SOLVED BulkVS Config

[Halea]

In this article I noticed the following section, which I am trying to understand:

With PJsip registrations, you may also need to add the following lines to the end of extensions_custom.conf in /etc/asterisk using your actual DID.
Then reload your dialplan: asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"

[from-sip-external]
; BulkVS
exten => 18005551212,3,Goto(from-trunk,${DID},1)

Could anyone shed some light on what it exactly does and why it is (or might be) needed?
TIA

 

[kenn10]

That has been around for ages. I've never seen the point of it or used it. Things in FreePBX already handle that on the trunk screen and routes. It might have been pertinent in older versions of Asterisk or FreePBX but is not relavent now.

 

[Halea]

Thank you @kenn10. The first time I configured BulkVS in pjsip I figured out the settings on my own and eventually I got everything working fine, just through the GUI settings.
As for this material, I just came across it as I accidentally clicked on BulkVS instead of Anveo while I was checking my Anveo settings against Ward's literature.

On a completely different matter, yesterday, all day Anveo (out) behaved oddly. But today everything has been working just fine. It might have been an isolated incident, but I'm a bit on edge as we put quite a bit of overseas calls through it.

Anyway, thanks again for your feedback.

 

[wardmundy]

Screenshots of working PJsip setup for BulkVS:







In the Advanced tab, be sure to enter the Match Entries and set General Retry Interval to 25 as shown above!!

 

[wardmundy]

Pricing

Outbound: $0.004 per minute in 6-second increments

Inbound: $0.0003 per minute in 6-second increments

 

[Halea]

Does this mean that we'll also see the BulkVS trunk definition included in future IncrediblePBX distribution ISOs?

 

[Samot]

Pricing

Outbound: $0.004 per minute in 10-second increments

Inbound: $0.0003 per minute in 10-second increments

Where did you get that from? That must be some weird billing tier. All my usages is being billed in the standard 6 second increments.

 

[Samot]

Also in Chan_PJSIP the Match field can take sip.bulkvs.com and will do a SRV/A record lookup on it and grab all three IPs associated to the SRV record and allow incoming requests to be matched.

 

[kenn10]

This is the rate list from my Account on BullVS. My inbound billing is based on the total seconds divided by 60 times 0.0003. That makes 126 seconds / 60 = 2.1 * 0.0003 = $0.00063. The same method applies to my outbound calling. This is confirmed on my BulkVS CDR report. I don't see any 10 second increment in billing on my account.

Remember that for inbound, you have no option except to accept their inbound Caller-ID at $0.002/call.

I still prefer IP authorization over registration. As @Samot mentions, once you set up the whitelist of the required IP's, you can use the SRV record in the Match field of the turnk to simplify setup.

 

[Samot]

total seconds divided by 60

60x60 is one of the standards as well. That must be the retail rate.

 

[wardmundy]

Apologies. 10 = 6. Fixed. Thanks.

 

[Samot]

Apologies. 10 = 6. Fixed. Thanks.

Is that a 100% for sure? There's a 10x difference between what I'm billed (6 sec increments) and what @kenn10 claims to be billed (60 sec increments) which would mean that @kenn10 and I would pay different amounts for the same termination call.

 

[wardmundy]

Also in Chan_PJSIP the Match field can take sip.bulkvs.com and will do a SRV/A record lookup on it and grab all three IPs associated to the SRV record and allow incoming requests to be matched.

You're correct. But, with the Incredible PBX IPtables setup, this is academic because any adjustment of the IP addressees on the BulkVS end will mean that some calls would start failing because the new IP address was not whitelisted in IPtables on our end. So... I prefer to see the IP addresses in the Match field so that when things come unglued, you at least know where to start looking for a solution when you open a support ticket.

 

[wardmundy]

Is that a 100% for sure? There's a 10x difference between what I'm billed (6 sec increments) and what @kenn10 claims to be billed (60 sec increments) which would mean that @kenn10 and I would pay different amounts for the same termination call.

My Call Log shows I'm on the 6-second increment plan:

 

[kenn10]

I guess I'm confused but it does seem to break down to 6-seconds billing. In this CDR, it looks like its always seconds divided by 60 and multiplied by the incoming our outgoing per minute rate. The billing amount seems exact.

 

[Eliad]

I recently learned one thing about BulkVS. If your account balance goes bellow $10 you are limited to 2 concurrent calls. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what was wrong with my PBX and then I submitted a ticket to BulkVS and I was told about this limitation.

 

[Jake]

I recently learned one thing about BulkVS. If your account balance goes bellow $10 you are limited to 2 concurrent calls. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what was wrong with my PBX and then I submitted a ticket to BulkVS and I was told about this limitation.

@Eliad Does this limitation apply to both inbound and outbound?

 

[Eliad]

@Eliad Does this limitation apply to both inbound and outbound?

for sure the outbound because this is what I was seeing, possible inbound too, not sure

 

[LitleBill]

I recently learned one thing about BulkVS. If your account balance goes bellow $10 you are limited to 2 concurrent calls. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what was wrong with my PBX and then I submitted a ticket to BulkVS and I was told about this limitation.

Were you getting a busy signal on your calls ? or was there anything in the logs that you noticed?

I had some unexplained issues with incoming calls but their support didn't mention any limitations when balance goes below $10 .

 

[Eliad]

outgoing calls were failing at random probably because there were more than 2 simultaneus outgoing calls. This instance is a 3CX server and showed fail to log in on the dashboard. For IncrediblePBX you can go to the CLI and type asterisk -rvvv and see what you see in regards to bulkvs