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We are trying to get more and more customers on the new VoIP server at A&A.

Most customers with a SIP phone or SIP client are just working, which is good news.

We are, however, trying to move asterisk customers over as well. This seemed to be working, but we are hitting some issues. We're not sure yet if we should use its registration feature to act like a SIP phone, or configure direct incoming calls from our call servers, or configure incoming authenticated calls. Getting asterisk to handle incoming calls is proving to be a real challenge. One of the issues with SIP as a protocol is that the INVITE does not have a setting to say "I can authenticate", so you have to work out from the headers if you want to challenge the caller or not. Getting that right in asterisk is definitely a trick, especially when the call server has multiple IP addresses in DNS. So we'll still working on the finding the right config for that. This plan is to set up asterisk on the bench and work it out next week.

However, even when we work around that, we ran in to a snag. Using asterisk and SNOM phones, we have had an issue this week where the SNOM phone could not put people on hold or allow call transfer.

Mike (my customer) and I have been working on this several times now, so I said we would find it one way or another this morning. After about 3 hours on it this morning we finally solved it.

The symptoms were complicated...

1. This did not go wrong on a fresh new clean config on asterisk, but we needed to work with an existing large and complex config.
2. This did not go wrong with all snom phones that are connected, and seemed it may be s/w version related, but not 100% clear and seemed like older software worked.
3. This did not go wrong with all carriers. Calls from the old A&A call server, and from other carriers worked to the same phones.
4. This did not go wrong with outgoing calls, even where they go via A&A's new servers.
5. This did not go wrong on any internal calls on the asterisk box.
6. This did not go wrong for all numbers on the A&A call server even, some worked, mostly the direct dial in numbers.
7. When you press hold the phone says something like failed on the screen and drops the call, but the caller gets silence for a couple of minutes before the call clears.

We have finally found it. Well, found what causes it. It looks like an asterisk bug which has always been there.

After chasing a lot of wild red herrings, the final clue was when Mike sent me SIP traces from the phone. I wanted a trace of the failure that caused the phone to show an error. Mike sent me traces several times, and I kept berating him saying that they were just the trace of the call set up, not the hold. Eventually we realised that the snom did not even try to put the call on hold, so there was no trace of that! I was then looking at Supported: headers (not needed for hold) and wondering if OPTIONS could be an issue and all sorts. Holding a call should just work as it is simply a re INVITE with adjusted sdp. It was a while before I spotted the problem on the trace of the call from asterisk to the SNOM. I was comparing the headers for a call that worked and did not. It should be hit me sooner.
(IPs and numbers changed to protect the innocent).

Working:
Contact: <sip:0123456789@192.168.1.1>

Not working:
Contact: <sip:0123456789" <sip:0123456789@192.168.1.1>

How the hell did I not spot that before - I am going SIP blind I think. If the Contact: is broken, it is no wonder the snom cannot send the INVITE to put the call on hold, or a BYE, or anything. Poor thing. It is also possible a different version of snom code (an older one, as it happens) might have managed to parse that mangle.

So, I tracked down the original call from A&A to asterisk, and it looks like the display-name part of the From: or Remote-Party-ID: was the issue. This is put in to the calling number, i.e. the From: header when sent to the phone, or should be! When there was no display-name part, it worked.

Working:
From: <sip:0123456789@172.16.1.1>

Not working:
From: "DK:0123456789" <sip:0123456789@81.187.30.111>

Some experimentation shows it is the colon in the display-name. The RFC allows this in the display-name, unescaped, so it is 100% valid. We use a prefix tag like this ("DK" in this case) for people wanting to see which hunt group was called (hence working for DDI calls). I can only assume we did not use a colon on the old call server. The fact the clean SIP config on asterisk works suggests it is setting of the CLI or CLI name in the config which fails to process the name with a colon in it and generates a display-name which asterisk then fails to correctly escape when sending the call to the snom. Getting rid of the colon fixes it.

Also working:
From: "DK 0123456789" <sip:0123456789@81.187.30.111>

Causing:
Contact: "DK 0123456789" <sip:0123456789@192.168.1.1>

Arrrrrg!

Digging a hole for themselves

Huxley are now telling the court that they did indeed offer to settle, but by mistake they forgot to say that their offer was "Subject to Agreement", and that they since tried to rectify that mistake.

