Categories
Support

Support Contracts

We provide levels of cover to suit your business needs , Below are our standard contract levels, Specific levels of cover are avalible on request.

We will provide 24hour monitoring of your server with our custom platform. It will email fault details to you and us 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Depending on your support package we will take immediate action to remedy the fault.

The platform provides a web based GUI for you to monitor server status and acknowledge faults. for this service as a standalone service the cost is £25 per year + Vat

No support

It is important to realise that, whilst we fully accept responsibility for equipment and services we supply, we do limit liability and provide specific remedies for failure. Even a phone system which may be critical to your business will not have an automatic support contract. With no support contract, if it breaks, the remedy is that you send it back for repair and we repair it and return it to you, same as if you had bought a toaster.

For this reason we offer a number of levels of specific support contract as outlined below. We recommend that for phone systems customers take at least the Cat2 level of support. We typically include one month of Cat1 support in the installation price for a phone system.

Ad hoc (CatS)

Ad hoc telephone/email support is available at a charge of £70.00+VAT per incident (Max 2 hours), plus any replacement parts and shipping costs (if not covered by warranty).

This includes remote diagnosis, reconfiguration, etc, and relates to one identifiable issue as defined by our technical support engineers. An incident may represent many calls or emails over several days until it is resolved, as well as liaison with manufacturers.

We can decline to provide support on this basis if we wish, on a per incident basis.

Cat1

This covers most things we can do remotely. This includes telephone and email support. It is not always possible to answer queries immediately and the target initial response time its 8 working hours.

Technical support staff will explain configuration issues, and make necessary changes remotely. Any problems in configuration, operation or software which can be rectified remotely are included in support. Remote upgrades, and talking customer through local upgrade procedures on the phone are also included.

This is not intended to be used for every minor reconfiguration, but to support where things are not working or the customer is unsure how to do something for the first time. Reconfiguration does not include any design or development work (i.e. anything that takes more than 30 minutes). Where several support issues indicate that training is required then technical support staff will recommend suitable training, and attendance becomes a requirement for the support to continue once the next training course has been run. Training courses are normally chargeable. At our discression we may choose to update any additional configuration software (such as asterisk web config tools) to include commonly requested configuration charges and so minimise support required.

Where possible the technical support staff will attempt to rectify the problem. Where the issue is one that requires the manufacturers to make a change or provide a workaround then technical support will liaise with the manufacturers – but no overall times can be guaranteed for this.

It is a condition for this support that we have direct IP access to servers or phone systems from our network (e.g. root ssh, and http). You may, if you wish, provide access only when required for a support issue, but any delay in providing access will not be part of our target response times. We recommend to allow our ranges of IPs, as we advise at the time, through any firewalls to phone systems or servers to allow appropriate access.

As a rough guideline, Cat1 support will be charged around £175 base cost plus £10 per port. Please ask for an exact quote. One month of Cat1 level support is included in all new installations.

Cat2

This includes Cat1 telephone and email support, But with cover extended to 7am – 11pm cover and a 4 response. Where the support staff believe equipment covered is faulty then next day courier delivery of replacement equipment is included. For an additional one-off fee per occasion same day courier is available subject to couriers avalibilty.

The supplied equipment may be refurbished or may be loan equipment until faulty equipment is repaired. Loan equipment may be a different model or physical construction providing it can provide the necessary facilities. No repair costs apply unless damage/failure is due to misuse or neglect.

As a rough guideline, Cat2 support will be charged around £250 base plus £17.50 per port in year 1 rising to £22.50 in year 2. If you wish to cover handsets as well as software/server hardware please ask for an exact quote.

Cat4

This includes Cat1 telephone and email support, but where the technical support staff believe equipment covered is faulty then on-site engineering support with replacement equipment is provided. The target is 24 hours on-site from when it is determined that an on-site visit is required.

