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Asterisk working in packetcable mode

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rbays
Asterisk working in packetcable mode

Im have trouble getting packetcable worhing with asterisk can anyone help??

kwesibrunee
Packetcable and Asterisk

Getting Packetcable and Asterisk to work together is gonna be tough. There is a NCS (MGCP) patch out there to allow Asterisk to talk packetcable, but I am not sure if it is ready to work in a real world enviroment, the last time is was updated was 2006 and it is for asterisk 1.2. Edit: Apparently someone did update the code, which can be found here still do not know it's ability to run in real world though.

You may also want to get a hold of Mr Burton, I know he has deployed Asterisk with packetcable as of two years ago he may be able to give you some more advice. his contact info can be found at the bottom of this page May also want to contact author of more recent NCS patch, though they are a commercial entity Contact info on same page as Mr. Burton

some of the snafus I am aware of when doing using packetcable with asterisk are:

option 122 problems: DHCP must have option 122 suboption 1,2,3 at a minimum in the Modem's DHCP reply.
Each MTA must have a unique FQDN.

What particular problem are you having?

What Modem/EMTA are you using?
can you use Arris Modems with SIP? They work fine with Asterisk no extra work needed.

rbays
I am new to Asterisk And

I am new to Asterisk And Packetcable.
I have experience with cm's in a lab test enviroment setting up dhcp tftp etc.
I have read that asterisk can be used to test emta's.
so I am wondering how or what I need to get started. Asterisk version, dhcp, tftp, tod etc.
the modems I would like to test are from various vendors Moto, Arris.
Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

kwesibrunee
Well it will depend on what

Well it will depend on what you want to run, There are at least two ways to run VOIP with eMTAs

1. Arris's modems with sip firmware. Basically makes the MTA a SIP MTA, in asterisk you configure just as you would any other SIP endpoint.

2. packetcable (Motorola, Arris, Scientific Atlanta, Thompson, Arris (packetcable version) etc....) Packetcable is standardized, but is also a lot more complicated, as far as I know the only way it works with Asterisk is in Basic 1 mode (i.e. no encryption) When people are talking about using Packetcable they are generally talking about using Packetcable with NCS (a form of MGCP) signalling, There is also a version of Packetcable which uses SIP signaling but I don't think it is finished yet. Be sure to check out the packetcable specs at cablelabs website.

For ease of use Arris modems using SIP is going to be by far the easier method with Asterisk. I wrote a Howto for DHCP/modem Configs for this setup found here. There are numerous sites with info on Asterisk online, I have found one of the easiest distributions of Asterisk to use is trixbox. It has a web based interface to configuring Asterisk which greatly simplifies working with Asterisk. You will also want to get talking with Arris's support find the contact info on their site, you will need the SIP firmware, and I would reccommend getting their PacketAce software (modem/MTA config generator) its free when you have a support account with them. Asterisk is actually one of their officially supported SIP endpoints, they can't help you configure asterisk but can give you the info you need to get their modems to work with it.

If you want to use packetcable specifically with Asterisk, you will be in for a bumpy ride, while it is possible to do so it is not very well documented on how to do it, and the base setup is pretty tough. You would neeed to familiarize yourself with the enigma which is Option 122, and get NCS (signaling packetcable uses) working with Asterisk first and foremost.

Asterisk version you want to use is either 1.4x (stable) or 1.6x (newer less stable) I would reccommend using Trixbox CE for beginners.
Dhcp -- ISC dhcpd v3.x works great, the only real requirement is that the DHCP server support option 122 which dhcpd does.
tftp -- Any should work.
TOD -- either Linux's or Ciscos CMTS ones work just fine. Only caveat is Asterisk server time and TOD server time are relatively synced up too far out of sync and the mta's wont work. I prefer to use the TOD server built into Ciscos CMTS.

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