One of the first things that everyone will have to do when switching from legacy voice services such as POTS or PRI is to calculate the expected costs of a new service.

Very often people hear me recommend pay as you go solutions and they immediately freak out saying it will be too expensive. Even though they have no idea what the costs involved look like.

Pay as you go services like VoIP.ms, VoicePulse, and others are very cost effective means of handling your calling as long as you correctly calculate all the costs of the legacy system and the new proposal.

First you need to realize that many legacy services hide most of your calling detail from you making this a very hard thing to truly understand. POTS lines have no detailed billing for local calling. Some carriers will not even tell you what your usage was unless you go over your long distance plan. So you only see call information for everything after that 5,000 minute package line item. There is no such thing as unlimited. Anyone selling that has fine print and they pay interconnect charges on all minutes used, so you can be certain that your monthly rate is high enough for that POTS line to cover expected usage.

This can seem like a very daunting task, but it is not as hard as it sounds. Like anything involving cost, math and reality are your friends. First off there are only so many working minutes in a month for a business. Then you can just take those numbers, factor in a percentage of hours per day on the phone, and add some wiggle room.

2017	Days /Month	Hours / Day	Minutes / Month
January	22	8	10,560
February	20	8	9,600
March	23	8	11,040
April	20	8	9,600
May	23	8	11,040
June	22	8	10,560
July	21	8	10,080
August	23	8	11,040
September	23	8	11,040
October	22	8	10,560
November	22	8	10,560
December	23	8	11,040
Average Minutes per Month			10,400

The math here in case anyone does not get it is Days per Month * Hours per Day * Minutes per Hour.

So this means one person on the phone for 100% of their work shift for the full month will cost $104 in a general $0.01 per minute pay as you go SIP trunk.

Thus, it is quite easy to extrapolate some basic numbers now that we know this. I usually plug all this into a spreadsheet and play with numbers in front of the client.

An SMB looking at SIP trunking has 15 POTS lines from the ILEC that cost $40/month after taxes (being generous here), so 15 * $40 = $600. If we assume all 15 lines were used 100% of the time, SIP would look all kinds of expensive. Using the average from the table above 10,400 * 15 * $0.01 = $1,560. Holy crap! More than $1,500 a month for something that only costs them $600 right now. So where is the savings? Well that comes in because no business uses all of their legacy POTS lines 100% of the time, ever. Because with POTS once all the lines are used, it is impossible to make or receive any more calls. So in the legacy POTS world, we over buy what we actually need on average in order to handle the high volume times.

If you can actually get a true CDR (call detail record) from your existing PBX or provider, then you can make real numbers here, but most likely you will be estimating. Assuming you need to estimate, the process will depend on the call flow. Simply do the best you can to poke the stakeholders for as much detail as you can get to narrow the margin of error for the estimation.

A small general office with 35 people or so will hover around 4-5 simultaneous calls (total inbound and outbound) on average for most of the workday. First hour, lunch hour, and last hour are lower usage.

Based on this you can calculate a better estimate, 10,400 * 5 * $0.01 = $520, we are cheaper than POTS already and long distance charges have not even been calculated for the old service yet. General long distance rates are $0.02 to $0.03 per minute. The 5,000 or 10,000 minute bundles are calculated along those rates for every client I have ever converted. Ever single minute of intestate, intrastate, interlata, and intralata calling simply adds to the cost and improves the RoI of a pay as you go SIP trunk.

Now every office is different. Some places are on the phone more than others, but they are also paying more per month most of the time. I have seen the SIP trunk savings fall in this type of range time after time.

Part of the FreePBX 13 Setup Guide

Credit: Work hours chart

I promised everyone a detailed setup guide back at MangoCon '16. Well, I finally have it ready for you all.

FreePBX 13 Setup Guide

Pre-Installation

• Initial Discovery
  • Estimating SIP trunk costs
• Host Choice
  • How to decide where you want your PBX
    • Instructions for Vultr
• Service Provider Choice
  • How to decide what kind of phone service to get
    • Instructions for VoIP.ms SIP trunk setup

Installation

• Install from the ISO
• Initial GUI setup
• Configure the Firewall
• System Admin setup
• Create your first exentsions
• Trunk setup
• Conference setup
• Ring group setup
• Creating system recordings
• IVR setup
• Using time groups and time conditions
• Caller ID setup
• Inbound call routing
• Outbound call routing

Setting up Desk Phones and Soft Phones

• Coming Soon™

Updating and Upgrading your FreePBX 13 System

• Updating the FreePBX Operating System
• Upgrading the FreePBX Firmware
• Upgrading the FreePBX System Modules

No sane person manually updates all of their stuff all of the time.

