07.23.09

Registering an Adtran 706/712 IP phone with Asterisk

Posted in VoIP Telephony at 9:49 pm by Nate Smith

The Adtran 712 was a little puzzling when I went to register it with Asterisk.  Once you set up the “ProxyServer.Address.1 (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)” and “RegServer.Address.1 (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)” on the SIP settings page and the “Reg.AuthUserID () ” and “Reg.AuthPassword()” you would be done on most phones.  But the Adtran would not register and was not even indicating it was trying on Asterisk using SIP debug.  Popping over to the phone summary page it did not indicate any line was configured.

So the trick turns out to be heading over to the buttons configuration page and set a button up with “Button.Type (Line)” and “Button.Realm (PBX)”.  There may be other variants of these but these options worked for me.  Once you have done this and reset the phone, the phone should register itself to Asterisk.

I haven’t done a whole lot of testing with the phone yet but it seems like a good phone, maybe on par with a Sipura or a Polycom.   The phone itself does not have any power inputs other than the PoE so an injector is needed if you don’t have a PoE switch.  It has an RJ-style jack for a headset.  There is also a button for the headset pickup next to the speakerphone button.  Unfortunately the flat black finish of the phone shows finger and face oils.  The backlit display is nice and reminiscent of a Polycom set.

07.16.09

Google, how we miss ye.

Posted in Geek Culture, Google, rant at 9:35 am by Nate Smith

Remember the early days of Google?  The Google page itself was plain and white execpt for the search form and the primary colors of the Google logo in the midde of the page?  Remember when searching Google brought back results instead of advertisements?  All the results were truly results, there was not a thinly veiled listing of commercialized results at the top?

Google once had a motto, “Don’t be evil”.  Do you think a motto like that would loose its emphasis once the happy times are over and they discover they need to make some money to support all the amazing projects, long term initiatives,  and employee benefits.  How long can it be before they replace product quality with marketing as other large companies have done?

Has it already happened?