Hot weather killed T'Internet

 My home network has had to be simplified a little, since one casualty of the sudden few days of summer-like weather has been a Netgear switch killer. So, I have now reorganised the wiring to use the other switch in the loft. 

All change for the house network

I gave up trying to get DD-WRT working successfully on the DIR-868L wifi hub. It was working quite well, except all of the Amazon Echo devices would occasionally disconnect, and I had a time getting Android phones working. The wired functionality was all fine, but that's not good enough.

So, I have now moved to buying another server, suitable for running pfSense on. This distro is a simple install of a BSD box that is configured as a firewall, router, VPN, VLAN-aware and capable box. So I have now re-architected the house solution to use that box instead ..

The networky bits of the loft ...

I've a couple of switches in the loft - one for the PoE network (including the cameras) and one for the gig e network. This is going to change, but for now ...

Hiding under the header tank for the central heating .. the existing support wasn't quite wide enough for a 19 inch rack, but it has enough room to mount the switches vertically! That's Fireball on the left.

Fireball, gig e switch. PoE switch and patch panel

... and a lovely table for an iMac G3 - it's running a 2007 version of YellowDog Linux right now, on its huge 13.5 GB drive - great though if you need to log into something quickly. It seems to have more or less survived being off for the last 10 years, but flashes over occasionally, and the screen geometry is a little off whack now. Bless her.

iMac G3

More routing fun

I still have the odd issue with routing. It seems that external phones don't always route both ways to internal phones.  The problem is that the Dlink router can't route to the phones - need a static route. Unfortunately Dlink managed to eliminate the option of putting in a static route where the target is on the internal interface when they did a software upgrade a long time ago ...

There are workarounds for most Dlink boxen, but not the DIR-615L I have. Nor can I load DD-WRT firmware on it,

However, it can be done on a Dlink DIR-868L, like the one I have just bought from that Auction Site. We'll see if that fixes things soon ...

Phones are working .. PoE is on .. and Asterisk and routing

So I have now installed a couple of switches in the loft, and Fireball, the house server is back online. I established two networks - one yellow zone, for the house and the wifi network, and the purple zone with the phones.

I needed a separate network for the phones, since they need to boot from a TFTP server. Some of the Cisco phones, like the 7970 actually won't seem to accept a static IP, so they need a DHCP server that also gives out the address of the TFTP service as well. Now, since the house router doesn't dish out advanced settings like that - a bit Cisco unique -  I have to serve up the phone network DHCP and TFTP settings from Fireball. So it is the router for the phone subnet.

As is commonplace for Asterisk, the phones then started exhibiting the one-way-voice problem. If I call between extensions in the house, no problems. However, as soon as I try to call in from outside, the voice only works one way.

Turns out that it is not the usual codec issue, nor is it a NAT issue, but a routing issue ..

If the traffic is coming from a hard phone to a soft phone, the hard phones are routed to Fireball anyway, since their default gateway is the Fireball 192.168.4.1 interface. However the reverse doesn't work, since the switch is not layer 3, and doesn't know that 192.168.4.x traffic needs to route via Fireball. Since all of the hard phones are on a network that doesn't have a routing rule on the router (not a good name for a device for which I can't provide internal routing information), they can't receive RTP data from POTS calls and the sipgate service.

So I changed the settings in sip.conf to force all traffic for phones to go via Fireball, rather than trying to allow the RTP flows directly between devices. That seems to work. 

sip.conf has to be set to identify each of the internal networks separately. In my case this looks like

externip=hilabs.dlinkddns.com ; This is the free ddns service from Dlink - works fine

localnet=192.168.10.0/24 ; allows multiple lines

localnet=192.168.4.0/24   ; 

directmedia = no ; force all traffic to go via Asterisk on Fireball 

Seems to work ok now. The loading on Fireball increases very slightly, but hardly an issue since the compressed audio only consumes about 64K bits/second, and it is compressed and decompressed at source (viz the phones). Unless I was running a call centre, Fireball can cope. It copes an awful lot better now it is running headless, so it's not running KDE, or Gnome, or any window manager at all. I love the command line! 

Virgin Media delivers ...

(I have no affiliation with etc etc .. only commercial interest is if you are thinking of switching, let me recommend you and I will get a discount off my next bill) ..

After a bit of to-and-fro with Virgin Media, and a few days of suffering dropouts every couple of hours, I have a new Superhub 3 installed and the latest broadband package - at 20 quid a month less than I was paying .. 

I ran Speedtest ..

.. and we are live with Asterisk!

I solved the issue with the analogue phone lines by getting rid of them. For the princely sum of 5.95 per month, Sipgate offer a trunking service, which means you can get your Virgin Media provided phone number transferred to them, and they will forward all calls to that number back to your own Asterisk system.

I've not done anything too complex so far, but it all works. If someone calls, then the VoIP phones (the Cisco ones) ring - first the main ones, then if they aren't answered the ones in the office and craft room get added on, and then if they are not answered, the mobiles ring!

If the call drops through to voicemail, the message is sent via an email attachment to us, so we can pick it up on our mobiles wherever we are as well.

Now Virgin Media charged me 17.95 a month for the privilege of a phone line. Since I don't need that any more, I wonder what their reaction will be when I ask that I have that money taken off my bill?  (Please note this only works if your current provider doesn't use the phone line to provide your broadband. Obvious when you think about it!)

All bets taken. Mine is that I might get a discount of a fiver after months of haggling.

*** Wrong again. After haggling, VM tell me that it is actually more expensive to change package to stop paying the line rental than it is to keep it. We need a bit more OFCOM legislation I feel. 

