March 2006 Archives

Frequently enough the rounds get made on the OpenBSD mailing lists regarding hardware that some n00b (newbie) wants support for and people either harshly or calmly explain that the lack of support for xyz are for a few reasons, but the most important is usually that hardware company abc doesn't have or refuses to provide thorough hardware documentation so that good drivers may be written. Worse, is being confronted by products that you purchase which are advertised to be compatible or will work with something and come to find that there is no explanation for how it is supposed to work with that something.
I just have figured out how to configure an Asterisk server for use in my home office and for eventual use in our office at Tankcraft. I was looking for a reasonably priced FXS/FXO SIP device for use with some analog lines that aren't easy to wire to where my Asterisk installation is. So, through a bit of research and price comparisons, I found the Linksys/Sipura SPA-3000 and the Zoom Model 5801.
vs. The Zoom is specifically advertised as having "Proven compatibility with SIP-standard servers from Asterisk, Cisco, NetCentrix, Quintum and more" (bold my emphasis). Considering the Zoom 5801 retails for around $30 less than the Linksys/Sipura and it is advertised as having proven compatibility with Asterisk, it was a relatively easy choice.
My mistake. I should have paid close attention to the product support page. If you take a close look at the specific documents available on the 5801 you will find nothing by way of comprehensive documentation on the functions available through the 5801's user interface. This is nonsense. I am so sick of buying products with little or no instructional support. I'm not asking someone to hold my hand through the configuration and use process, but how the hell do you expect me to leave your tech support people to more important problems when basic configuration instructions aren't available and make no reference to the products you supposedly support. This is what I lost when I decided to save $30. $30 times a few devices isn't all too much, but if we were looking at deploying tens, hundreds or thousands of them, it would make a difference.
I have now not only wasted enough time on trying to do my best at figuring out where the settings were that I needed access to, but I also ended up writing Zoom to see if they could provide assistance (I guarantee that I have blown way beyond the $30 I saved on each of the three ATA's I bought). Who knows what will come of my tech support request. (It may be positive or negative.) I will certainly avoid products like this in the future and will be unlikely to buy products from them again.

Gizmodo has a short post on the newly released Sharp Zaurus SL-C3200. I really like the Zaurus. I have two SL-5500's and another model that is like the 5500, but I can't remember which rev. I even figured out how to run apache and mysql on the device for testing when I installed new Anywhere Technology clients (before selling my wireless ISP in January of this year) - of course, this setup was achieved with the help of many different tutorials around the net. When OpenBSD first announced that a number of developers were working on OpenBSD for the SL-C3XXX series, I got excited. One of the things missing from my tech arsenal was a small machine that I could use to troubleshoot equipment on the go. Since I rely mostly on a terminal connection to anything to do my work, OpenBSD on a device of this size would have been extremely convenient. I did my research and found, however, that while I could do what I needed with the device, I would have to schlep around different CF adapters for wireless and wired testing. I finally convinced myself that it wasn't worth the work and effort to get it going. I also figured, however, that my reservations weren't unique to me. I read on a good number of message boards that people were hoping for at least one type of networking connection built-in. Being an OpenBSD advocate, I recognize the drawback of Sharp including wifi and bluetooth on the device due to the ridiculous maze of licensing and sell-your-soul-to-me agreements required to get a good number of wireless NICs out there to work. So, even if Sharp did include a wireless NIC, it wouldn't necessarily work with some of the *nix platforms that many people might want the device for (i.e. even if what I wanted happened, it wouldn't necessarily work the way I wanted. That being said, I'm still disappointed that Sharp didn't at least include a wired NIC into the device in this latest iteration. The irony is that in comparison with my OQO, this device still looks interesting especially considering the price difference. I am happy with the OQO, though, primarily because it runs Windows XP well - and I have yet to have bought a laptop in the past few years that runs XP well (even my X40 ThinkPad tends to dislike certain Windows operations like waking up from sleep). I really, really, really dislike using Windows, but since I don't use it much and it provides me the interfaces I need (and has come in very handy on a number of occasions), I'm happy. (The drawback continues to be the miserable 2-3 hr. battery life.) I've found how to get OpenBSD running on the OQO, but frankly, it's too much work and the device still isn't as interesting as the Zaurus. So, Sharp, you had a chance to gain a few extra customers with what would be an inexpensive interface to add to the device (considering prices have dropped dramatically over the years on wireless chipsets - or, again, wired). I wanted so badly this iteration to have the above...

