Complete newbie questions

Asterisk Asterisk Support
1

Hi, I’m brand new to Asterisk, and VOIP in general. I’ve managed to get Asterisk installed and running on a BusyBox server, and have installed the GUI.
I use sipgate.co.uk as my VOIP provider, and have a Cisco SPA303 phone that I’d like to connect to sipgate via the Asterisk service. I’ve read their instructions on how to configure sip.conf and extensions.conf, and have also read through the online Asterisk documentation set. But to date I haven’t managed to see my Asterisk installation ‘registered’ as a device on sipgate’s web-console. Would someone kindly answer a few basic questions for me? They are…

  1. What is the minimum set of config files that I need to touch to get this working? Is it just sip.conf and extensions.conf? What about users.conf and sla.conf? Do I need to remove or comment out any of the default *.conf files that are initially installed?
  2. Do I need to define a trunk via the Asterisk GUI? The sipgate documentation doesn’t say I need to do this.
  3. Will Sipgate’s console show me as ‘registered’ before I’ve configured the Cisco phone to connect to Asterisk?
  4. Does the extension I define for the Cisco phone have to be my SIP-ID?

Sorry if these are basic questions, but I’ve found the documentation expects a basic understanding of the concepts, and I’m yet to find a gentle introduction to these topics!

Paul

2

what GUI are you using ? Most of the GUI s get control of main asterisk config files such as sip.conf and extensions.conf and your changes will be removed when you change some settings through GUI . they usually include some other files like extensions_custom.conf or sip_custom.conf so that you can add your own settings.

for a simple sip extension . you just need to change sip.conf and define dialplan in extensions.conf . add your changes at the end of the file . you don’t need to remove comments , etc .
you have to reload asterisk . you should go to the asterisk console and run two commands :
1 - sip reload
2- dialplan reload

I suggest you to use pure asterisk configuration without any gui . because you have more flexibility in dialplan and troubleshooting in pure asterisk configuration is more simple .

3

Hi Omid

Thanks for your quick reply. I am using the Asterisk-gui…at least I was until receiving your advice! Having abandoned the GUI, and also since finding this very useful article - the-asterisk-book.com/unstab … nlage.html - I have now got it working!