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Obitalk as a SIP trunk.

Started by Usetheforceobiwan, December 04, 2013, 04:53:39 PM

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Usetheforceobiwan

Just curious if anyone has figured out a way to configure the Obitalk network trunk to make it act "sippish"?  It would be nice if you could have it as a fifth Sp such that you could use it to make URL dials and also to link a to an IP phone.  Anyone come close?

giqcass

I have never heard of anyone doing it.  I'm not even sure if ObiTalk uses sip.  Someone should wireshark it.
Long live our new ObiLords!

azrobert

#2
You can call another SIP device using a Voice Gateway.

Another method is to use a rule in the Phone OutboundCallRoute like this:
{123:sp2(anything@192.168.1.100:5060)}

Dial "123" and the OBi will call SIP device at above address.
SP2 must be defined as SIP and "123" must be in the Phone Port DigitMap.

Edit:
I forgot about Speed Dials. Define a Speed Dial like this:
sp2(anything@192.168.1.100:5060)

Usetheforceobiwan

#3
From my reading, I assume the Obitalk network is a proprietary implementation of a sip trunk.  What I am wondering is if it can utilized in a more sip way.  Are there certain settings you could use that would permit URI dialing from your Obitalk trunk to another provider? Or better yet, if you could use your Obitalk trunk to connect directly (notice I say directly) to a softphone, IP phone or other SIP endpoint without the use of the OBION program I think it would make the OBI's more flexible.

NOTE TO MODERATORS AND OTHER POSTERS:  I am not talking about hacking it or modifying it in any way, shape or form.

QBZappy

You can craft a dial plan which could bridge any OBi SP<->to any sip SP either direction. That simply rewrites the uri from<->to whatever the bridge the calls. This would achieve your goal by making it transparent to the caller. Unless you see a benefit in this it looks like more effort. What is the benefit of doing this?
Owner of the 1st OBi110/100 units in service in Canada & South America. 1st OBi202 on my street. 1st OBi1032 in Montreal.

Usetheforceobiwan

The case I am referring to is if the two SP's of a 100/110 or all four SP's of a 200/202 are used exclusively by GV connections, beyond call forking using GV (which to the best of my knowledge does not pass the originating CID) your only choice to relay it another endpoint is to use Obitalk to connect to an Obion softphone or another Obi hardware device.  Granted you could use Obitalk to pass the call to another Obi with a free SIP SP slot and then forward it from there, but what I am talking about it is the ability to say connect an Obitalk trunk directly to a softphone or IP phone.   At  this point this appears not possible because you cannot register a softphone or IP phone to an Obitalk trunk directly, you need the Obion program or an Obi hardpoint to do the termination. 

What got me thinking about this is a reference in the Admin manual which discusses adding an IP phone on the LAN side using a SIP SP BUT also makes reference to using a proxy address of Obi # > 5XXXXXXXX.pnn.obihai.com:port.  The pnn.obihai.com address would be outside your LAN and  perhaps they use this similar to a dynamic DNS reference but maybe a connection through this proxy address could be utilized in a different manner from the outside.  Again, with the inability to register to the Obitalk network using SIP, you probably could not originate calls from your softphone but maybe you could use the pnn.obihai.com proxy for URI forwards.  This is kinda getting ahead of my knowledge scope so I thought more enlightened or experienced minds would know.

QBZappy

@Usetheforceobiwan

Finally some details. We will need to put some thought into this, and make some experiments.

Quote from: Usetheforceobiwan on December 05, 2013, 01:17:27 PM
5XXXXXXXX.pnn.obihai.com:port.

BTW this has come up before. AFAIK nothing came of it other than some curiosity about the address.
Owner of the 1st OBi110/100 units in service in Canada & South America. 1st OBi202 on my street. 1st OBi1032 in Montreal.

QBZappy

@Usetheforceobiwan

Using an OBi202 with an IP Phone as an IP-PBX Extension
http://blog.obihai.com/2013/03/using-obi202-with-ip-phone-as-ip-pbx.html

Are you referring to something like the above set up?
Owner of the 1st OBi110/100 units in service in Canada & South America. 1st OBi202 on my street. 1st OBi1032 in Montreal.