I have tried and tried and tried and finally succeeded (after succeeding once only to squash it because I wanted to do more). To properly set up a SIP connection to your Gizmo account so you can use Gizmo for outbound calls, you need to have the following info set:

General Settings
Outbound Caller ID: 1747XXXXXXX (your Gizmo SIP number if you wish)
Maximum Chanels: 1 (I haven't tested higher numbers)
Outgoing Dialing Rules (I didn't make any changes or fill any of the fields)
Dial Rules: blank
Dial rules wizards: default (pick one)
Outbound Dial Prefix: blank
Outgoing Settings
Trunk Name: gizmo (set this to what you want the trunk to be called)
PEER Details:
allow=ulaw&alaw&ilbc
context=from-pstn
disallow=all
dtmfmode=rfc2833
fromdomain=proxy01.sipphone.com
fromuser=1747XXXXXXX
host=proxy01.sipphone.com
insecure=very
secret=your_password
type=friend
username=1747XXXXXXX

(for username and from user, replace with your Gizmo SIP number)

Incoming Settings (I've left all blank for now) - UPDATE - see below, not needed
Registration
Register String: 1747XXXXXXX:your_password@proxy01.sipphone.com

I then set up a dialing rule that requires you to dial 8 to get your Gizmo "line" and it works. So many of the instructions I found were half baked, didn't work, etc. You must especially have fromdomain and fromuser set for outbound calls to work. Sometimes the internet is filled with a lot of crap...

Later, I'm going to try to figure out how to set up incoming calls.
UPDATE: Wow... Inbound works fine as long as you have your routing properly set up - i.e. leave the above settings alone. If you are having problems, it is likely that your router is blocking certain incoming ports.
Continuing Notes (21 March 2006):
While I don't completely recommend it, you can put your Asterisk server as your/in your DMZ (if you have a single IP or are on the type of connection where you have no control over your IP, then that means you are probably using a SoHo router - e.g. Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, SMC, etc. - and you can place your machine "outside" your firewall to make sure the proper ports are open to you Asterisk server). Once you've figured out it works inside the DMZ or on a static IP with no firewalling, then you can slowly close down ports. The better way to approach this would really be to open up ports slowly, but this can be time consuming because for some reason, it can sometimes take some time for your incoming calls to be routed properly.
If you understand the following jargon, then the following port openings will work fine (if you're behind NAT, this means you need to port-forward the following ports to your Asterisk server):
TCP: 5060
UDP: 69, 5004, 5060, 5061, 5062, 5063, 4569, 5036, 8000, 9999-20001, 2727
The ones I bolded seem to have been part of the key for my setup - but, I'm doing quite a bit more than running my Gizmo inbound and outbound calls through this box.
Because my Asterisk server runs on a static IP, I simply had to open up my main firewall ports to that box.

I thought I'd catch the attention of people with a somewhat out-of-line title. What I'm going to describe actually isn't anything that I did to do something that I wasn't paying for or that the Atlantis last week. I just figured out ways around the fact that you couldn't access the internet with your laptop in our hotel room. I should also note that this may not work in different parts of the Atlantis - the hotel is enormous and really is three or four hotels in one (something that made the trip all the more interesting) - it worked great in the Royal Towers and specifically the Imperial Club. One of the nicest things about the hotel, though, was that they had wifi where it counts: outside, at the pools and in a lot of the open lounge areas throughout the hotel. (The only thing they did wrong from a technical standpoint was overlapping 802.11b/g network channels all over the place - sometimes making it impossible to grab a good signal even if you were close to the AP.) I wrote the hotel back in January to figure out whether or not they had high speed access and they answered with:

