FOOD FOR THOUGHT BulkVS.com -- Great Origination/Termination/TF rates!

[kenn10]

Correct. Bulkvs does not handle calling outside the USA and Canada. I maintain an Anveo-Direct account for outbound international calls. They do handle toll-free calls and actually give you back some credit for each outbound toll-free call.

I'm not certain the rates are the same in Canada and the USA. I pay $0.0003 per outbound minute and $0.06 per DID/month. E911 is $0.49 per number. I have multiple locations so I have one DID registered for E911 at each location and route any calls for 911 using the correct emergency number to identify the location.

 

[atsak]

if I understand bulkVS has no rate outside of canada and usa (u can't call long distance), and usa calls and canada has no different rate, and it has unlimited channels since it's based on rate per minute

Can and US are the same rate for termination. They have slightly different rates for origination from some Canadian rate centers (centres). They offer most of them, but the ones from Iristel and not their US origination carrier are more expensive. I sometimes fix this for busy lines by first acquiring the number elsewhere and porting it in to bulkvs.

The other thing you need to know though is that some departments from the government of Canada blocks toll free calls from the US carriers even if the source is a Canadian DID. This is particularly a problem with the CRA. I have to maintain voip.ms for termination to some toll free numbers so my clients can call government as well.

 

[krzykat]

which one is cheaper for a small business? voips.ms or bulkvs would you recommend with incrediblepbx in terms of pricing, with a did, and incoming and outgoing local calls in canada? I assume incoming must have cnam cost included too.

I prefer bulkvs, but that's a personal preference.

 

[w1ve]

I've been using Bulkcvs since 2019. Pretty much flawless!

 

[Halea]

I agree with @w1ve ! BulkVS has been rock solid over the years. I too started to use it in 2019. My personal/family call volume is nothing noteworthy but BulkVS saved my business lots of money!
From my vintage point (as a personal user and business owner) BulkVS is in a league on its own!

 

[l4cky]

I've been using Bulkcvs since 2019. Pretty much flawless!

I agree with @w1ve ! BulkVS has been rock solid over the years. I too started to use it in 2019. My personal/family call volume is nothing noteworthy but BulkVS saved my business lots of money!
From my vintage point (as a personal user and business owner) BulkVS is in a league on its own!

From bulkvs "We see this registration trunk registering every 2 minutes, could you lease have this decreased to every 25 seconds and test again."

But I have a freephoneline trunk which requires registration every 120 seconds, so im not sure what to do..

 

[Halea]

From bulkvs "We see this registration trunk registering every 2 minutes, could you lease have this decreased to every 25 seconds and test again."

But I have a freephoneline trunk which requires registration every 120 seconds, so im not sure what to do..

For your bulkvs trunk, in the peer details section put a line that reads defaultexpiry=25
That will only affect your bulkvs trunk. It will make the registration expire in 25 seconds and force to re-register.

 

[Samot]

From bulkvs "We see this registration trunk registering every 2 minutes, could you lease have this decreased to every 25 seconds and test again."

Did they randomly send this to you or as a reply to troubleshooting a problem? I can't see how BulkVS would want that type of unnecessary traffic. An expire time of 25 seconds means a REGISTER is being sent every 20 seconds. That seems overkill.

 

[l4cky]

Did they randomly send this to you or as a reply to troubleshooting a problem? I can't see how BulkVS would want that type of unnecessary traffic. An expire time of 25 seconds means a REGISTER is being sent every 20 seconds. That seems overkill.

no, it was a reply to a troubleshoot, that I couldn't get connected. I got told my value were set to 120secs, but has to be 25 secs




my other trunks don't lose connection, but with bulkvs, i randomly lose connection and their website status shows not connected after a few days.

 

[l4cky]

For your bulkvs trunk, in the peer details section put a line that reads defaultexpiry=25
That will only affect your bulkvs trunk. It will make the registration expire in 25 seconds and force to re-register.

I have this preset at 25 already, but bulkvs says it didn't work, still 2 minutes.

Am i putting it at the right place? Should general retry interval = 25 seconds?

 

[Halea]

@l4cky : I thought you were using chan_sip, in which case it goes in the peer details frame.
On an old PBX with chan_sip driver that line works for me. On other, newer versions of IncrediblePBX like 2021-D I use pjsip but I don't use registration, so I never put any value in the "Expiration" field.

But, probably it's the right place.

