Echolink

M0RVB

So... having an Allstar node I wanted to configure it for Echolink. It seemed this was just a matter of editing the pre-prepared configuration file echolink.xxx and renaming it to echolink.conf. Edits in place, this I did. Oh yes, and I set our broadband router up to forward the relevant ports to the hub. On restarting asterisk it gave numerous errors of the form 'Error in parsing header on servers.echolink.org'. Hmmm.

Ok, scratching around the web I found that Echolink has a firewall test service at https://secure.echolink.org/pingTest.jsp. It failed. Ugh.

Then it dawned on me (meaning I read the documentation a little better!). I had set a callsign with '-L' at the end which appeared to be the way to go. But this needed separate validation! Once that was done it all sprang into life.

Simple, and also obvious when I realised. Old age?

http://km6uso.net/index.php/2021/02/27/adding-echolink-to-your-allstar-hub/ is an excellent guide - there are others of course but this one pointed out clearly the need to register the -L or -R callsign.

You should also read:

M0RVB

EchoLink

(this is a re-write of my original post to tidy it up) I signed up to EchoLink today and installed EchoMac, a Mac version of the software. I have yet to play with this other than making calls to the *ECHOTEST* conference - a self-test facility like you get in Skype. Getting the software to communicate was a bit of a fiddle, through no fault of the software or EchoLink. First off, the home router needs to be able to pass UDP ports 5198 and 5199 in both directions to the Mac, and port 5200 TCP outgoing. The information is here http://www.echolink.org/firewall_solutions.htm. By default everything incoming is off other than a few rules that I have for the web servers. So I had to enable this. The Sky router I have can be a pain here because more often than not, pressing Apply to save firewall rules gives a 'not found' error and it seems to want several goes before it works. No idea why that should be, surely the script is either there or not, not there sometimes! Anyway, I got the rules in. Note on the Sky router you need to first define a Service for those UDP ports, then…

Continue reading...