Usetheforceobiwan

Quote from: QBZappy on December 06, 2013, 08:47:04 PM
@Usetheforceobiwan

Using an OBi202 with an IP Phone as an IP-PBX Extension
http://blog.obihai.com/2013/03/using-obi202-with-ip-phone-as-ip-pbx.html

Are you referring to something like the above set up?

Yeah, that's the one.  What I did not understand was if the remote IP phone is behind the remote Obi and the remote Obi is providing a proxy locally for the remote IP phone , why would you need the 5XXXXXXXX.pnn.obihai.com proxy? 

QBZappy

#9
@Usetheforceobiwan

We can get lost in the translation. Rereading the instructions in that tutorial is an exercise in English and logic. You can easily get confused with the details of which OBi units that they are making reference to. Their choice of words has to be read in the context of a software engineer and not as a lay person. Basically this is a dial plan crafted to twist the calls originating from a sip account, transported over OBiTALK service, twisted back to sip.

The "Proxy = 500111101.pnn.obihai.com:5061" specifies the gateway OBi with a unique OBi unit number and port. It remains to be seen if something like "ANYTHING@500111101.pnn.obihai.com:5061" can be used in any useful manner. This wont work because it is not exactly a SIP addressing schema. There is one dot too many. Perhaps something like "500111101@pnn.obihai.com:5061" could work.

Going off topic, this is a very interesting exercise to show that you can spend money on two OBi units to connect two ip phones to a PBX. It seems to me that the far away ip phone can register just fine to the far away pbx without adding two additional ATAs in the path. My house ip phone is connected to my office pbx directly. In my case I use a VPN, however knowing the public ip address of the pbx would do the trick just as well.
Owner of the 1st OBi110/100 units in service in Canada & South America. 1st OBi202 on my street. 1st OBi1032 in Montreal.

Usetheforceobiwan

I follow what you are saying  and you are right I might have flawed logic (just ask my ex boss) but isn't the translation from Sip to Obitalk being done on the remote side?  And with that in mind, why isn't the PNN reference  on the IP phone to the Obi # of the PBX side Obi?  That seems to make more sense.

QBZappy

http://blog.obihai.com/2013/03/using-obi202-with-ip-phone-as-ip-pbx.html

On OBi #2, set up the following parameters:
-             ...
-              SP1/InboundCallRoute = {>(1001):pp}
-              OBiTALK Service/InboundCallRoute = {1001>:sp1}

This concept is not translation. This technique is used to simply route the calls, no transcoding/translation is done (I think). OBi<->sip.


Owner of the 1st OBi110/100 units in service in Canada & South America. 1st OBi202 on my street. 1st OBi1032 in Montreal.

giqcass

#12
Quote from: Usetheforceobiwan on December 06, 2013, 10:20:58 PM
I follow what you are saying  and you are right I might have flawed logic (just ask my ex boss) but isn't the translation from Sip to Obitalk being done on the remote side?  And with that in mind, why isn't the PNN reference  on the IP phone to the Obi # of the PBX side Obi?  That seems to make more sense.
You are looking at this like it's the mailing address when it's clearly the return address.

Quote from: QBZappy on December 06, 2013, 09:45:13 PM
@Usetheforceobiwan
It remains to be seen if something like "ANYTHING@500111101.pnn.obihai.com:5061" can be used in any useful manner. This wont work because it is not exactly a SIP addressing schema. There is one dot too many.

I agree this is not a sip address but there is nothing stopping you from having multiple dots in a sip address. I have working sip addresses with considerably more then one dot in them.  

I don't believe anything useful can be done(from the user side) with ANYTHING@500111101.pnn.obihai.com:port because the part of the address 500111101(or whatever your Obi number is) never appears to be assigned an ip address.  pnn.obihai.com is hosted on Amazon with the bulk of Obis infrastructure. I think 500111101.pnn.obihai.com is being replaced by the ObiTalk service with the external IP address of OBI#1 using and internal database on the initial sip invite through the ObiTalk servers.  
Long live our new ObiLords!