In the Fedora realm, I use dnf-automatic.
http://dnf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/automatic.html
The below instructions are for Fedora 26 and newer as the exact name of the timer changed from what it previously was.

Update: 2018/12/04

As of Fedora 28 (possibly 27), the original timer and service name was implemented.

dnf install -y dnf-automatic

Now you need to edit the /etc/dnf/automatic.conf file to do what you want.
Generally I change the following fields from their default values to this.

apply_updates = yes
emit_via = email
email_from = [email protected]
email_to = [email protected]
email_host = your.smtp.server

Optionally, edit the timer frequency. I leave it at the default of 1 day.

nano /usr/lib/systemd/system/dnf-automatic.timer

Sart and Enable the timer.

systemctl enable --now dnf-automatic.timer

You can list the time to see the status

systemctl list-timers --all

It will look like this

NEXT                         LEFT       LAST                         PASSED       UNIT                         ACTIVATES
Tue 2017-11-21 22:42:15 CST  52min left Tue 2017-11-21 21:42:15 CST  7min ago     dnf-makecache.timer          dnf-makecache.servi
Wed 2017-11-22 20:47:10 CST  22h left   Tue 2017-11-21 20:47:10 CST  1h 2min ago  systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer systemd-tmpfiles-cl
n/a                          n/a        Tue 2017-11-21 21:47:57 CST  1min 59s ago dnf-automatic.timer  dnf-automatic.service
n/a                          n/a        n/a                          n/a          sysstat-collect.timer        sysstat-collect.ser
n/a                          n/a        n/a                          n/a          sysstat-summary.timer        sysstat-summary.ser

5 timers listed.

I typically reboot at this point and then check the timer again to make sure it is running as expected.

systemctl list-timers
NEXT                         LEFT          LAST PASSED UNIT                         ACTIVATES
Tue 2017-11-21 22:00:00 CST  5min left     n/a  n/a    sysstat-collect.timer        sysstat-collect.service
Tue 2017-11-21 22:04:18 CST  9min left     n/a  n/a    dnf-makecache.timer          dnf-makecache.service
Tue 2017-11-21 22:09:18 CST  14min left    n/a  n/a    systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service
Tue 2017-11-21 22:54:18 CST  59min left    n/a  n/a    dnf-automatic.timer  dnf-automatic.service
Wed 2017-11-22 00:07:00 CST  2h 12min left n/a  n/a    sysstat-summary.timer        sysstat-summary.service

And damn is it a sexy looking GUI.

They have totally overhauled it to look more like UNMS.

So the topic came up in another thread and I thought it would be good to have a thread for those who want to talk about their trials and such.

I'll start off by saying that this is something for those who want it known. I want the additional pressure knowing that others are aware of my progress.

Most of my Adult life I was > 300 pounds. IN 2001 the Doctor said I was Type 2 Diabetic and needed drugs. I said screw that. I can be not a fat bastard.
I started eating better. A few years later I started exercising at work on my breaks. Just steps or walking the parking lot.

I went from 350 pounds (160kg) in 2001 to 176 pounds (80kg) in 2007 (on my wedding day). Many things changed in my life since 2007 and I gained some weight back (maxed at 109kg / 240 lbs).

I want to get back under 90kg / 200lbs. My goal for the next 15 days is to get under 100kg.

Me and a co-worker have been tracking it all year. Here is my progress.

That goal weight is just the US standard for 5' 10" medium build. My goal will be to stay under 90kg / 200lbs.

A lot of people want content filtering. DNS content filtering is the best bet for almost everyone.

If you run a Pi-Hole DNS filter for blocking adds and malicious site already, you can add porn quite easily.

Add this url to the lists.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chadmayfield/pihole-blocklists/master/lists/pi_blocklist_porn_top1m.list

Then Click Save and Update.

Before you go starting to install FreePBX (or really any PBX), you need to know a few things.

Without knowing all of this, it is highly likely that you will end up wasting money. Maybe directly by purchasing more than you need for some service or another, or just in the time spent doing things multiple times.

1. Number of DID – How many phone numbers do they have
2. Inbound Call Flow – How are inbound calls handled.
   • Ring Groups – Departmental ring groups?
     • Ring strategy, and remote call pickup?
     • Destination on no answer
   • IVR – Call trees, press 1 for sales, etc.
     • What are all the options
     • Destination on no selection
     • Professional recording of message or user recorded
   • Day/Night control
     • Automatic or user controlled
   • Individual DID
     • Direct to extension calls available
   • Call Queues for departments
3. Outbound Call Flow
   • Outbound CID
   • Routing per trunk
4. General Call Handling
   • Paging
   • Intercom
   • Music on Hold
   • Conferencing
   • Call Parking – Putting calls on hold on “Line 1”
   • Voicemail
     • VM to Email
   • Endpoint Management – How to manage desk phones
     • What buttons need to be where on the screen of each phone.

