Switchvox Support

Peering Benefits

The main purpose of peering Switchvoxes is to make calls cheaply and easily between your office locations:

• Inter-Switchvox calls are made using your Internet connection, so the calls are free of per-minute charges.
• You can add peered coworkers to your Switchvox Phonebooks, which offer easy dialing and call-handling, and show your coworkers' presence.

You can also route calls between peers to see other benefits. For example:

• Switchvox at the New York office could route Boston-area calls through the Boston Switchvox, which could route local calls through its analog lines. That lets you take advantage of free local calls.
• Each office could use different VOIP providers, and calls could be routed to any provider. That lets you route particular calls to the provider that gives the best rate.
• Outgoing calls in each office could be sent to the other office in the event that the local VOIP provider can't be reached. That helps you protect against downtime.

Managing Calls Across Peers

You can route calls to a peered Switchvox using an Outgoing Call Rule. An Outgoing Call Rule includes a dialing pattern and routing instructions.

All Outgoing Call Rules are in an ordered list, and the order is important: when a call is dialed, Switchvox checks each rule in order and acts on the first rule that matches. It keeps looking for a matching rule until instructed to stop, or until there are no more rules.

Here is the process:

1. Switchvox checks each rule in order, looking for a matching dialing pattern.
2. When a matching dialing pattern is found, Switchvox follows those routing instructions.
3. If the call can't be made based on those routing instructions, Switchvox checks the setting Is this rule final?
   1. If this is set to No, then Switchvox moves on, trying to find another matching rule and complete the call.
   2. If this is set to Yes, then Switchvox stops looking and the call fails.

The important thing is, the call does not fail until Switchvox has applied all of the Outgoing Call Rules as instructed and cannot complete the call. Examples of why a call might not be completed include an extension being deleted from a peer, a VOIP provider experiencing a momentary networking issue, a networking issue on your local network, etc.

Managing Contacts in Phonebooks

You can include your peered coworkers in your Switchvox Phonebooks. That means that the Phonebook panels in the Switchboard show you if that person is on the phone, and his or her Presence. (However, with a peered coworker you can't see who he or she is on the phone with, or use the Extended functions such as monitoring or whispering into the call.)

If you use a Phone Feature Pack, you can put peered coworkers in the Phonebook that you use for Phone Provisioning. That lets you speed-dial that person, and see if he or she is on the phone. (If you don't see the person, make sure that he or she is at the top of your Phonebook, and that you have enough line-keys to make him or her visible).

Set Up

The following information covers all of the tools that you might need to set up and use two Switchvoxes as peers. The examples in this section use two sample offices, one in New York and one in Boston. Each has its own Switchvox and a broadband connection.

Extension Numbers

To make call routing easier, it’s a good idea to give each Switchvox location its own range of extension numbers, with the first digit being unique to the location. For example:

• New York extensions are 200-299
• Boston extensions are 600-699

Note: You may have Switchvox peers with different settings for Extension Length. That should not be a problem, but you always need to be sure that your Outgoing Call Rules are set correctly.

VOIP Providers

To peer with another Switchvox, you set up a new VOIP Provider that is really the other Switchvox. You must choose a protocol, SIP or IAX, and use that protocol for the VOIP Providers on both Switchvoxes.

SIP Providers

On each peer, go to Setup > Call Routing > VOIP Providers, and click Create SIP Provider. These settings are mostly arbitrary, but be careful with the Account ID and Password.

• Provider Name
• Your Account ID (must be the same on both Switchvoxes)
• Your Password (must be the same on both Switchvoxes)
• Hostname/IP Address

IAX Providers

On each peer, go to Setup > Call Routing > VOIP Providers, and click Create IAX Provider. These settings are mostly arbitrary, but be careful with the Label, Account ID, and Password.

• Provider Name
• Provider Label (must be the same as the peer's Account ID)
• Your Account ID (must be the same as the peer's Provider Label)
• Your Password (must be the same on both Switchvoxes)
• Hostname/IP Address

Advanced Options

In the new provider on each peer, there are several Advanced Options that you need to set. These are necessary for SIP or IAX.

In the Peer Settings tab:

1. Host Type: Peer
2. Host is a Switchvox PBX: Yes
3. Treat system’s users like local users: Yes
4. Jabber Hostname
   This is important if you are using the Switchboard or Chat functionality. Be sure that the Jabber Hostname for both peers resolves correctly.
5. Apply Incoming Call Rules to Provider: No
6. Outgoing Call Rules
   check the Allow box for InternalThis allows the peer to call your Switchvox extensions. You can also allow the peer to place outbound calls through this Switchvox, by allowing one or more of the other Outgoing Call Rules.
7. Set Qualify Hosts: Yes  (under Connection Settings)
8. Scroll down and click Add Provider to save your changes and add the new provider.

That's all you need to do in the VOIP Providers section. You also need to set up your Outgoing Call Rules and Network Settings.

Outgoing Call Rules

Once you have set up a Switchvox Peer as a VOIP Provider, you can set up an Outgoing Call Rule so that calls can be routed appropriately to that Switchvox.

