I’m new to telepony. I busy reading the book on Asterisk and installing Astrisk on Ubuntu.
During my research I found that it seems one needs a service provider for provisioning and have some question regarding provisioning.
What happens during provisioning.
I think this is a way of configuring the device!
If I want to send data from an ATA device (in some other location) to an Asterist server at home, do I need a service provider or can I do the provisioning my self?
What information is required for this process?
Well. If you are talking about a ITSP (internet telephony service provider) providing you with service. Then the provisioning is done on there end. They will set it up so you asterisk server can “talk” to there systems. Most of the service providers will then provide you with some sample configs.
Most of the time you will receive a sample configuration the will set up a peer in you sip.conf (assuming that is the technology you are using with your provider) That will look like a standard peer in sip.conf and allow you to send call to the service provider to have them sent to the PTSN. If you plan on havening this provider terminate call from the PTSN to you the will most likely provide you with a register string to place in the [general] section of sip.conf. That would look like this
register => username:password@provider.com:5060
That string will allow you asterisk server to “register” with your service provider so there know where to send calls that are meant for you.
Now with that said you can “provision” phones or ATA’s yourself. Again assuming you ATA is using SIP you would make a friend (or peer depending on what you are doing) in your sip.conf and then tell the ATA (through the firmware) where it is to register (i.e. the ip address of your server)
Hope that helps.
What book are you reading? I hope it is this on Asterisk: The Future of Telephony I have self tought myself with plenty of tech books and none have helped me more so than this book. I still consider myself a novice when it comes to asterisk but I would have no clue what was going on with out that book.
There are two types of “provisioning”. We can call one of them full and one partial. There is little between them except for the final stage.
Basicly what happens in provisioning is:-
You place and order.
The supplier checks that they have capacity and available numbers.
You submit the order*
You details are entered into the main customer database.
Accounts are created on the relevent servers that will reference the central database.
6a. You will be sent details of the account.
6b. You will be sent hardware to connect.
7a. You setup you hardware. and make calls
7b. You connect your hardware. This checks back to the central servers and ties the up with your account. On a full system this would be by mac address and a partial system they would send you a preconfigured unit.
Not many ITSPs are using full provisioning platforms at this stage. This is down in part to cost and complexity. Time will come when they all do though. And as networks grow they will need to, I the same way as a normal PTO or mobile operator does. The provisioning platform they use keeps track of the network equipment in use and idle so redundant and idle equipment can be removed or reused.
root52, yes Asterisk: The Future of Telephony is the book I’m reading. One other question, you said
[color=green]Now with that said you can “provision” phones or ATA’s yourself. Again assuming you ATA is using SIP you would make a friend (or peer depending on what you are doing) in your sip.conf and then tell the ATA (through the firmware) where it is to register (i.e. the ip address of your server) [/color]
Does this still include a service provider or not? In this case can one do the ‘hosting’ with a SIP server - OpenSIPS or SER?
provisioning your phones with configuration information is a nic feature if you have say 20 phone’s intalled and you need to change some parameter in the phone like dialplan changes you can change a file on your server the phone’s are checking the configfiles on ther serverfor changes and if there is a change it will get that file and update the phone.
if yo have just 1 or 2 phone’s or different phone’s you do not need it.
most times you can do provisioning with a tftp server or webserver
[quote=“sander4000”]if yo have just 1 or 2 phone’s or different phone’s you do not need it.
most times you can do provisioning with a tftp server or webserver[/quote]
So this means I don’t need a service provider to connect an ATA device in one location to Asterisk that is located at my home.