Dial-up for $.50 a min? That's crazy talk - though not as crazy as the $1.00/min. I paid while on Grand Cayman some years ago. (I was happy with everything else, though.) What really got me, though, was the fact that wireless service was available everywhere but my room. So, being the wireless hack I am, I packed a 9 dBm 2.4GHz omni antenna, pigtails and two travel routers I have (the Linksys WRT54GC (no link because linksys.com isn't loading correctly, again) and the D-Link DWL-G730AP) hoping that because our rooms overlooked some of the pool decks that I'd be able to pull a signal from there and "bounce" it into my room ;) Steph was thrilled as she saw me pack everything... What I didn't realize was that the Linksys could not be set to client mode, so the omni and pigtails were no good. Plus, I didn't bring a 12' extension cord like I normally do - making it difficult to hang the D-Link over the side of the balcony. As a side note, I had to laugh as I was packing the omni into my bag - it looks like a pipe bomb unless you know what it is (and are oblivious to the N connector on the end of it), so I used a magic marker and wrote 2.4 GHz Antenna all over it to make sure that if someone unpacked it, they would come to their senses if they had any questions - and, of course, it would scan like a pipe with a piece of wire in it.
Well, the first thing I did when we got to our room was pull out the OQO (trying to be discrete so as to not anger Steph) and see if I could grab a wireless signal from our balcony. No dice. I didn't have anything urgent to do, so I left well enough alone and decided to experiment later. Later, when Steph was taking a nap, I took out the D-Link (which can be powered from your USB port), hooked it up to my MacBook and hung it over the balcony to see if directionality of the antenna had to be such to grab a signal. Again, no dice. I looked around the room to see if they had anything for broadband set up, but just hidden. I saw an RJ-45 jack, but decided not to play because I couldn't trace what it was going to and I had burnt out a NIC in the past "testing" a jack only to find that it was powered weird and my NIC couldn't handle it. Later, at the pool, I pulled the "pid-guest" ssid fine, hopped on, paid my $10 for 24/hrs and went to town. For all the problems we had with the telephone system at the Atlantis (it sucks, by the way - the phones are crackly, they don't hang up properly and a call to the States is $3/min. even using a Global Crossing calling card), the internet connection was blazing fast. Down by the pools, I was getting 3-6mbps up and down. (This is where I learned to use Gizmo and love it - and hate Skype.) Now that my wireless MAC was registered, I figured I could squeak out a signal from the room. I was right - only half of the time, though. With my MacBook perched as in the photo, I was only able to grab a signal sometimes (having to do with the overlapping network problems). But, when I needed it, it worked, and if not, I went to the pool - which was the whole purpose of the vacation to begin with!
A bug got in me a few days before we left, though, to figure out how their IPTV stuff worked. So, I moved the hutch that the television (a 32" LG LCD - nice) perched on and took a peek at all of the wiring. Lo and behold! There was a VIA mini-itx PC mounted to the back of the hutch and controlled some of the streaming media and internet-over-tv stuff that they had set up. Ironically, I found out where that RJ-45 jack I had initially seen led to: a NIC labeled laptop on the mini-pc. The main NIC was being used to connect to what appeared to be a network. So, I started playing. The main jack to the room must be set up so that each computer grabs a statically assigned IP from the hotel network because while the connection went active on the MacBook, I wasn't able to pull an IP. I also wasn't able to figure out what subnet they were running on. On the other side of the mini-pc, though, when I plugged into the laptop NIC, I got an address and a gateway. A lot of times, the cheap and easy way for a hotel or airport to keep you from using their network for internet access is by not setting up DNS via the DHCP services. So, in order to grab a site, you have to know the IP or use your own DNS caching server. (Not a problem when you own a few, like me - or if you have a caching server set up on your laptop, like me.) I tested to see whether I could ping some known gateways, like that of Anywhere Technology or some boxes I know the IPs to on the net. What was really odd is that pings would go through, but the connection would be really, really lossy. So, it wasn't DNS. After playing for a bit, I opened up a browser window to see if anything would come up. To my delight a window showing a log-in screen and you-are-going-to-pay-for-this option. So, I tried to say okay to the $10/day charge and see if data would be routed correctly. Something went wrong every which way. Finally, it occurred to me that I had seen an internet-over-your-tv screen on the tv and went to look and see what was there. In the spendy mood, I okayed the $10/day charge to my room to access the internet via the tv and an IR keyboard they had. Mozilla popped up and I tested going to a few sites - and it worked. (The mini-pc was running some customized form of Linux that I had no desire to further figure out.) With general browsing working, I plugged the Linksys router into the secret laptop/RJ-45 port that I had seen when we first got there, got an IP on the router and went to town again... Nice. The only trick you had to figure out was how to get the min-pc to pass data - and that was easy - set up internet service through the television interface and suddenly your hidden RJ-45 jack becomes useful. Whew... that was a lot of work just to get on the net for a few days - all when I really only cared about it outside anyway. It was worth it, though. The connection was ridiculously fast - I ran a speed test a few times to Speakeasy in Atlanta (I learned that was one of the cable termination points to the undersea cables going to the Bahamas) and got 16mbps up and down. Hot damn... I've been on a connection that fast only a few times in my life and ironically, I had nothing to download ;) (Having ran and owned an ISP, I don't like to download crap just because.... I like having a purpose/reason.)
So, I effectively hacked the hotel networks in the room so that I could get internet in bed, which is what I didn't care about anyway. (Maybe this should really be labeled a "workaround.") Next time we go, I'll not only know better, but I'll bring some different gear so that I can simply use either the room connection or the one by the pool. It is nice to know, though, that the connections are reliable and available. I saved myself the $3/min phone calls by using Gizmo and paying $.01/min for my calls to the States. That's another thing I'm happy for - VoIP - but that's another story.

