Tag Archives: jazinga

SwitchVox AA60 VoIP Appliance, Part One

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I’m just getting started with the new Digium SwitchVox AA60 unit.  This VoIP telephone system was introduced this past spring. I’ll be evaluating it with two Polycom SIP phones and a Junction Networks IAX trunk account for PSTN dialtone.

SwitchVox is a San Diego-based IP Telephony technology integrator that has been producing very eyeball-friendly Asterisk phone systems for the last several years. Brian and Tristan Degenhardt, both with SwitchVox since its early days, were instrumental in publishing my second book, VoIP Hacks, as Brian contributed some fantastic material for the book, and Tristan coordinated his contributions.

I met Tristan briefly at Fall VON Boston two years ago (in the Asterisk Pavilion), but didn’t have much time to go over things with her.  Well, as it turns out, SwitchVox was very soon later acquired by Digium, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The AA60 is aimed at small offices (there are more capable models aimed at larger offices, of course). Street price on these is around $3400 for a 10-user bundle.  Now I’ve never been a big fan of licensing users for PBX access (especially on an open-source system), but I realize there’s no better way of appropriately monetizing the offering.

Initial setup of the AA60 involves connecting a PC keyboard, mouse, and monitor to the rear panel of the AA60 (shown a few scrolls down).  Once you’ve done the network setup, the keyboard, mouse, and monitor are no longer needed, and the unit is configured through a fantastic web interface. Actually, SwitchVox’s web interface is arguably the main reason Digium acquired the company.

So the AA60 is really a PC. It does have sort of an odd form-factor. I was expecting it to be 19″ rack-mount standard, but its enclosure is about the size of a slimline/SFF desktop PC, maybe a bit bigger.  Digium does include a mounting bracket for placing the AA60 on a wall board.

Now the AA60 doesn’t come with any legacy telephony interfacing out of the box, though Digium’s cards can be configured and installed as a part of your order. This would allow you to equip the unit with T1/E1 PRI access or analog trunk/station ability.  I have a Digium Wildcard TDM with two stations and two trunks that I’m going to try out as a part of this demonstration, so I’ll let you know how that goes.

The AA60, unlike other VoIP appliances (such as the Jazinga we looked at a few weeks back), delivers only voice functionality. That is, it isn’t a switch, router, or firewall.  For installers looking at a more high-end PBX product with fewer strings attached, this is a blessing.  For some offices, and all-in-one unit makes sense. I would argue though, that for most, having a standalone PBX makes the most sense.  Keeping PBX separate from infrastructure spreads out the points of failure and doesn’t make your phone system reliant on a bundled switch or router. Digium has wisely decided not to include those extra components.

In the next post, we’ll get into configuring the AA60 and talk about the pros and cons, if we discover any. See you then.

Jazinga: Putting the AUTO in Auto-provisioning

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Jazinga, a startup from Toronto that offers a new breed of Asterisk/Freeswitch-based IP-PBX, has put a lot of muscle into the automatic phone provisioning features.  The idea is, if you have an IP phone on your Jazinga-powered LAN, you should literally have to “do nothing” to get it working.  So I decided to put this claim to the test with a pair of Jazinga-supplied Linksys SIP phones.

And, I was going to videotape the whole process so I could share the ups and downs with folks on YouTube. I plugged the Linksys phone into the LAN and went to get my camcorder.  But, by the time I got back with it, which was about 2 minutes, the phone was ALREADY RUNNING on the Jazinga system. So it went from out the factory box to being a working SIP peer on the Jazinga system, firmware config and all, in under two minutes, and the best part–I did NOTHING, just as Jazinga claimed. Heck, I didn’t even have to key the MAC address of the phone into the Jazinga box.

Those clever Canadians are pretty good at this VoIP stuff–they should keep it up!

Head-to-head: Jazinga vs. Asterisk Appliance, Part 2

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(Here’s part one in case you missed it.)

Yesterday I had a great talk on the phone with Randy Busch, CEO of Jazinga, the Toronto-based technology company behind the Jazinga VoIP PBX system. I learned several positive things during this conversation:

  • Jazinga isn’t required to be a NAT firewall in order to support IAX trunks, as it is in order to support SIP trunks.
  • Jazinga is based on Asterisk and Freeswitch.
  • Its web user interface is mainly Flash-driven.
  • It has an onboard hard disk and is basically a single-board PC type appliance.

Autoprovisioning: Here’s How it Works

One of the things I really like about the Jazinga is autoprovisioning. If you enter a phone’s MAC address into the admin interface and then boot the phone up from a factory state, it obtains all it needs configuration-wise directly from the DHCP and TFTP servers onboard the Jazinga unit.  So, very easy for non-technical folks trying to get set up.  Right now, Jazinga supports automatic provisioning of Polycom, Linksys, Aastra, and SNOM phones. Randy tells me that Cisco 79XX support is in the works.

