Thursday, September 17, 2026
Factory Reset VTech VCS754
This has been a fantastic phone. Its best feature is that it works as a PC based speaker phone right to your computer via USB. It's awesome.
Factory Resetting VTech VCS754
Asterisk FreeBPX fail2ban whitelist and status
Here's some asterisk fail2ban info
List Banned IPs in Fail2Ban
Fail2Ban stores a list of all the IPs currently banned from connecting to your server. Run the following command to see all active jails on your server:
sudo fail2ban-client statusThe one you are probably interested in is "asterisk-iptables"
sudo fail2ban-client status asterisk-iptablesHere you'll see that 192.168.0.101 is banned. This was a phone that I couldn't make register.
Unban Specific IP in Fail2Ban
This command will let you unban an IP. In my example i'm going to unban 192.168.0.101 from the asterisk-iptables ban.
sudo fail2ban-client set asterisk-iptables unbanip 192.168.0.101Now you see that the "banned IP list" is blank.
Whitelist Specific IP in Fail2Ban
sudo nano -l /etc/fail2ban/jail.local- look for ignoreIP. There should be one in there already of 127.0.0.1/8
- Add a space and then add the additional IP(s) that you want
ignoreip = 127.0.0.1/8 192.168.0.101 192.168.0.102- Save the file and then reload Fail2Ban.
sudo systemctl reload fail2bansudo systemctl status fail2banPolycom Phones with FreePBX Asterisk
I'm using PJSIP asterisk FreePBX deployment. Heres the configs
In a VVX 500 series phone, heres what I have: (my pbx is 192.168.0.113)
For a Polycom SoundStation IP 6000 here's what I have
In my FreePBX gui, its pretty standard. Extension number and password. Nothing else changed in the GUI
What I DID have to do, was modify my fail2Ban. I had the system sometimes banning the IP of the phones. So I put them in a white list
Editing the Fail2Ban Configuration File
Open jail.local using a text editor like nano or vim:
sudo nano /etc/fail2ban/jail.local
Whitelisting an IP Address
In the jail.local file, look for the [DEFAULT] section. To whitelist an IP address, add it to the ignoreip line. If the line doesn’t exist, you can create it.
For example, to whitelist the IP 123.45.67.89, you would add:
[DEFAULT]
ignoreip = 123.45.67.89 192.168.0.101 192.168.0.102
You can also add multiple IPs, separated by space, or use CIDR notation for a range of addresses.
After adding the IP addresses to the whitelist, save the file and exit the editor. In nano, this is done by pressing CTRL + X, then Y to confirm, and Enter to save.
Restarting Fail2Ban
For the changes to take effect, you need to restart the Fail2Ban service. This can be done with the following command:
sudo systemctl restart fail2ban
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
FreePBX GUI with Callcentric (PJSIP)
This let me make calls to/from Callcentric with FreePBX.
In CallCentric, add an 'extension'. In my example I created extension 108, so my callcentric ID looks like 1777xxxxxxx108. Your callcentric ID will be a bit different, but similar.
Replace 1777xxxxxxx108 with your Callcentric 1777 number.
1> Add PJSIP trunk in FreePBX GUI
2> Under "GENERAL" tab
Trunk Name: CallCentric
Outbound CallerID: 1777xxxxxxx108 (OR a DID you have with Callcentric)
3> Under "PJSIP SETTINGS" tab
Username: 1777xxxxxxx108
AUTH username (IGNORE)
Secret: (Your Callcentric password for your 1777xxxxxxx108 extension)
SIP Server: sip.callcentric.net
SIP SERVER PORT 5060
4> Under "ADVANCED" tab
Contact User: 1777xxxxxxx108
From Domain: sip.callcentric.net
From User: 1777xxxxxxx108
Match (Permit): 199.87.144.0/21,204.11.192.0/22 (This limits the IPS that can work for some additional security)
Send RPID/PAI: Both
5> Create an inbound route
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
Updating Polycom phone firmware via internet
In the GUI, go to "Software Upgrade"
Select Check for Upgrades.
System will reach out to the Polycom servers and get a list of available upates.
upgrade in from the oldest to the newest. I find that in my experience, I couldn't skip releases, I had to do them in order.
Click on Install.
accept the agreement
Your phone device will reboot. It will download the firmware, apply it and restart itself. Can take 5+ minutes
Polycom VVX 500 with Callcentric
This is a super helpful video Setup Polycom for CallCentric
Here's the basic config in the phone. This is all I used to get the phone to work, just like the above video.
Make sure that your network address/dns is configured properly.
Make sure your time / date is setup with NTP properly.
Display Name: Poly (this is an internal field when you call another local extension phone)
This was my callcentric config (extension 105) in my example.