There are two things you learn while on the road with your laptop: whether the machines you own are actually dependable and what programs actually help when you need it. We're traveling in an area of the world where telephony options are limited despite the fact that internet access is better than most places (rather, out of the way places) I've been to. While high speed access isn't available in the rooms at the Atlantis, it is in almost all of the lounges and by the pools (where to be honest, I'd much rather have it anyway). So, when I tried 20 times to call the States and failed (because of three different reasons, unknown, "please dial your number again," and beyond unknown), I turned to my MacBook and decided to try Skype. Well, either Skype hasn't been updated to support Apple's Intel line or it is simply buggy. My experience with Skype has varied. The fact is, though, that I've never gotten Skype to work well on a Mac. It has worked well on those Windows machines I've set it up on, but not my Macs (which are the machines I want to use anyway). So, after the program crashed six times and wasted my valuable sun time, I remembered that I had read somewhere about the Gizmo Project. What the heck, I knew it wasn't a bandwidth problem (I was getting 3mbps both ways), but wasn't sure whether it was a ports issue (i.e. ports being blocked by their firewall or nat server) or an issue with the program itself. Now, I know that both Gizmo and Skype are based upon two different technologies (Skype is proprietary VoIP whereas Gizmo is based upon standards based SIP) - and I must say, this has always been a sticking point with myself and Skype; why must they use closed standards - i.e. proprietary - protocols and not allow outside inspection for security reasons - but the fact is that both of them should just work - especially to be useful. So, I downloaded Gizmo, signed up for 1000 minutes of outbound calls to PSTN numbers (i.e. real phones) and waited for the credit to hit my account. When it did, I called my voicemail number to check it out. It just worked. Except for the fact that my bluetooth headset (Motorola HS810) isn't playing well with my MacBook (nor any other computer I own), the voice calls were fantastic. I called in to work to answer a nagging question they had and that was that.
It really is nice when technology works the way it is advertised and the way you'd expect it. It would be even nicer if it would work as easily as this experiment went. So, even when Skype comes out with their video conferencing on the Mac, it may not be enough to get me to use their services again if it doesn't work as well as Gizmo did for voice calls. Mark one up for Gizmo - you've now become my primary software telephony program.

While its late - so late that I should have been asleep a few hours ago, I have been toying with so many things over the past few weeks that I had to finally do some fly-by note taking:
Q: this is the latest QEMU emulator available for OS X (at Q [kju:]) and it rocks. I bought a new MacBook Pro - I couldn't wait for rev2 because I was dying to see how Intel performed (notes below) and the performance of OpenBSD under Q on OS X is fantastic. The only thing I still can't figure out is networking and why I can't get packets past the emulator, but I'll have to do more digging on that one later. As far as performance of moving around the system, adding packages, etc. is concerned, it is very impressive. Considering my thoughts under the PowerBook (even the 1.67GHz model) was less than appealing, I am happy (and the fact the VirtualPC won't work on the new Intel machines - and I'm not sure given my recent bout of problems with that application that I will invest in it again).
MacBook Pro: I love it. Period. People are complaining about different items missing from the hardware like the S-Video connection and modem. I could care less (modem... well, I do a bit, but not too much). The machine is stellar. I like the built-in iSight (yes, I actually use it) and the speed. No, not the speed with regards to non-universal apps - especially Microsoft Office and Adobe products. Yuck. The performance is no better than my PowerBook. Where I notice the difference is on Intel native (i.e. universal) applications and especially on unix related stuff that I compile. I honestly think the performance on compiling ports (vis a vis darwinports.org) is better than on my dual 2.0 G5. I haven't actually timed anything - yet - but it has thoroughly amazed me. I'm happy all around and hope to do more writing on the topic later.
AFPoverTCP: i.e. Apple native file sharing on an 802.11g network. Quick quips: Stream DVD's? Not unless you really monkey with buffer settings in VLC (set file buffering to 10,000 ms). At least it is not consistent. I really don't know what Apple is going to do to make streaming video over 802.11g any good. Unless they tweak all of their media programs to do better buffering, people will be sorely disappointed if they think they are going to network a small army of Mac Minis together to create a hodge-podge video and content streaming network. The throughput is so inconsistent (even if I'm sitting 2 ft. from the AP) that DVD's often drop out and/or become choppy. I finally tweaked VLC enough to get it working to my satisfaction, but that is not for Joe-Mac-User. I really can't figure out how Apple has let afp performance slide so horribly. Even when looking at file transfer performance on a gigabit network, the best I see is 367mbps on file transfers (yes, single large files). That is some overhead... ridiculous. I'm going to look more into seeing if there are system related tweaks one can make to get better performance out of the built-in networking devices, but who knows. With the theoretical speeds of today's networks, a lot of what we want to do should be possible - i.e. stream high(er) definition video content from machine to machine. Unfortunately, instead of focusing on making things better, we're stuck with developers and companies trying to add some new, unneeded button to already good hardware. 17mbps of real throughput on [advertised as] 54mbps network gear is ridiculous. That equates to around 2mBps - just around what a DVD showing full color frames will stream at. I love living on the edge...