Load balance you Phone..

[ruben23]

Clustered:
-2 Asterisk
-1 DB/Wen Server
Asterisk 1.4.35-rc1
Dahdi current
Agc 2.4 trunk latest
Ubuntu 8.04 server LTS

Hi guys, im a bit confused on how to used Phone alias for my 3 clustered vicidal server, as describe it says Load balance my Phone loign for my 3 servers- when one is down i just logout then re login agent can still continue dial

But any sample setting sdof the Phone alias:

Alias ID: __________?
Alias Name: ________?
Phone Logins List: _____?


I read each description on each menu but if anyone can give favor to sampel fill up those field with existing naming convention of your Phone alieas....?


Thanks in advance.

[Trying]

I don't really understand this either. It is not very clear in the Manager Manual.

[ruben23]

@Matt can you explain a little bit of this functionality..?

[mflorell]

Let's say you have 3 servers:
10.0.0.11
10.0.0.12
10.0.0.13

and you have an agent phone you want to phone-load-balance-login across all three servers, you would need to create a phones entry for that phone on each server with a different login:
101a -> 10.0.0.11
101b -> 10.0.0.12
101c -> 10.0.0.13

Then you go into to add a new alias(101x) for this set of phone logins which has this as the extension:
101a,101b,101c

Then the agent logs in with 101x as the phone login and tada, it works!

[Trying]

Thanks Matt. Does that mean you must have a phone that can register 3 separate accounts? Meaning that the soft/hard phone will have to be registered with 101a, 101b and 101c at all times? Are there even softphones available that can take more than two accounts?

[floydans]

I think matt refers to balanced logins to the webserver (ie using the vicidial web client), not softphone login to Asterisk.

Did I get it right? If so I wonder if there's a way to do balanced logins also from the softphone...

[mflorell]

Yes, the softphone must register to all 3 servers. No I don't know of any FREE softphones that allow registration to more than 2 servers. Zoiper professional and eyebeam(professional version of Xlite) are what most of our clients use for this.

[williamconley]

zoiper free will register THREE accounts (not the web version).

[mflorell]

You know, I thought it did that too, in older Zoiper Free versions, but the latest version I downloaded only allowed 2 accounts no matter what I did.

[williamconley]

would you like a link to the old version?

I knew there was a reason i downloaded those and said "no!" to upgrade offers. LOL

http://www.poundteam.com/downloads/soft ... taller.exe

[mackoko]

hi guys what will be the password in the AGC if I will be using 101x login then? will it be blank?

[williamconley]

1) This has nothing to do with the existing post.

2) Please post YOUR Vicidial Version with Build on all posts along with your installation method and version of installer.

3) Please read the manual before posting (this is a requirement). It is available at eflo.net for FREE (although with the questions you are asking, I would say you need the purchase version, it'll probably save you two months worth of headscratching and be well worth the small investment!)

[ronator]

Then you go into to add a new alias(101x) for this set of phone logins which has this as the extension:
101a,101b,101c

Then the agent logs in with 101x as the phone login and tada, it works!

Just for anybody who is as stupid as I was and to clarify things:

all the phone extensions of one alias MUST have the same "web login password"! ( Either I missed the line where it is mentioned here or people thought, it should be obvious. For me, it wasn't so this posts may help somebody someday ...)

so it is like

"phone web login" 101a with "phone web password" 101x and
"phone web login" 101b with "phone web password" 101x and
"phone web login" 101c with "phone web password" 101x

then agent logs in with 101x as the phone login and 101x as the phone password!

works perfectly here with vicidial 2.2.1-259. I'm going to use that feature as soon as I got the time to re-configure the phones.

Nice thing, thank you for implementing!

[dspaan]

Thanks for this last post because i could not figure out how to set the password for the alias but you need to use the alias name as phone login and same password in all linked extensions to the alias like you said.

The limitation for me is the bulk phone insert page which only allows you to specify a suffix but not a prefix. For instance we usually let agents login with phone logins like these:

cb01, cb02, etc
wp01, wp02, etc

Easier to remember for an agent then 101x, 101y, etc.

[geoff3dmg]

Oh and btw, ekiga has no sip account limits, is open source and works on windows.

http://ekiga.org/

[dspaan]

Thanks for that tip. I'm using Ekiga now. Very simple but nice features. It also has auto answer which is always nice when working with ViCidial.

[geoff3dmg]

That's true, although I'm a bit wary of auto answer. My agents can be a bit dense at times and tracking down who's kicking who out because they are using the wrong phone login gets harder with auto answer.

[schernit]

i have a question about fuctionality ? i have two servers and It seems tombe working fine with load balance. But If an agent has a softphone with only one account created (only to one of the servrs) when the agent login, if vici decide to send the initial call to the other server, obviously nobody call the agent and I get the message (nobody in your session 86xxxx). Is there any option I can select to allow vici to check if the extension has been registered to an asterisk server before calling it ? At least when phone alias is configured. Perhaps this would be a new feature. Regards, Sebastian

[dspaan]

We use stickers on the monitors with the vicidial login information to prevent agents logging in with the wrong information.

I don't think that feature exists to detect if a phone is registered, i had the same problem. Either register two lines or remove that extension from your alias.

[schernit]

I think that it is possible to create a process that runs every minute on each server and execute an asterisk command , parse info and update phone registration to a table.later, on login screen, when asked for agent id, vici can check on that table and don't try to call an extension that is not registered.

[lanerfy11]

Hi Matt and William,

I would like to ask if it's alright to use a phone alias that is the same with the phone extension..

For example, I have 1 phone extension for two dialers.

phone extension: 1000

phone aliases: 1000,1000a


should the phone aliases be different from the phone extension?

Thank you.

[mflorell]

No, they need to be different.

[lanerfy11]

Hi Matt,


That is noted. Thank you!

[williamconley]

Your best bet is to use the bulk phone creator. Note that it will make the aliases for you. And of course, they will not overlap or duplicate anywhere.

It's available in Reports at the bottom "Admin Utilities" in some versions of Vicidial.

[lanerfy11]

Hi William,

Thank you for this information. This is very helpful when making plenty phone extensions.
May I ask a follow up question, will we also use the phone alias when registering the sip account to the softphone (eyebeam) or still the extension itself?
we noticed that the eyebeam hangs up after registering another account and enabling them at the same time.. we have registered the same phone extension on both accounts but with different domain.

[lanerfy11]

Hi William,

Apologies for my previous question.
After reviewing the thread, I've seen that Matt have already posted the answer to my question.
Thank you still.

[marveelou]

thanks you guys .Able to run balance dialing now.

[lmoreira]

I suppose login load balance works on webRTC, doesn't it?

[ambiorixg12]

According to this statement, I don't think phone alias will work with WebRTC as it does works with a regular softphone, I haven't test it, but I think you could create phone alias and just login and logout from the browser using any of the alias, and it will be transparent for the agent

Yes, the softphone must register to all 3 servers. No I don't know of any FREE softphones that allow registration to more than 2 servers. Zoiper professional and eyebeam(professional version of Xlite) are what most of our clients use for this.

[mflorell]

Yes, Phone Aliases work well with WebRTC phones, we have many clients using them.

[carpenox]

yes i also use phone alias for phone balancing, it works amazingly, not having to configure 4-5 different phones across a cluster. its the only way to go.