Setting up with Multiple Companies on Asterisk

Hi,

can anyone help me? I have a requirement to set-up Asterisk so that two separate companies with the same extension numbering scheme can use one Asterisk Server. I have set-up my sip.conf file as follows:-

[2001]
type=friend
secret=****
qualify=yes
nat=no
host=dynamic
canreinvite=no
context=internal_co1

[2001]
type=friend
secret=****
qualify=yes
nat=no
host=dynamic
canreinvite=no
context=internal_co2

but my handsets will not register properly. I have tried specifing the IP address of handsets in the host field but this seems to make no difference. Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Thanks

Geoff

[quote=“GeoffNewnham”]Hi,

can anyone help me? I have a requirement to set-up Asterisk so that two separate companies with the same extension numbering scheme can use one Asterisk Server. I have set-up my sip.conf file as follows:-

[2001]
type=friend
secret=****
qualify=yes
nat=no
host=dynamic
canreinvite=no
context=internal_co1

[2001]
type=friend
secret=****
qualify=yes
nat=no
host=dynamic
canreinvite=no
context=internal_co2

but my handsets will not register properly. I have tried specifing the IP address of handsets in the host field but this seems to make no difference. Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Thanks

Geoff[/quote]

Geoff -

To my knowledge you cannot have two extensions share the same [2001] number in your sip.conf file. This is what * looks at when you phones attempt to make a call and hence it does not know which one to use. Remove (or comment out) one of those or change it to a different number and your phone will register ok provided all other settings have been set correctly.

The use of the same extension for several different phones (ie - multi-tenant) MIGHT be possible depending on how you have your contexts configured in your extensions.conf and how you have calls routed into and out of your system. However I have never tried it myself. My guess is that you would have to spend some quality time in front of your * test server to determine if it is possible and how hard it will be to implement and troubleshoot when there are issues.

no, it will not work like that. you need to have unique ID’s for each device in sip.conf. change [2001] to [company1-2001], like [acme-2001] for Acme, and [ibm-2001] for IBM.

then you could have specific contexts for each company, like you have set up now…

that is what i’d do, anyway - makes it easier to distinguish who is who at a glance, as well…

the entry in sip.conf and the entry in extensions.conf do NOT need to be the same - that is one of the cool things about asterisk that took me a while to understand - there is a clear distinction between a device and and extension, and they can be meshed together one of several different ways.

Thanks for all your replies. Could you give me an example of how to mesh an entry in the sip.conf with the extensions.conf?

well, i was thinking along the lines of this:

in sip.conf, we’ll have the following device:

[acme-2001]

let’s say this person acts as an operator…

in extensions.conf, we can have the following extensions point to this device:

exten=>2001,1,Dial(SIP/acme-2001) ; direct extension

exten => 0,1,Dial(SIP/acme-2001) ; operator extension, put in your incoming calls context

this way, internal users can dial extension 2001 to reach this person, but external callers will be able to dial 0 - it allows you fine grained control over who can call who, basically.

this is an extremely crude example, but it’s also fairly common. this may not be what you were thinking, but when i said mesh, i meant a matrix, where devices can have multiple extensions tied to them, and vice-versa - you have total separation of the ROUTING of calls and the DEVICES that are being routed to (that is a bad sentence, but you get my drift, hopefully)…

Comment on the multi-tenant thing… Simply it works great.
You can ring a list of extensions at the same time using the following
example. Each phones needs to have its own config, but then you
can point an extension to it or a DID or whatever.

I do not believe it is possible for multiple phones to share the same
registration so they will all need their own “logins” so to speak.

exten => 6195651439,1,Dial(SIP/1001&SIP/2229&SIP/2227&SIP/1000&SIP/2231&SIP/2232&SIP/10005,20)

Thanks for all your help. Issue sorted and works like a dream.

Glad to be the member of a great community.