Welcome to Langys.Com!  This is the personal website for Bob Langys and tells a little about who I am and what I do.  Please have a click around to see more about my professional and personal interests and activities.  On this site you'll find some articles about the different technologies and products that I have experience with, as well as more specifics about my personal interests.  If you have a technology problem to solve, I can help you.  If I don't have what you need now, chances are that I know where to send you for help.

 

Avoid These Mistakes with Your Website

The Web is the best way to attract new customers at the lowest cost.  Why? - Traditional methods of advertising and marketing appeal to a small and shrinking base of customers.  Who breaks out the phone book to find a local business?  Not too many people.  Who responds well to getting that call about services that you are selling?  In a best case scenario – it’s 10% or less.  The key is being able to be FOUND when your likely prospects need you.  The key to this visibility is to be friendly with the search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others.

Search Engines – Are they your friends or your paid entourage?  You can approach it two ways.  You can give the companies money through advertising and they will position your ads in front of the right searchers.  Or you can provide them with value through content that they can use.   If you want to control your budget and build higher value traffic, good content is the key.  Here are some things to avoid when putting together content.

Don’t Use Lots of Pictures, Few Words

While pictures are helpful to make your site easy to look at, they do almost nothing to get traffic to your site in the first place.  It is a balance between pretty and useful.  Search engines work on words and phrases, not pictures.  Focus on your written message and then add the appropriate graphic elements.  The graphics are necessary – no one likes a bland website.  More important than the look is the message.  Avoid using pictures of logo and text where you could easily substitute searchable elements.

Stop thinking in your own terms, and start thinking of your customer

I’ve learned this from experience.  It’s easy for you to describe your business in exact terms.  You know exactly who you are and what you do.  In many cases, that isn’t what matters to people who are searching the internet.  They are trying to solve some problem that they have.  Does your website have answers to problems?  Of course it does.  Every product is an answer to some sort of problem or need.  If you had the same problem as your prospects, how would you search for your answer?  When you answer that question you have some ideas for content that matters.

Don’t Hide the Details

Disclosure builds trust.  If you are a vendor that has nothing to hide, then you are someone who can build trust with just words.  Do you have some problems that you’ve encountered and overcome?  Maybe you want to share that story.  Can you give approximate pricing for your products?  Do it!  It’s both a good trust builder and a qualifier.  If you have a $100 widget and the customer is looking for a $10 widget, do you want to spend your time convincing them otherwise?  On to the next!

Avoid Never Changing Content

Once you are done with your site,  you are NOT done.  It’s a start and you need to continually enhance the content that you provide.  Some folks will tell you that you are doing this to be interesting to customers that may return.  I’m sure that is true in some businesses.  My primary goal with fresh content is to entice the search engines to regularly scan my site.  They make their living on knowing what is out there and it’s to your benefit to change it enough so that they care enough to visit your site with regularity.

Do Not Wait until it is Perfect

We’re not talking about building fine watches or nuclear reactors.  It’s a website.  If you happen to slip up and use some improper grammar or some awkward phrasing chances are that people are not going to die.  Get your content to the point that it delivers your message and then move to the next.  Go from a concept to execution to review to tweaking, then repeat the process.  Content on the web is like money in an interest-bearing account.  The content that you have out there today is found and indexed by the search engines and other sites.  You will build credibility based on how long your content has been online as well.

To summarize:  Your website is key to getting new prospects to look your way.  Apply some strategy to the process and get good results.  Do it now, as the longer you fish the more chance you have to catch some fish.

Are you happy with your job? Do you have the tools that you need to be successful? Are you prospering in your career - or do you feel held back?

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_Langys

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Adtran Total Access 900 Series - PRI and FXS Ports with Asterisk

Asterisk is a very flexible platform. As with any tool that can perform many functions, that flexibility can translate into a complicated set of options. Over the years we’ve struggled with determining the best way to get traditional circuits and devices connected to the system. How to I connect to a PRI? How do I get those analog phones or devices connected the best way?

Our choice thus far has been to use Xorcom communication servers and the built-in telephony ports for all of our installations. If we needed remote sites, we would just deploy another Xorcom platform and connect via Asterisk / FreePBX through dial plan work. Sometimes, however, there are cases when you need to have remote trunks and another Asterisk platform is not the right answer. What’s the best way to remotely connect in trunks and analog station ports?

If you go through the information at voip-info.org or on the variety of sites that sell gateways that work with Asterisk you will find a wide variety of manufacturers and products. Grandstream, Cisco, Audiocodes, Multitech, Quintum, and others are represented. I came across an article talking about the Adtran Total Access line. I’ve seen many Adtran devices during installation – as they seem to be a favorite of the local carriers in Illinois.

