Radius and Mitel 3300

[FrankGrimes]

Hi All,
I have been asked to connect our Mitel 3300 MXE to a PortaOne billing system. Link
From what I understand PortaOne connects to Cisco and Quintium phone systems using radius authentication.
It also captures calls stats using the same method which is why I've been asked to connect to it.
Has anyone connect a Mitel to a radius server? I only need to connect the SIP trunks and its seem that both the Mitel and PortaOne support the same protocols, but it doesn't necessary mean they'll both connect and work.

The only way I can think of doing it is: Mitel --->PortSwitch --->Carrier or Mitel ---> Asterisk ---> Carrier

PortaSwitch is like their PABX system. I don't really want to put anything between myself and the carrier as that just add an element of risk, but from what I've read this might be the only way.

 

[LoopyLou]

Interesting. Don't think the PortaOne billing system will be able to exchange data with the 3300. Think RADIUS only used for set authentication on the network with the Mitel. If they can't collect and use normal SMDR records from the Mitel then I think your only way is as you suggest, ie having the SIP trunks run through the ProtSwitch so statistics can be collected from it. Would have thought the SIP carrier could provide the necessary details for billing as a service to their customers.

I'd tell you a UDP joke but I'm afraid you won't get it. TCP jokes are the best because you always get them.

 

[FrankGrimes]

Yeah the carrier can provide this type of data BUT I have been asked to route calls via an MPLS network out to specific country to other phone systems which means I wont be able to collect that data without some kind of billing system attached.
I would love to use something like CAAB or CVT which works on SMDR data but the company already owns PortaOne.
I guess I 'll either have to purchase a very expensive PortaOne switch or use Asterisk, both these things will just add an element of risk.

 

[slapin]

Or just write a simple SMDR parser which will convert each line coming from MITEL to a RADIUS Accounting message.
Components needed:

1. Fairly simple TCP client which can establish and maintain connection to MITEL ICP
2. String parser. SMDR is well documented fixed field data format. It is pretty trivial to implement it for one pre-configured record format
3. RADIUS Accounting message encoder and sender (client). There is a lot of ready to go open source libraries. GPL license is perfectly fine in your case since you are not going to sell or license the software to other parties.

 

[LoopyLou]

The old KISS rule applies so yes if you put an Asterisk or Portaswitch in line it will work but you as you say add another element, point of failure, pain in the ass to the picture. I find slapins solution interesting which he probably does in his sleep but it too adds more elements to your picture.

I'd tell you a UDP joke but I'm afraid you won't get it. TCP jokes are the best because you always get them.

 

[FrankGrimes]

I think either way im stuffed. I feel more comfortable with the Asterisk but that might be because that's what I know.
Slapin solution sounds very interesting but I'm not a programmer

 

[slapin]

For example here

http://www.perl.com/doc/FMTEYEWTK/IPC/inet.html

TCP client in Perl, command line parameters are ICP IP address and port 1752 (SMDR)

Very detailed description of SMDR format, there are multiple formats available, you just need to implement one, which is currently configured.

http://www.mitel.com/resources/tech_data_services_prog_ref.pdf

Using substring function extract each field from the record instead of just printing out as in the TCP client example

http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/substr.html

for example
my $date = substring $line, 5, 1; # Extract 5 symbols starting from offset 1 (the first position is 0, see page 18 of the PDF)

Now, once all the interesting fields are extracted put them into desired RADIUS attributes and send accounting request to the server
A simple example is here:

http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/LUISMUNOZ/Net-Radius-2.103/examples/example-client.pl

You will probably need to construct Accounting-Stop request as we have SMDR records created upon the call completion.

So, by combining a couple of examples from the Internet we get a simple solution which will not affect the system core functionality even if it will completely fail.