ITL: Cisco VIP30 Phones with Asterisk
Tuesday 4/5/05

Contributors: Todd Deshane, Patty Jablonski, Sarah Jozefiak, Creigh Long, Jeff Ward

Overview: Initial test configuration of two Cisco VIP30 phones running with an Asterisk server on Ubuntu Linux.

Requirements:

• 2 (or more) Cisco VIP30 phones
• A Linux server capable of running tftp and dhcp with Asterisk installed
• A hub to connect the phones and server

Files:
/etc/asterisk/skinny.conf
/etc/asterisk/asterisk.conf
/etc/asterisk/extensions.conf
/etc/dhcpd.conf
/etc/inetd.conf

Instructions:
Install Asterisk
Install dhcp server (we chose dhcpd)
Install tftp server (we chose tftpd)

Configure inetd:

Confirm the tftp service is listed in /etc/inetd.conf.

#:BOOT: Tftp service is provided primarily for booting. Most sites
# run this only on machines acting as "boot servers."
tftp dgram udp wait nobody /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/sbin/in.tftpd /boot

Configure dhcpd:

Configure the DHCP server to hand out IP addresses to the phones.
We made limited changes to dhcpd.conf.

# option definitions common to all supported networks...
option domain-name "fugue.com";
option domain-name-servers toccata.fugue.com;

option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;

subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 192.168.0.100 192.168.0.200;
# option name-servers bb.home.vix.com, gw.home.vix.com;
# option domain-name "vix.com";
# option routers 192.5.5.1;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option broadcast-address 192.168.0.31;
default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;
}

Configure Asterisk:

We used the skinny.conf file for VIP30 phones from Josh Fiske as an example.

Create a new configuration for each phone.

• The phone’s instance name is in brackets
• Device = serial number from the bottom of the phone
• Version = P002D204
• Context = set in asterisk.conf, ours was “home”
• Line = the extension for that phone, we used 120 and 121.
  Josh provided comments in his config file that show the function call needed in extensions.conf (see below). A comment of ‘Dial(Skinny/120@Living)’ was used to show that extension 120 was the phone ‘Living’ and that it could be reached using the Skinny protocol.
• Callerid = name of the phone, 10-digit number

asterisk.conf

no changes were made to this file

extensions.conf

under the “[local]” heading we added the following:

exten => 120,1,dial(skinny/120@living)
exten => 121,1,dial(skinny/121@living2)

this tells Asterisk that extension 120 has priority 1 and will use the skinny protocol to call the phone named living (as described in skinny.conf) and that extension 121 works the same and connects to living2.

Start Asterisk: /etc/init.d/asterisk start

-- check /var/log/messages for problems with Asterisk
-- check /var/log/asterisk/messages for problems with Asterisk

Start dhcpd: /etc/init.d/dhcp start

-- use debugging mode if you encounter errors
-- check /var/log/messages for problems with dhcpd
-- since we’re running the dhcp server on eth1 instead of eth0, dhcpd eth1

Start tftp: /etc/init.d/inetd start

-- start inetd manually if this does not work, inetd -d
-- check /var/log/messages for problems with tftp

Phone Functionality (so far):

• Call another phone on the network by dialing their 3 digit extension.
• Clear the phone’s display with the asterisk key while the handset is in the cradle.

Resources:
Asterisk with Cisco VIP30 Phones by Josh Fiske
Asterisk Fedora Core 3