Some quick research uncovered that the Adtran Total Access line had the ports that I was looking for and fit the right price range as well. A couple of phone calls later and there was an Adtran 908e on the way to our office.

Initial Impressions

In the box were the normal things – the product, power supply, and a documentation CD. The product itself was impressive as the case is hefty and it seems to be really well made. As I looked around the device, I found that the 908e can also take a local battery backup – a big plus for local survivability. Following the quick start guide, I was able to get into the device, set the IP address, turn on DHCP, and place it in my test environment.

Functionality Requirements

The project that I am working on requires remote interfaces for PRI and Analog FXS ports. I need to be able to route calls out of a local trunk even though the Asterisk is located in the customer’s cloud-based system. For the purpose of my evaluation, I just had to be sure that I can complete calls and attach local FXS devices.

Result

The Adtran 908e performed exactly how I had hoped. Once my setup was complete, there was no drama in conducting calls to / from all trunks and resources. The audio quality was clear and the device survived just fine through a series of simulated power loss situations. Furthermore, since the Adtran 900 series is completely stand-alone and standards based, we are not limited to a particular load of Asterisk to use the functionality it offers. How did we do it? Keep reading!

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How To: Connect Adtran Total Access 900 Series to Asterisk for PRI Trunking and FXS Connectivity

(Click here for configuration file for the Adtran TA908e)

In retrospect, the process to complete these tasks is fairly easy. While working on the project, however, it was a mystery to me until the pieces fell into place. This is because the Adtran Total Access is very flexible – just like Asterisk. There were several steps required to build each type of connectivity because there are so many options. If you follow along you will be able to use the TA908e on your Asterisk system as well.

Configuring the Adtran

To start with, please remember to follow the quickstart guide to configure the IP address of the system and turn on any other network specific functions you require. First and foremost, you want to make sure that it is working as a network device.

Setup the PRI Interface

Log into the Adtran and you will be greeted by the system summary. Notice no T1/PRI interfaces are enabled or active.

Click on the Physical Interfaces tab

Click on the name of the interface that you wish to configure

First setup the T1 Signaling – Remember to Apply after choosing the settings below. The FDL setting was a guess for me – your provider may require something else – it’s easy to switch if you need to later.

 

After you apply the changes above, go back to the interface and allocate the channels to the PRI as shown below. Remember to “add” the configuration as well.

After you click add, name the PRI, and then apply the changes.  **** Please note - I have "Network" selected for protocol emulation.  This applied because I was connecting to an Asterisk box via the PRI.  If you are connecting to a carrier, then you must choose "User" as the protocol emulation! ****

 

 

We are all done with Physical Interfaces for now. Now select the Voice tab on the left, and then the Trunk Account tab.

Create a trunk account. Remember to associate it with the PRI interface you just created as well in the ISDN Settings section.

 

 

After we create the trunk, we need to create the trunk group. This is necessary, even if you only have a single trunk. In Voice / Trunk Group create the new trunk group.

Remember to add members, and choose the trunk you previously created.

**** Important Note **** You must choose the outbound dialing templates to allow before you can dial out. The standard options should be fine for most PRI installations. If you are creating a trunk to another local phone system you need to create a custom rule to allow you to send any digits you want to send. To do this, click on configure advanced templates, and setup an entry that is just the “$” character. As you can see in my example below, I have a “22$” entry. Any numbers dialed on this system that start with “22” will be dialed via this trunk group. Be sure to add this entry to the “allowed” group.

After the above steps are completed, the Adtran 908e knows about the PRI interface, but it does not know about the Asterisk on the other end. To do that, we need to build a SIP trunk to the Asterisk box.

Go back to Trunk Accounts (under voice) and build another trunk. See the pictures below for my settings.

 

 

**** Note **** While I have a SIP registrar specified, I never actually entered credentials to register. I did not specify this requirement for the Asterisk / FreePBX Trunk.

On the Asterisk – Create the SIP Trunk in FreePBX as shown below. All options default. Remember to create an outbound route that will send the digits as you need to dial them through the Adtran Total Access. The information has to agree in that if the dial plan on the Adtran is expecting to see 18005551212 as the number you cannot send a trunk access code, I.E. 9, out to the Adtran. The reverse is also true – if you program different trunks in the Adtran and use dial access codes, then you must configure Asterisk / FreePBX to send the code.

Configuring the Analog Station Ports on the Adtran to work as FXS stations on the Asterisk / FreePBX

Once the SIP connectivity is established between the two systems, the process of setting up the analog ports is a snap.