Asterisk and stuff

One of the other fascinations I have is with telephone systems. I have a Cisco 7940, and a 7970 in the house, and I have a Sipgate account for VoIP. It was working fine with one phone, but then I thought I wanted both phones working. SIP is a strange protocol, and is hugely flexible so you can spend happy hours playing with all kinds of things to get it going. The phones are different as well; Cisco rely on having a TFTP server in the network for the phone to boot from, which contains most of the phone configuration. Each phone has a SIP<macaddress>.cnf file in the tftpboot directory that it looks for, to bring up the phone. I had some happy times with Wireshark to find out what was going wrong. Having fixed the 7940, the 7970 uses a similar approach, but a completely different format for the configuration file - now in XML! The phones also have their own web services built in ..

So having the phones working individually, I needed something so I can use them both. There is a lovely bit of Open Source software - Asterisk - that can run on Linux to provide a local PBX solution. So, downloaded that, and it now functions to manage calls coming in and going out on the SIP line.

I then installed Zoiper on all of the mobiles and tablets in the house, and that works well - so I can now call Trish from the office to her mobile, without the call going out over the air - and therefore is free. So far so good.

What I want to do next is to receive incoming calls on the house phone, and send them out to the SIP phones. So, how to solve this?

I did the usual, searched with Google and decided from a ten minute bit of research that the SPA-3000 device, available for pennies from eBay would be a good bet. Ah. Now the real fun begins.

I found the manual online, and there is a very comprehensive Asterisk book for download. I am still struggling though - this is a key part of the home phone strategy, so I can use the existing analogue handsets over DECT to ring them (assuming the phone call is from someone I like - telemarketers will get a very long message advising them that we don't accept unsolicited marketing blah blah on the phone). I will post more as I find out more, but this is a nightmare so far. There are literally hundreds of settings for the SPA-3000.

I may have to sell the little darling and buy a better interface.

New MacBook, old data card

So anyway, I have a brand new (to me) MacBook for my playtime. And work, and stuff. It was a brilliant purchase from eBay (except when it arrived, it seemed to be missing a key) and I am delighted with it.

It took a little sorting out when I upgraded to El Capitan a couple of weeks ago, but I am very pleased.

Then, a couple of days ago I decided to log in when I was at a show in London, with my Virgin Media data card plugged in to the USB. Ah, no device. Tried again. Still no device. Now the USB port knows something is plugged in, and the package to install pops up on the screen, so its not a low level problem. Must be the software, I thought. I go Googling at home, can't find anything sensible, so I decided to phone Virgin Media.

I phoned the number on the web site for mobile data, and got through after a few minutes. I described my problem to the nice person on the phone. Hmm, let me transfer you to the technical department.

Oh, sorry they are busy. I'll just put you on hold, as I want to make sure I pass you over properly (la,l a, music, la, la) Sorry about the delay. To make sure I can pass you over, I need to take some details from you first.

(Go through process of saying no, I can't give you the phone number of the card as when I plug it in, it DOESN'T WORK - followed by my postcode, house number, Nicholas Sargeant - yes, you may call me Nick, the first two characters of my password etc).

Transfer to technical department. Describe problem again.

" I need to take some details from you first. " (Go through process of saying no, I can't give you the phone number of the card as when I plug it in, it DOESN'T WORK - followed by my postcode, house number, Nicholas Sargeant - yes, you may call me Nick, the first two characters of my password etc).

Technical department tell me that it's not a known problem, but it's usually an issue with Windows 7 migrating to Windows 10. I tell him I am using Mac OS X and I am on El Capitan now.  Ah, ok. Well, it's the same thing. The manufacturers can't keep updating device drivers, so we encourage customers to look at Mifi products now. Really? I ask .. having been Googling in the background. Well, I don't need Mifi, and it seems to be a little more expensive, but would be a lot easier than having a special launcher on the machine, so I say Please tell me more. Ah, yes sir, I'll just pass you over to our sales department.

Welcome to Virgin Media. So we can serve you better, please listen carefully to the following ...

Get through to another person. Lovely girl.

" I need to take some details from you first. " (My postcode, house number, Nicholas Sargeant - yes, you may call me Nick, the first two characters of my password etc). I'm interested in your Mifi products, and wondered if you would tell me something about them.

Yes sir. I will need to transfer you to Mobile Data to deal with your query though. Just let me pop you on hold ..

Get through to another person. Lovely girl.

" I need to take some details from you first. " (My postcode, house number, Nicholas Sargeant - yes, you may call me Nick, the first two characters of my password etc). I'm interested in your Mifi products, and wondered if you would tell me something about them.

Yes sir. I am a little new to Mobile Data products, but I will do my best to help you.

Long conversation ensues, followed by me choosing a product I wanted, giving my credit card details and so on. Oh, sorry sir, that one is out of stock. We do have the 3GB per month model available for only 15 quid a month ..

Not convinced, I explained I would need to do some research and come back. Meanwhile would it be possible to cancel the contract on my USB stick, that DOESN'T WORK?

Yes sir, of course. I will just transfer you to Cancellations ..

Oh, sorry they are busy. I'll just put you on hold, as I want to make sure I pass you over properly (la,l a, music, la, la)

Get through to another person. Lovely girl.

Blah, blah,  Go through process of saying no, I can't give you the phone number of the card as when I plug it in, it DOESN'T WORK - followed by my postcode, house number, Nicholas Sargeant - yes, you may call me Nick, the first two characters of my password blah blah ...

My new USB stick comes from O2. Works fine out of the box, even on El Capitan on my Mac. They thoughtfully send me an email when I cross 80% of my data usage, so I can either squeeze my usage until month end, or I can buy an additional GB of data to tide me over. So far, I have managed to keep within the allowance. My only gripe is that while the contract comes with mobile wifi hotspots, they aren't all that prevalent, with one huge exception. The hospital where I spend most of my time at work ;-)

New D-Link router in da house