The supplied equipment may be refurbished or may be loan equipment until faulty equipment is repaired. Loan equipment may be a different model or physical construction providing it can provide the necessary facilities. No repair costs apply unless damage/failure is due to misuse or neglect.

This level of cover is not always available, depending on location. Our target times will depend on transport constraints.

Cat4 support is not an alternative to providing suitable remote access to servers. If our staff do not have access, then they will not be able to tell if an on-site vist is necessary and so this may delay dispatch of an engineer.

As a rough guideline, Cat4 support will be charged at £400 base plus £25 per port in year 1 and £30 per port in year 2 per year. Please ask for an exact quote.

General conditions

* Support calls must be to 01225580025 Cat4 customers have a 24Hour 0800 access number for support calls.
Email support at supportdesk@cyber-cottage.co.uk.
* All curtomers with Cat1-4 have access to the web based fault ticket system to log and check the status of faults.
* To provide support and meet target response times we must have remote access to equipment over the internet. (For asterisk systems, direct root ssh access and http is required) and Mitel SX2000 and 3300 Tracker or alternative access is required.
* To provide support and meet target response times we must have co-operation from on-site staff to carry out simple instructions (such as power cycle the box, check cables, etc).
* Support costs will be based on the size and cost of the overall system. However, on specific equipment is covered. For example, telephone handsets are not covered under CatS, Cat1, Cat2 and Cat4 unless specified and customers are advised to ensure they hold spare handsets and/or headsets, etc, to cover faults for which equipment will be handled on a return to base basis.
* Pre-existing issues are not covered unless specifically agreed on a case by case basis. We may require a chargable inspection of the existing products before taking on support if they are out of the normal warranty period or not supplied by us.
* Server hardware ca be covered if requested. This will be only avalible to customers who purchased hardware via ourselves from a recognised server supplier. The levels of cover will be explained at commencement of project.
* We use our best endeavours to ensure prompt and appropriate response to any issue and aim to provide support with reasonable skill and care.
* Liability is limited as per our normal terms and no liability is accepted for failure to perform due to circumstances beyond our reasonable control – including weather and staff illness, or consequential losses.
* Working hours are 9-5 Mon-Fri except holidays. We may occasionally announce days when support levels are reduced during office shutdowns, e.g. some days over Christmas.

Categories
Case Studies

Outdoor pursuits company.

We were approached to supply  a hosted PBX solution to a Southwest England based Outdoor pursuits company replacing their on site AsteriskNow system with a more manageable and streamlined hosted Elastix based solution.

This gave them the ability to have handsets located where ever they were needed and add handsets easily with the user friendly Elastix interface. It also gave them increased viability of call usage with the inbuilt reporting and FOP2 let them see users engaged on calls.

We ported their existing BT Analogue lines to Gradwell VoIP trunks, This gave them an immediate increase in call capacity and combined with inclusive landline and mobile call packages meant call costs were kept under control.

Categories
Handsets

Snom Handsets

We Supply the full Snom range of handsets and feel that they provide both solid reliable business handsets to  touch-screen handsets that integrate with door-entry systems and much more.

 

 

For full details of handset features click on the handsets image

 

 

Categories
Case Studies

Xorcom Solution for Kensington Office

An existing client was moving offices from Carnaby St London to Kensington, Since the original system was installed the usage had changed with the majority of staff now being based in South Africa where we also have remotely installed an Asterisk solution previously.

For the new kensington office it was decided to use a Xorcom IPBX as this single box solution would make management easier and as ISDN2 Lines were required the overall cost would be lower than using a dedicated server and ISDN2 gateway.

xr2000-analog-250

The system was preconfigured and tested in our Lab and then taken to site and installed in one day. The clean interface allows for easy addition of handsets using the endpoint manager.

Since the company make a large volume of international calls it was decided to use Gradwell for outgoing calls as this means a great saving over BT for call charges. They also had a EFM circuit installed for both Voice and office internet usage.