In Asterisk / FreePBX configure your SIP extensions for your analog stations.

In the Total Access, Create a user account for the Analog extension. The Extension number specified here is the Adtran internal extension, not your Asterisk extension.

 

Next, assign a sip identity for the analog extension. Click on add sip identity and then fill in the blanks. I matched the SIP identity to the trunk authentication credentials and entered the Asterisk sip secret into the password field.

 

 

Add SIP identity and submit. Do a quick check on the Asterisk CLI with the SIP SHOW PEERS command to verify that you are communicating.

 

PRI Troubleshooting Tools

On your Asterisk Server, login to the CLI and issue the command PRI SHOW SPANS

For more detail, you can use PRI SHOW SPAN 1

On the Adtran Total Access 908e, you can login and go to enable mode and type DEBUG VOICE SWITCHBOARD to see detailed voice activity. This is great to make sure your call is being sent to the right interface.

 

 

Over the last year I've had the opportunity to work with a local school district on their telecommunications platform.  Their challenge was to replace their aging Avaya systems at six sites.  All the regulars were in the competitive mix - Cisco, Avaya, Shoretel, and finally Asterisk.  Upon learning of the opportunity and securing an initial meeting, I was determined to be able to address the questions and any objections that the District may have.  Can we route between sites?  Check!  Can we share trunks between sites?  Check!  Do we have redundancy, Check!  Our first meeting resulted in gathering the information that we needed to complete the proposal.  As we were in the opportunity rather late, my turnaround time had to be quick and withing a week we were presenting a solution along with a demo of the system.

The District liked our proposal, but wanted to go with Cisco phones.  Great - No Problem!  We can use Cisco phones on our solution.  We took our mobile demo to the District Office and presented the solution to the administrators.  They liked it and agreed to move forward.

Demo of Asterisk System - It compares well to Shoretel, Cisco, or Avaya!

Our installation process began with the gathering of user lists and setup requirements for each school.  We configured each platform in our in-house testing environment and then deployed onsite.  As we were changing trunks at the same time, we had the opportunity to install the core elements and test without disrupting any existing calls.  Once we were satisfied that our solution was operational, we deployed our phones and trained the users.

The Result?  An excellent telephony solution that meets the technical needs of the district, and keeps costs inline.

Along with the Cisco telephones, we also used Xorcom communications servers with great success.  Xorcom has been a great company to work with as they provide innovative products and great support.  The installation was easier due to the documentation and load testing that Xorcom provides.  We plan on using Xorcom servers for all of our Asterisk installations.

Questions - contact Bob Langys at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

 

 

PRI on an Avaya Partner?  Yes You Can!

We recently had the fun of working on a project with a busy mortgage company that was out of space on their partner system. They were also out of contract on their telephone services, so it was a good time to consider some alternatives. When we got to talking about budgets, it was clear that they didn’t want to change the entire system out.

Can we reuse our phones on a new system? Not really.

Can we add more modules to our system to add the extra extensions? No – your system is full!

What can we do about it? Why not use an Asterisk system in front of the Avaya Partner, take in the PRI and feed out analog lines back to the Avaya?

Planning

We met with the customer and reviewed their requirements. We needed to add five phones to a system that was out of space. We needed the existing staff to be able to use their existing partner phones, to be able to transfer calls to both the old phones and the new phones, and for everyone to easily make calls. Our design that meets those goals includes a Xorcom telephony platform, Elatix (Asterisk), and Cisco 509g telephones.

Execution

We began our programming on the Elastix system by setting up the Xorcom box simply. Take incoming calls on the PRI and feed them to a hunt group that included all of the analog station ports. Program the Cisco phones to work on the Elastix and setup the new users. Define all of the outbound routes to give both the Avaya and Cisco users the ability to make outbound calls.

How does it work?

Simply put: Great! For the Avaya users it is seamless. The calls come in and go out just like they did before. Transfers to the Cisco people work very well as well. The only wrinkle was the transfer from a Cisco 509g phone to the Avaya phones; it was a two part process. The user had to initiate a transfer, dial the auto attendant on the Avaya, and then dial the extension. It was a bit painful at first, but everyone got used to it after a short while.

Conclusion

It’s clear that this is a great solution if you are looking to extend the life of your old system while expanding its capabilities. It could also easily be justified when you want to take advantage of lower rates on the PRI line to save on your monthly telephone bill. This solution also works on other analog-line based solutions. The customer ended up with a great savings on the upgrade, and a clear path to the future using VoIP without having to throw away equipment that works.