlink.AI6BX-2-PBE-400-QTH.local.mesh (10.79.238.118) 408.802 ms
9 AI6BX-1-PBE-400-P2P-QTH.local.mesh (10.58.239.66) 408.927 ms
10 dtdlink.AI6BX-1-RM3-P2P-Snow.local.mesh (10.139.73.15) 409.018 ms
11 W6LAR-4-RM3-XM-SW.local.mesh (10.246.106.209) 409.105 ms
12 dtdlink.AI6BX-4-RM5-XW-Pleasants.local.mesh (10.193.21.77) 409.156 ms
13 AE6XE-PleasantsPk-P2P-Yucaipa.local.mesh (10.40.100.204) 409.217 ms
14 dtdlink.KE6BXT-PleasantsPk-M5R-NE.local.mesh (10.253.213.11) 612.767 ms
15 K9LMR-Riverside-PleasantsPeak.local.mesh (10.252.29.94) 612.871 ms
16 *
Oddly, NC8Q-OHIO (my supernode) is directly linked to KE6BXT-LASVEGAS-SUPERNODE
yet I see about 10 extra hops between us instead of something more direct between us. :-|
Maybe KE6BXT-PleasantsPk-M5R-NE and KE6BXT-LASVEGAS-SUPERNODE are not as
connected as one might imagine. ?
Some of my phones should be resolvable (DNS):
nc8q-phone(,-v,-1008,-1009,-1073).
You should be able to reach those phones by name, but here is the IP address of the
phone in my unattached garage that you may call 24/7/365: 10.93.84.247
73, Chuck
It seems my GXP2000 does not IP dial out of the phone book. I must have just stored IP's there instead of writing them on a post it note.
I tried calling you from the phone book and the process just times out. Manually dialing yielded a different result; a "remote busy" error.
From my end:
traceroute to 10.46.133.185 (10.46.133.185), 64 hops max
1 10.193.213.225 0.686ms 0.662ms 0.593ms
2 10.252.213.11 17.123ms 12.284ms 8.036ms
3 10.41.100.204 21.791ms 7.750ms 3.575ms
4 10.192.21.77 14.006ms 9.486ms 13.201ms
5 10.247.106.209 86.461ms 16.048ms 65.072ms
6 10.138.73.15 38.036ms 55.230ms 23.640ms
7 10.59.239.66 30.820ms 46.357ms 15.102ms
8 10.78.238.118 13.390ms 67.574ms 20.270ms
9 10.81.13.186 28.241ms 73.392ms 28.134ms
10 172.31.107.117 150.968ms 98.474ms 136.765ms
11 10.214.122.19 89.791ms 95.656ms 119.041ms
12 172.30.64.198 103.930ms 120.274ms 110.314ms
13 172.30.64.205 137.829ms 147.239ms 185.315ms
14 10.207.77.99 203.519ms 158.122ms 160.263ms
15 10.46.133.185 242.337ms 212.122ms 219.336ms
Same number of hops, a little less latency this morning.
Thank you for the conversation. It forced me to install traceroute on my Ubuntu machine and learn a little more about how this network functions and the role of Supernodes.
73, David
So, the idea of storing 'numbers' in a phone's 'phonebook' and not needing a PBX is false.
A VoIP phone can have an IP address, but it only gets a 'number' from a PBX.
Some/all phones cannot dial bu IP address from a 'phonebook'.
My Nortel phones cannot IP dial, so, again, a 'phonebook' without a PBX is useless.
I propose that everyone that would allow an unsolicited inbound call should give
their phone a hostname like <callsign>-phone and advertise thus on a node.
I can configure my 'linphone' application to dial SIP:<domain-name>.
Linphone is free and runs on iOS, Android, Mac, Linux, and even Windows.
73, Chuck
I just noticed a "Missed Call" from "1071" with your Name and Call indicated.
The time stamp is not valid, apparently I haven't set the phones clock.
Too much fun.
73, David.