PSTN Connectivity, DAHDI, Digium Cards, and Analog Phones

Before we get to DAHDI and Asterisk configuration, we need to physically connect to the PSTN. Unfortunately, there are no worldwide standards for these connections; in fact, there are often variations from one part of a given country to another.

PRI connections are generally terminated in an RJ45 connection these days, although the impedance of the connections can vary. In some countries (notably in South America), it is still possible to find PRIs terminated in two BNC connectors, one for transmit and one for receive.

Generally speaking, a PRI terminated in an RJ45 will be an ISDN connection, and if you find the connection is made by a pair of BNC connectors (push-and-twist coaxial connectors), the likelihood is that you are dealing with a CAS-based protocol (like R2).

Figure 9.3, “A balun” shows the adaptor required if your telco has supplied BNC connectors (the Digium cards require an RJ45 connection). It is called a balun, as it converts from a balanced connection (RJ45) to an unbalanced connection (the BNCs), in addition to changing the connection impedance.

Note

Basic Rate Interfaces (BRIs) are common in continental Europe and are almost always supplied via an RJ45 connection.

Figure 9.3. A balun

A balun

Analog connections vary massively from place to place—you will know what kind of connector is used in your locality. The important thing to remember is that the analog line is only two wires, and these need to connect to the middle two pins of the RJ11 plug that goes into the Digium card—the other end is the local one. Figure 9.4, “The BT plug used for analog PSTN connections in the UK (note only pins 2–5 are present)” shows the plug used in the UK, where the two wires are connected to pins 2 and 5.

Figure 9.4. The BT plug used for analog PSTN connections in the UK (note only pins 2–5 are present)

The BT plug used for analog PSTN connections in the UK (note only pins 2–5 are present)

The Digium Asterisk Hardware Device Interface, or DAHDI, actually covers a number of things. It contains the kernel drivers for telephony adaptor cards that work within the DAHDI framework, as well as automatic configuration utilities and test tools. These parts are contained in two separate packages (dahdi-linux and dahdi-tools), but we can also use one complete package, called dahdi-linux-complete. All three packages are available at http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/. The installation of DAHDI was covered in Chapter 3, Installing Asterisk.

Chapter 7, Outside Connectivity covered the use of analog and digital PSTN connections, and we will not reiterate those details here. If you are using digital PSTN connections, your job is to find out what sort of connection the telco is giving you. Generally, if you have requested a primary rate interface (PRI), this will be a T1 in North America, a J1 in Japan, or an E1 in pretty much the rest of the world.

Once you have established the type of PRI connection the telco has given you, there are some further details that you will require in order to properly configure DAHDI and Asterisk (e.g., whether the connection is ISDN or a CAS-based protocol). Again, you will find these in Chapter 7, Outside Connectivity.

DAHDI Drivers

The connections where some real localization will need to take place are those of analog interfaces. For the purposes of configuring your Asterisk-based telephone system to work best in a given locality, you will first need to specifically configure some low-level aspects of the way the Digium card interacts with the connected device or line. This is done through the DAHDI kernel driver(s), in a file called /etc/dahdi/system.conf.

In the following lines (taken from the sample configuration that you get with a fresh install of DAHDI), you will find both the loadzone and defaultzone settings. The loadzone setting allows you to choose which tone set(s) the card will both generate (to feed to analog telephones) and recognize (on the connected analog telephone lines):

# Tone Zone Data
# ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# Finally, you can preload some tone zones, to prevent them from getting
# overwritten by other users (if you allow non-root users to open /dev/dahdi/*
# interfaces anyway). Also this means they won't have to be loaded at runtime.
# The format is "loadzone=<zone>" where the zone is a two letter country code.
#
# You may also specify a default zone with "defaultzone=<zone>" where zone
# is a two letter country code.
#
# An up-to-date list of the zones can be found in the file zonedata.c
#
loadzone = us
#loadzone = us-old
#loadzone=gr
#loadzone=it
#loadzone=fr
#loadzone=de
#loadzone=uk
#loadzone=fi
#loadzone=jp
#loadzone=sp
#loadzone=no
#loadzone=hu
#loadzone=lt
#loadzone=pl
defaultzone=us
#

Tip

The /etc/dahdi/system.conf file uses the hash symbol (#) to indicate a comment instead of a semicolon (;) like the files in /etc/asterisk/.

Although it is possible to load a number of different tone sets (you can see all the sets of tones in detail in zonedata.c) and to switch between them, in most practical situations you will only need:

loadzone=uk     # to load the tone set
defaultzone=uk  # to default DAHDI to using that set

…or whichever tones you need for your region.

If you perform a dahdi_genconf to automatically (or should that be auto-magically?) configure your DAHDI adaptors, you will notice that the newly generated /etc/dahdi/system.conf will have defaulted both loadzone and defaultzone to being us. Despite the warnings not to hand-edit the file, it is fine to change these settings to what you need.

In case you were wondering how we tell whether there are any voicemails in the mailbox associated with the channel an analog phone is plugged into, it is done with a stuttered dialtone. The format of this stuttered dialtone is decided by the loadzone/defaultzone combination you have used.

As a quick aside, analog phones that have a message waiting indicator (e.g., an LED or lamp that flashes to indicate there is new voicemail) achieve this by automatically going off-hook periodically and listening for the stuttered dialtone. You can witness this by watching the Asterisk command line to see the DAHDI channel go active (if you have nothing better to do!).

That’s it at the DAHDI level. We chose the protocol(s) for PRI or BRI connections, the type of signaling for the analog channels (all covered in Chapter 7, Outside Connectivity), and the tones for the analog connections that have just been discussed.

Tip

Once you have completed your configuration at the DAHDI level (in /etc/dahdi/system.conf), you need to perform a dahdi_cfg -vvv to have DAHDI reread the configuration. This is also a good time to use dahdi_tool to check that everything appears to be in order at the Linux level.

This way, if things do not work properly after you have configured Asterisk to work with the DAHDI adaptors, you can be sure that the problem is confined to chan_dahdi.conf (or an #included dahdi-channels.conf if you are using this part of the dahdi_genconf output).

The relationship between Linux, DAHDI, and Asterisk (and therefore /etc/dahdi/system.conf and /etc/asterisk/chan_dahdi.conf) is shown in Figure 9.5, “The relationship between Linux, DAHDI, and Asterisk”.

Figure 9.5. The relationship between Linux, DAHDI, and Asterisk

The relationship between Linux, DAHDI, and Asterisk