Making network/router changes after the fact

FreePBX Installation / Upgrade
1

The short question:

PIAF 2.8.1.5
Is there a way to change a the box to static IP and set routers/IP/Gateway info on it? If so, how? (I’m a bit timid “under the hood”)…

The long version…

I’ve been running a PIAF box for a while, but am in process of re-integrating it into a larger network.

2.8.1.5 is the flavor.

My networks are thus:
Computer/Data side - a router serving DHCP, also is the gateway for most of the data network for the business. it is 10.x.x.100., fed into a managed Cisco switch, with numerous switches, end users, and data servers inside.

VOIP side: a SEPARATE router serves as the gateway for the VOIP network. Its IP is 10.x.x.102 and is connected to a separate ISP/web feed for VOIP data… (we originally ran all this on ONE network, but created separate after months of agony with QoS issues, and it immediately cleared up those issues)… The PBX is x.x.160, served by DHCP, and plugged into it.

Previously, both networks have been running entirely independently of each other, but my plan is to re-integrate them, as we have several processes which need to speak to both sides (database making phone calls, passing info to the deskstations etc).

ALL VOIP items (except for the PIAF PBX box) are set static IP’s… and I’d like to set it static as well.

The issues I have are:

1 To make sure that the PBX box sends its data to the correct gateway router (x.x.102), not to the x.x.100 DHCP router.

  1. to set the PBX box to static IP (so it doesn’t take its IP from the .100 router and thus get the .100 gateway).

I didn’t see a nice comfy GUI to do this change on the Free PBX page, and am a bit skeered to jump in and attempt such a change in linux without some very clear direction…

The system is fully functional now (on 2 separate networks), so I wnat to make sure I am able to make these changes without having our phone system go down for hours/days.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

I have a nice graphical layout of the networks if that would help, but haven’t seen a way to upload that to the post…

2

The reason was clear, it was just the reasoning that makes no sense.

You need to use a router to forward traffic between the two networks, not flatten them up.

Upgrade your core router to something that supports VLAN’s or has a managed switch. The latest Cisco small business routers are $150. and support multiple LAN’s failover etc.

Personally I would go one step further and terminate both Internet drains into one router, use a route map on the source IP of the Asterisk server to use the “voice” Internet connection primary and the Data Internet connection secondary. This would give you failover and redundancy.

3

“You can do a system-config-network from the command prompt and it will bring up the same script you saw on installation.”

I’d be happy to go this route if I knew the command to pull that up again.

Is there a simple listing of commands like this?

I don’t mean to be negative, but quite often the PIAF postings here tend to treat the person asking questions with contempt for not being complete pro’s at PIAF or linux.

I appreciate the voluntary aspect, but I think it would help bring a LOT more involvement in the forum if questions were actually answered instead of negativity being dropped upon whomever asked the question.

I use *nix on a daily basis, though for a rather limited list of activities. So yes, the lack of indepth knowledge doesn’t help me, but (I thought) that’s what this forum was about…

4

RE: 4 - Having a voice VLAN is optimum, I can’t see any sense in combining the networks back together. That’s a huge step backwards.

the reason (I thought was clear) - I need both data and VOIP to “see” each other, as enduser boxes need to communicate to the VOIP controller, to push extensions, or push outbound calls, etc…

5

current config is

DEVICE=eth0
#BOOTPROTO=dhcp
BOOTPROTO=none
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
IPADDR=10.0.1.160
GATEWAY=10.0.1.102
HWADDR=00:18:8B:1E:7A:7A
ONBOOT=yes
#DHCP-HOSTNAME=pbx.local

is something wrong with this?

6

thx for the note thoughts.

  1. it may have sounded as if i’m unwilling to do linux command line… that’s not the case… i just don’t have hours on end to hunt in the dark, so i was hoping there was a faster way…

  2. this setup has 2 independent ISP feeds. each has its own router

the data router is the only DHCP router with the new setup.
but the PIAF box has been set to DHCP.
I did find notes on how to switch over from DHCP to static (/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 ).

i punched it over to recommended settings:
replacing BOOTPROTO=dhcp with BOOTPROTO=none, and adding :
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
IPADDR=10.x.x.160
GATEWAY=10.x.x.100

upon reboot the system wouldn’t register with any SIP devices, and was agoniziingly slow… in fact i could ONLY log in via command line…

ideas?

7

You can do a system-config-network from the command prompt and it will bring up the same script you saw on installation.

Some thoughts on what you said in your message:

1 - A host does not have to have an interface in a network to talk to other networks. You can use you VoIP router as the default gateway and put static routes for the other internal subnets you mention to use your normal core router (is it both the Internet gateway and the Gateway for you internal networks or do you have a VLAN integration router or layer 3 switch?)

2 - If you are going to manage a production system you can’t be afraid to get under the hood. Many system administration tasks require Linux knowledge. One of the things that gets users in trouble is forgetting that FreePBX is an application that provides PBX functionality. You still have to perform normal system administration chores on the Linux host it runs on.

3 - On the same thought as 3, many other application play are part in providing the PBX functionality however Asterisk is as the core. You need to be comfortable with SIP and the Asterisk CLI in order to troubleshoot and manager the system. The GUI only goes so far.

4 - Having a voice VLAN is optimum, I can’t see any sense in combining the networks back together. That’s a huge step backwards.

5 - Get yourself a relationship with tier 2 and up support now. You don’t want to be establishing that relationship when you are in the middle of an issue.

6 - Make sure your backups work. Have you restored a backup to a new server and make sure it works? You need to have validated backup plan.

7 - Version 2.8 is end of life, you need to upgrade FreePBX and Asterisk

Welcome to the forums.

8

I thought I went out of my way to give you a chunk of advice that would get you where you need to be.

Honestly I am not sure how I can make it easier, maybe I should have said type “system-config-network” at the command prompt and it will run the network setup script.

As far as support, I think everyone tries. It’s hard enough supporting our software then be expected to tutor users in basic Operating System stuff is quite a lot to expect. Some folks take it further and expect us to support operating systems other than CentOS.

CentOS has incredible documentation, you can Google almost anything in natural language and it comes up with a tutorial, for example “centos network setup” yielded many straight forward tutorials, just like “centos delete files older than a specific date”. It works with mysql also “mysql display columns in a table” gives you a tutorial on that.

I don’t memorize many commands any more than the next guy but I do know how to find the answers. If someone asks a question I have never seen answered I will spend all day researching it. What I won’t do is go look up the syntax of a question that has been asked 100 times.

On top of everything as I always say. It’s not personal. I rarely even look at the names on the post, on my best day all I can really do is get everyone pointed in the right direction.

Good luck…Scott

9

actually, you’ve described my network as originally built.

As noted, we are running a cisco managed switch, which we bought to allow us to forward traffic and keep all traffic on one network. We did go to an Untangle router instead of Cisco.

But we ran into a problem with our ISP that they would not help with packet prioritization (despite being a 'business grade" ISP), so whenever one of our media servers started pulling large bandwidth, VOIP traffic got completely stomped. The issue was not in-house, but was up the network from us. and they wouldn’t help with it…

So we had to separate out to two separate networks to keep VOIP prioritized and working well.

I’d love to go to a single ISP source and save cost. but we need larger bandwidth, and (to date) we’ve not had an ISP which actually supplies quality service.

10

sorry about the confusion on “system-config-network”… you’re correct–i punched that in, and reconfig’d it.