So they have now stated to the court that an agreement was reached and now stated to the court that they did indeed make that agreement without reservation, albeit claiming they made a mistake in doing so. The letter to the court saying agreement had been reached must have been another mistake as well.

Their letter makes the facts clear - they offered to settle and I accepted. So I have now asked the court to change my claim to one for breach of contract whereby they have simply not paid the £30 they agreed to pay, and the letters to the court are my evidence of their unconditional offer and their agreement (telling the court we had reached agreement).

This will be a way simpler case to win - show the judge the letter where they offered, my reply accepting, (contract formed) their letter telling the court we agreed (proof they got my acceptance), and bingo.

Actually, thinking about it, even their claimed mistake does not change things. If their offer included "Subject to agreement", the fact they then wrote to the court saying an agreement had been reached means, well, that agreement had been reached and so the "subject to" is satisfied.

What fun.

Spammers 0:1 RevK, again?

Huxley said they were settling, and even wrote to the court to say so.

No money arrived.

Now they are saying that they need me to sign a 3 page settlement agreement which includes an agreement to remove items from my blog and not post about this or the settlement agreement.

They seem to think that my blog "infers[sic] that we have accepted liability". Given that I posted their letter which clearly states that they were settling on a without prejudice commercial basis, I can hardly see how my blog could imply that they accepted liability. It would have been nice if they had taken responsibility for their actions, but that was clearly not the case.

They think they can buy my silence by paying me the £30 that they had already agreed to pay. They also think they can get me to agree to remove things from any other website, public platform, or portal - as if I had the power to do that!

I have not agreed to the agreement to keep the agreement quiet!

So, lets see them in court! I am looking forward to it.

Good for the environment?

As several people have noticed, the Dell 3330DN printer offer from ebuyer is a tad special.

• You buy a printer for £174.99
• You get a free Ricoh printer as well
• You claim the £75 cash back from Dell
• You send the Ricoh to Dell as a trade-in and get a further £100 cash back

So, you end up with a Dell 3330DN printer with toner for -1p.

So the Ricoh printer, unopened, is recycled. It means these Ricoh printers are made and then destroyed without ever being used. Dell even pay the postage for the returned printer!

What's the betting this is Dell claiming on some government scheme for saving the planet by disposing of old printers. That must be good for the environment, no?

To top it off, as a company, if we buy this, we get to reclaim £29.17 VAT in the purchase, but the cash back has no VAT, so we make £29.18 on each printer we buy.

And, of course, what you then do is sell the printer on ebay for some small amount.

What a strange world we live in some times.

Spammers 0:2 RevK

So, the other spammer paid up.

And the solicitors for Huxley have said they have sent £30 by BACS.

What more can I say :-)

Spammers 0:1 RevK

Huxley are settling, £5 for spam and £25 court fees.

The other spammer that said they would pay the £10 I asked for, hasn't. So maybe I'll point out that I have already got money out of spammers by going to court and see what they say...

Silverstone F1 2013

Silverstone went well. We took all the staff that wanted to go (which was pretty much all of them). Fun event for all. Although I don't recommend walking around the whole track in the sun with no hat - my head is killing me (sun burn). I think everyone enjoyed it.

The company that sold it to us have still not refunded the phantom booking fee they agreed to refund, and re-reading their original description of the event it was a far cry from a "private suit" at Silverstone. My overall opinion is we did not get good value for money. That is to say we paid far too much for what we got, not that what we got was not a fun day for all.

It is actually the first time I have done Silverstone. We had some fairly good grandstand tickets. National Pit Straight, not the start/finish line, sadly, but a good place to see some over taking.

The camera worked well. I was not the only one with a 70-200 L USM lens, as you can see. It was a toss up whether to use the x2 or not. I ended up using it for many of the shots. In that light, 140-400mm f/5.6 was fine for getting fast shots. I settled on 1/800th second for most shots as they showed some motion blur on tyres, but were quite crisp. The IS worked even with slower shots. Going to 1/8000th second the cars look stationary, as you would expect. My main gripe is that even with the on-screen zoom on the camera it is hard to be sure which settings are getting the best shots, and taking a laptop to the grandstand was not on, obviously. The tracking auto focus on the 1Dx worked well too. I am pleased with the end result, over 1,000 shots including some of the red arrows display at the start.

We did not see any crashes, which is good... well, not until we had spent ages in a massive queue of traffic on the way back which was entirely down to people looking at a crash on the other side of the road (did not look like anyone was hurt).