Part of the FreePBX 13 Setup Guide

Just esigned the loan documents. now to go to the bank and get the cashier's check for our cash to close.

Closing tomorrow on our house.

I have had to do this a couple times and always need to look up the command.

So I thought I would drop it here so I can search here first in the future.

DISM /online /Set-Edition:ServerStandard /AcceptEula /ProductKey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

Technet Article for doing this on Server 2012: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj574204.aspx

@travisdh1 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:

@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:

@Dashrender said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:

I think one of Scott's points is that you don't need a decked out box to make a lab happen.

I had an old 486 running Novell Netware what seems like 100 years ago, and a Pentium running Windows NT 4.0 This was when P II's were the rage, or was it PIIIs?

10+ year old hardware used to be completely usable for most lab setups. now with Virtualization, you need something a bit newer, x64 and supports virtualization, but that started becoming very common 8 or so years ago, so there's that. But real servers aren't needed either. A desktop can run VMWare ESXi or XenServer or Hyper-V just fine (assuming the virtualization hardware is there). Other factors will limit the number of VMs you can run, but hey, this is a lab.

Then today we can get $5/month VMs online - so there are options.

@Dashrender said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:

Then today we can get $5/month VMs online - so there are options.

And that's the price to keep it online and running 24x7. You can make scripts and build them when you need them and tear them down when you don't to learn more, cheaper than even the $5 mark!

Yeah, I don't have a HOME lab, but I've been building things in ramnode, Digital Ocean, and Vultr in not quite wild abandon. My current Vultr instance I'm playing with is all the way up to $0.56 for this billing period. That's less than I'd pay for the electric to run something at home.

If you are doing it outside of work hours, then it is a "home" lab IMO.

@jasgot said in Need MS Access app re-written to something else.:

We're talking super simple. I kinda wish I had 5 hours to dump into it.

Super simple on top of the access backend.

Not a 5 hour job.

Hollywood sign behind us.

@jasgot said in Need MS Access app re-written to something else.:

@jaredbusch said in Need MS Access app re-written to something else.:

Only serial? The gate controller has a serial port?

The computer monitoring the scanners has two serial devices attached.
One is an RS232 to RS485 converter, this is how we chat with the barcode readers.
The other is a serial-signal controlled bank of four relays. These relays are what trigger the gates to open. (Voltage raised - gate opens, voltage drops- gate closes.)

Bar code: so RS485?

Gates: Does it need to stay a serial signal controlled bank? Can pins from a Pi board be used to trigger directly?

Computer: what kind of interface is needed? Are you adding and removing codes through this interface?

@jasgot said in Need MS Access app re-written to something else.:

Great conversation guys.
The end user has no place to turn other than us-- without embarking on a search they have already decided would be better for their IT company to tackle.

I too know it is something better handled by people other than my staff. I chose to turn here first, because I really like this forum and the people.

I already know what has been stated, save for the specifics about the specific languages and databases. Didn't really learn anything here today.

Continuing this topic appears to be more wasteful of my time than looking to the other sources we have available to us.

This is something the company I work for could possibly do. But I have no way to make any kind of intelligent conversation in forums posts without asking all of the questions I asked, then having you answer, then me asking more questions.

You did answer my questions, so now it is on me again.

airport advertising …….

@frodooftheshire said in Safely transferring sensitive information:

Currently when they're looking for volunteers data is sent from the volunteer's email address to an employees account (in charge of finding volunteers & using Google Workplace account) and then to the director's email address (Again Google Workplace account).

So once you get the information, it is always encrypted in transit.

Are you wanting to get the initial information from the volunteer in a guaranteed secure format?

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/patch-now-linux-file-system-security-hole-dubbed-sequoia-can-take-over-systems/

Not actually ahigh risk unless someone already has local access to the system. I mean serious exploit, yes. But first you need to be on the system.

"If an unprivileged local attacker creates, mounts, and deletes a deep directory structure whose total path length exceeds 1GB, and if the attacker open()s and read()s /proc/self/mountinfo, then" through a series of other maneuvers you can write to out of bounds memory.

@jasgot said in Need MS Access app re-written to something else.:

serial signal to a controller

Only serial? The gate controller has a serial port?

@jasgot said in Need MS Access app re-written to something else.:

manages the barcodes in the database

What does this mean. How much detail is there for each barcode?