Boy, do I need help! Asterisk DNS issue?

Hi all,

I’ve been dumped with an Asterisk server, and a failing Windows Server which we are planning to migrate to Linux. That part is fine, but I’ve discovered a few problems. Firstly - I did not install the servers, the person responsible has moved on, and left NO documentation about what they did :frowning: (in fact, they hardly left anything, even most of their work files…naughty)

So:

Asterisk server runs the phones on 192.168.167.xxx - wired separately as far as I can see.
Windows 2003 server runs on 192.168.168.xxx - again, all wired separately from what I can see.

When I installed Linux server, I set the IP the same as windows, no problems, our PC’s connect fine. We have no phones though. I thought this was odd, but digging around I’ve discovered that the Windows server has a bunch of A records (?) which are setting up the phones…

Firstly, why would it be set up like this? I really cannot understand why the phone server (standalone) has to use windows 2003 server (which we want to change) instead of configuring this itself? Why is our Windows server telling Asterisk what to do? I can provide plenty of information, but don’t really know where to begin…

[quote="richrock"
When I installed Linux server, I set the IP the same as windows, no problems, our PC’s connect fine.

Firstly, why would it be set up like this? I really cannot understand why the phone server (standalone) has to use windows 2003 server (which we want to change) instead of configuring this itself? Why is our Windows server telling Asterisk what to do? I can provide plenty of information, but don’t really know where to begin…[/quote]

When you say: i set the ip the same as windows i presume you put it in the same subrange and not gave exactly the same ip

Can you reconfigure a phone and give a static ip in the range of the windows and once in the range of the other phones?

I guess it is more a network related problem than a asterisk problem

Taking a WAG at this and I have a lot of questions…

You say there a bunch of A records ‘setting up’ the phones. Do you really mean there is are A records with the IP addresses of the phones? Are the phone’s addresses statically assigned or DHCP?

Is either the Windows box or the Linux/Asterisk server dual homed so that 192.168.167.0 can route to 192.168.168.0? I have to suspect the Windows box was on both. Perhaps even hosting a DHCP server that the phones may have been using for booting and config files? If that is the case, with the Windows box off line, the phones may not be getting config information and do not know how to register with Asterisk. That is hard to tell by a description of ‘we have no phones’.

Do you know if the phones are registering?
Can you access the phones via web or handset interface and verify if they have good IP addresses and if they believe they are registered with the Asterisk server?
Do you know how to access the Asterisk CLI and issue commands there?
Is this an installation of a packaged Asterisk such as AsteriskNOW or PBX In a Flash or is this a source build without a web interface?