By the way, defaultexpiry=25 under peer details was something that bulkvs' tech support told me to do several years ago when I was on FreePBX 13, Asterisk 13 with chan_sip.

If you test it with chan_sip & registration, make sure that you have all 4 trunks (one for each bulkvs IP) configured with that addition in peer details.

Update:

I've just given a try with IncrediblePBX 2021 Debian version since I had a test vm handy.
I configured a bulkvs trunk using the pjsip driver and setup for outbound registration.
That worked just fine without fiddling any of the timings (for almost 20mn now).
Besides, I think @Samot 's point is well taken. There is no reason to have a 25 second registration schedule, that would flood bulkvs' servers.

I wonder if your issue is not router or gateway related.
Is your PBX behind a NAT gateway? If so, what kind of router is it?
The NAT layer might very well drop the opened ports if it gets under heavy stress, that might result for instance in a random registration loss.

 

[l4cky]

thing tha

@l4cky : I thought you were using chan_sip, in which case it goes in the peer details frame.
On an old PBX with chan_sip driver that line works for me. On other, newer versions of IncrediblePBX like 2021-D I use pjsip but I don't use registration, so I never put any value in the "Expiration" field.

But, probably it's the right place.

By the way, defaultexpiry=25 under peer details was something that bulkvs' tech support told me to do several years ago when I was on FreePBX 13, Asterisk 13 with chan_sip.

If you test it with chan_sip & registration, make sure that you have all 4 trunks (one for each bulkvs IP) configured with that addition in peer details.

Update:

I've just gave a try with IncrediblePBX 2021 Debian version since I had a test vm handy.
I configured a bulkvs trunk using the pjsip driver and setup for outbound registration.
That worked just fine without fiddling any of the timings (for almost 20mn now).
Besides, I think @Samot 's point is well taken. There is no reason to have a 25 second registration schedule, that would flood bulkvs' servers.

I wonder if your issue is not router or gateway related.
Is your PBX behind a NAT gateway? If so, what kind of router is it?
The NAT layer might very well drop the opened ports if it gets under heavy stress, that might result for instance in a random registration loss.

thanks.

yeah actually i am on freepbx 13, but planning to move in the future to a newer version.

I can try to reconvert it to Chan SIP, would you be able to tell me if the settings lines u used:

outgoing
?
defaultexpiry=25

incoming
?



As for the router, yeah behind a router Asus RT-AX86U. But if registration drops, wouldn't it be the same with the other trunks?

 

[kenn10]

BuilkVS does not require registration. IP Authorization works flawlessly. I don't see why you would choose to use registration.

 

[l4cky]

BuilkVS does not require registration. IP Authorization works flawlessly. I don't see why you would choose to use registration.

I think because the external IP address can change... form the ISP

 

[kenn10]

OK. FreePBX-13 and chan_pjsip weren't really good. If you upgrade your Asterisk and FreePBX, you'll probably have fewer problems. If you're staying on the older platform, I recommend sticking with chan_sip.

 

[l4cky]

BuilkVS does not require registration. IP Authorization works flawlessly. I don't see why you would choose to use registration.

I was just following the instructions where it says If i have a router, then it won'T work...

 

[kenn10]

No argument there if your IP changes frequently but how often does your outward facing IP address change and can you get a fixed IP address from your provider? Even with registration, when your IP address changes, it takes a while to switch within Bulkvs. You would have up to 25 seconds where it would reject connections to your PBX.

 

[l4cky]

No argument there if your IP changes frequently but how often does your outward facing IP address change and can you get a fixed IP address from your provider?

I would say maybe 2-4 times per year, so not a lot.

 

[kenn10]

I would say maybe 2-4 times per year, so not a lot.

Mine changes about once per year so I just update in Bulkvs as needed. You didn't say what version of Asterisk you are using but anything less than Asterisk-16 is likely to have buggy PJSIP and FreePBX-13 is also an issue.

 

[l4cky]

Mine changes about once per year so I just update in Bulkvs as needed. You didn't say what version of Asterisk you are using but anything less than Asterisk-16 is likely to have buggy PJSIP and FreePBX-13 is also an issue.

yeah very buggy, spent so much time in the past to get things work. But now it's obsolete, and I have to move to a newer one. I don't think I can even load some logs...
Do you know if it's possible to install and configure a incrediblepbx in a raspberry pi at home and then just plug it at work, plug and play? will it work? All i can think of is just open back the ports for the work router, but I am not sure what else I might be missing, or it's better to just have it connect to the work network and work from distance