Usetheforceobiwan

I still don't see why the remote IP phone needs to point to the pnn.obihai.com proxy.  If anything, it appears to be redundant. 

Here is my take on how a call is made in this scheme.  On the remote side, the remote IP phone establishes a session with the remote Obi using a straight SIP connection that should stay within the remote location's LAN.  Then the remote Obi takes that session and continues it by routing it through the Obitalk cloud to the PBX side Obi.  On the PBX side, the PBX Obi routes the call via SIP to the PBX. 

Doesn't pointing to the pnn.obihai.com address appear to confuse session connections that should be either exclusively internally LAN based or externally cloud based?


giqcass

#14
I'm no expert but here is how I see this set up working.  The IP Phone sends a sip request to OBi 1. It can not actually register with Obi 1 but it looks like it might make it believe it is.
Obi 1 sends that request through Obi Talk.
Obitalk translates the 500111101.pnn.obihai.com:5061 to a useable return sip address.
1001@yourIpAdress:5061
That address is passed to Obi2 via Obitalk to pp(ob500222202)
Obi2 forwards a sip request to the PBX from 1001@yourIpAdress:5061
The two devices now talk to each other independent of OBi1.

What happens when calls go the other way appears to work about the same because Obi2 is registered as an extension on the PBX.  

Anything look wrong about my assumptions?
Long live our new ObiLords!

Usetheforceobiwan

#15
Quote from: giqcass on December 07, 2013, 02:18:55 PM
I'm no expert but here is how I see this set up working.  The IP Phone sends a sip request to OBi 1. It can not actually register with Obi 1 but it looks like it might make it believe it is.
Obi 1 sends that request through Obi Talk.
Obitalk translates the 500111101.pnn.obihai.com:5061 to a useable return sip address.
1001@yourIpAdress:5061
That address is passed to Obi2 via Obitalk to pp(ob500222202)
Obi2 forwards a sip request to the PBX from 1001@yourIpAdress:5061
The two devices now talk to each other independent of OBi1.

What happens when calls go the other way appears to work about the same because Obi2 is registered as an extension on the PBX.  

Anything look wrong about my assumptions?

You know, I think you are on to something here.  I think the proxy 500111101.pnn.obihai.com:5061 allows the IP phone to register on the LAN side of the Obi.  I noticed in the web instructions that you linked to that Obihai has you checking the box on the IP phone that will make it register (to the Obi).  At least registration is what I am assuming it does or perhaps it's a spoofed registration if that can exist.  

What I am not sure of however is does the registration process stay within the LAN or does it go out through the WAN side and come back in through the WAN? And as part of this scheme, if you set up the 127.0.0.1 dummy proxy on the SP that the IP phone "registers" to, does that mean you could register an IP phone outside the LAN to this Obi?  I know others are using a softphone to connect to an Obi SP like here:  (http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=4647.0) but I kinda got the feeling that this connection was not necessarily a foolproof or durable one.  Perhaps if you used the 500111101.pnn.obihai.com:5061 to proxy against instead of a Dynamic DNS one, maybe that would be more rock solid.  

Again all of this leads me to believe there is some aspect of the Obitalk network that can be used in some sort of conventional SIP manner.  I will have to experiment myself sometime to see if I can find something out.l

giqcass

I don't think 500111101.pnn.obihai.com:5061 can be used as a real proxy because it can only be looked up via obitalk to get a real IP.  What you said about a fake registration is exactly what I think happens.  I believe registration requests and responses travel across the Obitalk network to OBI2 which in turn actually registers to the PBX.  Then OBI2 sends spoofed registration info back and forth between the PBX and IP phone.

Dynamic DNS is a pretty good solution as long as you have some way to update it automatically.  It's been very reliable for me. 
Long live our new ObiLords!