Having this simple endpoint setup is awesome, and the reduction in steps required handily downs many Asterisk solutions, becuase all the phone provisioning components (DHCP, TFTP, generation of firmware configs, etc.) are already done for you.

Softphone and Hold Music: No Sweat

Running Bria with the Jazinga was as easy as it was with the Asterisk Appliance.  I uploaded an MP3 of Runaround by Blues Traveler to test the hold music feature, and it worked great.

Groups and Call Distribution

Ring groups are a snap, though the only option for ring patterns is simultaneous. Given the size of customer Jazinga is going for here, I don’t think that’s a drawback.  Note that Asterisk Appliance allows different ring-around patterns, but only if you know the Asterisk keywords necessary to make them work.  The keyword with call distribution on Jazinga is “simple”, which I believe appeals to the SOHO customer.

Jazinga SIP Trunk Service

The Cleveland-local number the Jazinga folks set up for me worked like a champ, though I did have to reboot the Jazinga unit in order to get incoming calls to work.  There seem to be no options for tweaking caller ID on the Jazinga-operated PRI, but I’ve got to assume that it’s coming.  Sound quality was acceptible. I called my mother, who was camping in central Ohio at the time.

So what’s the verdict?  We’ll discuss it in a few days after I’ve run Jazinga through its paces with a few auto-provisioned IP phones. Stay tuned.

Head-to-head: Jazinga vs. Asterisk Appliance, Part 1

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Jazinga (top) and Asterisk Appliance (bottom)

Jazinga is a Canadian VoIP software startup that offers a small business telephone solution, among other VoIP technology procurements. The solution works with SIP phones and consists of a shiny grey appliance that certainly conjures thoughts of its contemporary, the Asterisk Appliance, another VoIP telephone system from Digium. When I first looked at the Asterisk Appliance, I was mostly impressed–there were a few key things missing, though, and if Jazinga can seize on Digium’s shortcomings with their product, I’ll give ‘em a high-five.

First off, know that the Jazinga product is not yet available to the general public, however the software and hardware I looked at was in a very functional state. So it’s fair to compare with the Digium device, since it too was in a pre-release state when I looked at it.

Let’s talk about the Asterisk Appliance for a minute. It looks great, offers support for up to four analog phone lines, and has a “pretty good” GUI web interface–nothing as slick as Switchvox or Fonality, but functional.

The Asterisk Appliance MUST be directly connected to the Internet in order to act as a VoIP trunk gateway, and this is hugely bad. For one, the Linux under the hood of the Asterisk box isn’t all that easy to keep up-to-date security patch wise, and for two, the underlying routing, NAT, and access functions necessary to the Appliance’s functioning as a router aren’t available via its web interface. That’s why I haven’t actually used an Asterisk appliance in the field yet.

Small businesses don’t have a block of IP addresses to work with, and typically don’t have a DMZ segment to sit their phone system on, so I haven’t been able to recommend it as a production PBX.

Let’s hope Jazinga has solved some of these problems.

The first thing I noticed about the Jazinga box was its inclusion of an antenna, ostensibly making it a wireless access point as well as a PBX. A quick glance at the back panel of the main unit, and I realized it’s also an Ethernet switch and a broadband router, just like the Digium unit. The Jazinga offers 4 LAN ports, one WAN port, two analog phone connections, and one analog phone line connection.

According to the quick-start card Jazinga includes, the Jazinga must act as the Internet gateway, which is somewhat problematic. Like the Digium unit, which frustrates me that it has to be the Internet gateway router, the Jazinga insists on being “directly” connected to the Internet–ie. there cannot be a NAT point in front of the Jazinga as it communicates with hosts on the Internet. This is unfortunately, if excusable. VoIP signaling protocols still haven’t totally bridged the NAT gap, but the Jazinga innovates its way out of that mess by allowing you to disable routing altogether, and by providing support for IAX trunks–which are immune to NAT problems normally imposed on VoIP protocols.

Initial setup was easy. I only had two snags. The documentation I received said to use a URL with a host of jazinga.local, but the DNS obtained from the Jazinga through DHCP didn’t resolve that name. Fortunately a quick ifconfig told me what IP address the Jazinga was on and it was mostly smooth sailing from there. The second issue I ran into was a difficulty with the DHCP client on the WAN side. In this case, I was using the Jazinga with a cable modem, which, after a reboot, got the Time Warner DHCP server back on track. So, pretty easy.

Jazinga is going to offer a branded VoIP trunk service especially for this device. At this point I don’t know where their PRIs sit, but I expect you’ll be able to get a local number anywhere in N. America. So, not wanting to be held up, I got to work connecting the Jazinga to my Gizmo account, with which I have a Gizmo CallIn number.

I’ll post the results of that experiment and the rest of my Jazinga evaluation in a day or two. Stay tuned.