Using a SIP Registrar

Blueworx Voice Response for AIX supports a SIP register service that registers a list of ‘usernames’ to one or more registrars as defined in a user-configurable file $SYS_DIR/voip/master.ini and secondary files such as $SYS_DIR/voip/basicList.ini. The file master.ini defines a list of registrars. Each registrar defines a different server to which to send REGISTER attempts, has an associated list of user names in one or more files, and may override default values for port, timeout of registration, user agent, and priority. For example:
 Registrar 127.0.0.1
  IniFile=/usr/lpp/dirTalk/db/sys_dir/voip/basicList.ini
  Timeout=60
  UserAgent=Blueworx Voice Response
  Port=5061
  Priority=0.7
  Proxy=12.34.56.78  
  RegisterAs=93.0.0.4
  HidePasswords=false
  UseSIPS=false
  TransportProtocol=udp
;
These registrations are triggered by putting one or more VoIP channels into service and will be unregistered if all VoIP channels go out of service. Registrations will be automatically reattempted when they expire.

To configure a SIP register service for your system, you must edit master.ini to define the appropriate registrar and attendant properties, and edit basicList.ini (or create your own secondary .ini file or files) to define the list of users to register.

The master.ini server definition parameters are as follows:
Registrar
IP address or hostname of the registrar. (mandatory)
IniFile
The path of a secondary .ini files that contain details of the actual REGISTER requests to make (mandatory). If multiple .ini files are listed (using multiple IniFile parameter definitions), the contents of each of the defined files are combined sequentially, in file name order, to form the final list of registrations for that registrar. If the same username is used in more than one secondary .ini file, the latest username added to the registrar definition overrides the entries in any files combined previously. To send exactly the same REGISTER requests to two different registrars, include IniFile=fileName in both Registrar definitions. File names are resolved relative to the $SYS_DIR/voip directory.
Timeout
The period, in minutes, a registration should last before expiring and being reregistered (optional). This value can be overridden by lines in the secondary .ini file. The default value is the Timeout value defined in the system configuration.
UserAgent
Part of the register request and specifies who made the request (optional). If the system configuration parameter is set, this will have _hostname appended to it to make it easier to identify the machine a registration came from. This value can be overridden by lines in the secondary .ini file. The default value is the UserAgent value defined in the system configuration.
Port
The UDP port that the registrar uses (optional). Usually for UDP or TCP, the default is 5060. For TLS, the default is 5061. It is possible to change the port for any protocol if necessary.
Priority
The Contact 'q=' parameter referred to in the SIP specification rfc3261, which is by convention a value between 0 and 1 (optional). Some registrars support two machines registering the same name to themselves with differing priorities, so that if the main machine goes down and unregisters, a back-up machine can take over, for example. It is possible for a registrar to do load balancing using this facility by splitting the load proportionally according to priority. The default value is 0.5.
Proxy
Specifies a proxy IP address for the registrar (optional). The Registrar value will be used in all TO, FROM and CONTACT headers in the message, but the message will be sent to the proxy address.
RegisterAs
Specifies the IP address to use when identifying the Blueworx Voice Response machine that is doing the registration. By default this is inferred using the local host name.
HidePasswords
If set to true, prevents the password being added to the To and From headers of the REGISTER message. The password will still be used by the authentication challenge mechanism. The default value is false, which if a password is specified, results in the password being added to all instances of the address.
UseSIPS
Controls whether to register the contact as a sips rather than a sip address. Usually, if sips is specified, TransportProtocol is set to TLS, but a sips address can be registered using an unsecure SIP message if required.
TransportProtocol
Specifies the transport protocol to use to send the REGISTER message. Valid values are TCP, UDP, or TLS. The defaults is UDP. If set to TLS, secure SIP must be set up to allow the protocol to work. See Secure SIP configuration settings for outbound calls for more information.
The master.ini file can include comment lines beginning with the ’#’ character.
The supplied example secondary .ini file, basicList.ini, shows how to override the timeout and user agent fields on a per-registration basis. You must supply the user name, but the timeout and user agent values are optional. You can provide either or both of those if you wish. The format of a line entry for a secondary .ini file is 
Username[:Password][,Timeout][,UserAgent]
Or, if the Timeout is that specified in master.ini or the default:
Username[:Password],0,UserAgent

For example:7777,13,MyUserAgent registers, without including any password, the URI sip:7777@thisMachine:5060 to the registrar with a timeout or 13 minutes and a requesting UserAgent of MyUserAgent, where thisMachine is the hostname of the resource where the secondary .ini file is located. To include a password of 2222 in the registration, the line entry would be 7777:2222,13,MyUserAgent.

7777,0,MyUserAgent registers the same URI to the registrar using the timeout value defined in master.ini if there is one, or if not, that defined in the system configuration and a requesting UserAgent of MyUserAgent. To include a password of 2222 in the registration, the line entry would be 7777:2222,0,MyUserAgent.

7777 registers the same URI to the registrar using the timeout value and UserAgent defined in master.ini if defined there, or if not, the values defined in the system configuration. To include a password of 2222 in the registration, the line entry would be 7777:2222.

The secondary .ini file parameters are as follows:
Username
The number at the Blueworx Voice Response machine registered to a registrar (mandatory). The username can be specified in several different ways:
  • For a 480-channel system, each available channel could be defined as an individual available username, for example 001@mywvr to 480@mywvr
  • To represent individual applications, (equivalent to a VRBE NumToApp application mappings representation). Registering one or more applications that can be answered by a particular machine, for example: 12345@myWVR identifies that the Blueworx Voice Response system can handle calls for user 12345 and has an equivalent NumToApp mapping defined in the default.cff configuration file.
  • A single username registered to represent the machine as available, for example: WVR61@xyz.ibm.com
Password
Optionally, a password can be specified in the registration.
Timeout
The period, in minutes, a registration should last before expiring and being reregistered (optional). The default value is the Timeout value defined in master.ini if there is one, or if not, that defined in the system configuration.
UserAgent
Part of the register request and specifies who made the request (optional). If the system configuration parameter is set, this will have _hostname appended to it to make it easier to identify the machine a registration came from. The default value is the UserAgent value defined in master.ini if there is one, or if not, that defined in the system configuration.
Secondary .ini file can include comment lines beginning with the ’#’ character.

Default SIP register support is configured using the following VoIP SIP Signaling configuration parameters:

Parent topic: Configuring Blueworx Voice Response Voice over IP