VICIdial Account Entry: The Peer and Credentials Block

The Account Entry is the block on the carrier form that actually defines your relationship with the provider. Everything else points at it. This is where your server learns the carrier's address, your login, which audio codecs to use, and where inbound calls should land. Get the syntax exactly right; Asterisk is unforgiving about a stray space or a misspelled keyword.

This post goes through the Account Entry line by line. It is one field on the carrier form from adding a carrier trunk, and it builds what Asterisk calls a SIP peer.

A working example

Here is a complete Account Entry for a SIP carrier:

• [testcarrier]
• disallow=all
• allow=ulaw
• type=friend
• username=testcarrier
• secret=test
• host=dynamic
• dtmfmode=rfc2833
• context=trunkinbound

What each line does

The bracketed name at the top, [testcarrier], is the peer name — the handle the rest of your config uses to refer to this Carrier. Then:

• disallow=all clears the default codec list so nothing is allowed until you say so.
• allow=ulaw then turns on exactly one codec. A Codec is the format used to compress and carry the audio; both ends must share at least one or the call connects with no sound.
• type=friend lets calls go out through the carrier and come in from it. Use this when one trunk handles both directions.
• username and secret are your login credentials, supplied by the provider.
• host=dynamic means the carrier's address is learned at registration time. For an IP-auth carrier you would instead set host to their static IP.
• dtmfmode=rfc2833 sets how key presses are signaled — important for IVRs and press-1 flows.
• context=trunkinbound tells inbound calls from this carrier which part of the dialplan to enter.

Why context=trunkinbound matters

If you plan to take inbound calls — for example routing a DID (direct inward dialing) to an agent group — the context line is what makes VICIdial's inbound handling pick the call up. Set context=trunkinbound and your incoming numbers can flow into the DNIS-based routing (DNIS is the number that was dialed) that VICIdial uses to decide where a call goes. Skip it, and inbound calls have no defined path.

How the peer connects to routing is shown below. The Account Entry defines the peer; the dialplan then references it. That Dialplan side is its own topic in the dialplan entry post.

flowchart TD
  A[Account Entry block] --> B[Defines peer testcarrier]
  B --> C[type friend]
  C --> D[Outbound allowed]
  C --> E[Inbound allowed]
  B --> F[allow ulaw codec]
  E --> G[context trunkinbound]
  G --> H[DID route to ingroup]

Templates for repeated settings

If you run several carriers with the same baseline settings, you can put the shared lines in a Conf File Template and select it instead of retyping the block. One catch: never put secret, username, accountcode, account, or mailbox into a template — those are per-carrier and belong in the Account Entry itself.

For the bigger picture of how all the fields fit together, read the carrier integration guide, and if you are still choosing a provider, choosing a SIP carrier will save you grief.

Wrap up

The Account Entry is small but every line earns its place. Match your codecs, set the right type and context, and keep credentials out of templates. Want a clean dialer to try it on? VICIfast spins up a secured VICIdial server in under 40 seconds — see pricing.