1. Select Setup > Call Routing > Outgoing Calls.
2. Click New Outgoing Rule.
3. In the new outgoing rule, set the appropriate options:
   • Rule Name and Note are your choice, so that you can identify the rule.
   • Pattern to match: Number begins with the digits (2 or 6). The rest of the number must be between 2 and 2 digits in length.
   • Call through: (SIP Provider or IAX Provider)
   • SIP Provider: (Boston or New York)
   • Is this rule final? Yes. In this situation the rule should be final, because if the peer can't reach a Switchvox extension, the call should not be completed.
   • Allow all existing extensions to use this rule? Yes. This sets this Outgoing Call Rule to Allow in every Switchvox extension's settings.
4. Click Save Outgoing Rule. A message is displayed that indicates the new outgoing rule was successfully created, and the new rule is included in the list of rules.
5. Drag the new rule up until the new rule is a higher priority than the Internal rule.This is useful because you know that these extensions start with a 2 or a 6 and have 2 more digits, so putting this rule before Internal means that Switchvox does not try to find those extensions locally.

Network Settings:NAT Port Forwarding

If a peered Switchvox is behind a NAT router, you need to enable port forwarding on that router, and configure that Switchvox’s Network Settings.

If the IP address of either Switchvox is in the following ranges, it is probably behind a NAT router:

192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255
10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 - 172.32.255.255

The following ports need to be forwarded from your router to Switchvox:

For IAX traffic: UDP port 4569

For SIP traffic: UDP Ports 5060, and 10000-20000

To enable port forwarding, check with the documentation for your router. Documentation on port forwarding for many common routers can be found at:http://www.portforward.com.

To configure the Switchvox Network Settings for NAT port forwarding:

1. Select Server > Networking > IP Configuration
2. Select Yes for Allow Nat Port Forwarding
3. Enter the external IP address of your router (if you need to, click Look Up External IP)
4. Click Save IP Configuration to save your changes

Network Settings: Hostname and Jabber Hostname

You can set a Hostname for Switchvox (e.g., boston_pbx.biz.com) if you have a DNS setting. Make sure that this name resolves to this Switchvox. Setting a Hostname may alleviate problems with delivering emails through particularly strict SMTP servers. Important: This option also sets the Switchvox web server’s SSL key. This may help prevent warnings from your browser when logging into Switchvox. In most cases it is best to leave this option unchanged.

You can also set a hostname for the Jabber server in Switchvox (e.g., boston_jabber.biz.com) if you have a DNS setting. Make sure that this name resolves to this Switchvox. This is important if you want a peered Switchvox to be able to interact with this local Switchvox for Chat and Presence.

External Voicemail

You can set up peered Switchvoxes so that all voicemail is managed on one of the Switchvoxes. This is useful for managing voicemail backups.

To use a peered Switchvox as the External Voicemail Provider:

1. Be sure both Switchvoxes are running Switchvox SMB version 4.0 or later.
2. On the server Switchvox (the External Voicemail Provider), be sure that each extension that exists on the client Switchvox also exists on the server Switchvox as a Virtual extension.
3. On the client Switchvox:
   1. Go to Tools > PBX Features > Voicemail, set Use External Voicemail System to Yes, and select the server Switchvox (the peer) as the SIP provider.
   2. Set up an outgoing call rule so that calls to the voicemail-access extension (by default, this is 899) are sent to the server Switchvox.
4. Remember, extension-owners must go to the Switchvox Extension Suite (/main) on the server Switchvox to see their Mailbox.

Phonebooks

You can include your peered coworkers in your Phonebooks. In this situation, you use the External Number entry type (because this extension is not on your local Switchvox).

To set up a Phonebook entry for a peered coworker:

1. Be sure both Switchvoxes are running Switchvox SMB version 4.0 or later.
2. Go to a Phonebook editing tool:
   1. Open Features > Phonebooks in the extension's Web Suite (/main).
   2. Click Add Phonebook Entries from a Switchboard Phonebook Panel.
3. Create a new entry:
   1. Entry type. Select External Entry.
   2. Phonebook. Select the Phonebook this entry belongs in. (To create a new Phonebook, use the New Phonebook tab.)
   3. Number. Enter the extension number from the peered Switchvox, just as you would dial it on your desk phone. Peered extensions might start with a different number than yours, or have more digits.
   4. Name. Enter a name for this entry.
   5. Jabber ID. Enter this person’s Jabber ID on the peered Switchvox. The Jabber ID has a user ID (the extension) and a Jabber Hostname. Make sure this is a Jabber Hostname, not an IP address for the peered Switchvox. The Jabber ID is necessary for the Switchboard Phonebook panel, to display your coworker's presence (e.g., available or away).
4. Check your Switchboard Phonebook panel to see the new entry, that extension's presence. You can see if that person is on the phone, and you can see the Presence status that he or she has set in the Switchboard. (You cannot see who he or she is on the phone with, or use the Extended functions such as monitoring or whispering into the call.)