Categories
Handsets

Gigaset Handsets

All the Gigaset DECT bases and handsets we sell are compatible with each other, but some handsets may only offer basic or limited compatability find out more information contact us

 

 

For full details of handset features click on the handsets image

 

Categories
Handsets

Aastra Handsets

The Aastra 67XXi Series offers features and flexibility in an open-standards based, carrier grade IP telephone. Click on the handsets for more details.

 

 

For full details of handset features click on the handsets image

Categories
Knowledge Base

Trusting Linux servers

This hopes to explain in simple steps setting up a pair (or more) servers as a trusted group.
So what do we want to achieve ? Well we wnat to be able to ssh, sftp, rsync etc between servers and not need to enter passwords
Steps required
1 Hosts File
2 Editing sshd_config
3 Create the ssh keys
4 Setting up the Auth. users file
Hosts File

Firstly we need to make sure all servers are in the hosts file
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 asterisk2.local
# We point to eth0 on our own box
192.168.10.100 asterisk2.local
192.168.10.100 asterisk2
# We point to eth1 on the other box
192.168.10.108 asterisk1

Editing sshd_config

Now we need to edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file
so that the following

RSAAuthentication yes
PubkeyAuthentication yes
AuthorizedKeysFile /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

replaces

#RSAAuthentication yes
#PubkeyAuthentication yes
#AuthorizedKeysFile .ssh/authorized_keys

Now restart the sshd
/etc/init.d/sshd restart

Create the ssh keys

We now need to create the keys on each server
ssh-keygen -t rsa
and hit return for all the questions.
this will create 2 files in /root/.ssh

go the /root/.ssh directory and copy the id_rsa.pub to the other server and get its id_rsa.pub

sftp asterisk1

put id_rsa.pub asterisk2.pub
get id_rsa.pub asterisk1.pub
bye

Setting up the Auth. users file

In the /root/.ssh directory you will now have for example :-

asterisk1.pub id_rsa id_rsa.pub known_hosts

We now need to copy the asterisk1.pub to the authorized_keys file

cat asterisk1.pub >> authorized_keys

Do the same on the other server.

You should now be able to ssh and rsync between servers.

Categories
Gateways

Xorcom Astribank

Astribank is a versatile and powerful channel bank that was specifically designed for the Asterisk IP-PBX. Astribank supports all the common telephony lines and trunks: FXS, FXO, BRI, E1/T1 PRI, T1 CAS and E1 R2. The Astribank driver is a part of the standard Asterisk distribution.

DataSheet

Categories
Knowledge Base

Sip debugging with wireshark

Wireshark and Cloudshark are invaluable tools for debugging sip and iax issues on your Asterisk server.

Here we have a short Video that goes over the basics of getting a call captured and opened in Cloudshark

we also have a short tutorial for download here in PDF format

First we need to get the packets we want. This is far simpler than its thought. We use a simple command line tool called tcpdump, if its not installed install it now, You wont be able to live without it.

Here we have 2 commands, The first captures packets on interface eth0, -n means we won’t convert addresses, -w means we just capture raw packets and udp means its only the udp packets we want and finally port 5060 means its only the sip messaging we want. In the second we dont specify port 5060 so that we get the rtp stream as well.

/usr/sbin/tcpdump -n -i eth0 -w /tmp/wireshark.pcap -s2000 udp port 5060
 /usr/sbin/tcpdump -n -i eth0 -w /tmp/wireshark.pcap -s2000 udp
screen -S "udpDump" -dm tcpdump -n -i eth0 -C 9 -W 15 -w /var/log/asterisk/dumpsip.pcap -s2000 udp port 5060

The command above will write to file in the background and will rotate at 9 meg so suitable for cloudshark

Once you have started the capture and made a call as required you will get a file called for example /tmp/wireshark.pcap copy this to your workstation via ftp or sftp as you would copy any file.

Categories
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