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We started with some cheesy radio links and have moved up in speed over the years to where we now have a direct fiber connection to a local ISP. We are currently buying 50MB symmetrical service for data, and that is sufficient to allow widespread streaming of Netflix for our residents (we don't have access to cable TV here, but a few folks have satellite). We added VOIP phone service a few years back, which the same ISP sells us over a separate set of fibers to avoid call quality issues. We have local servers for email, community website stuff and for the VOIP service (using the excellent SIPx open source software). We use open source PFSense software running on a low-power ALIX box as our central firewall & DHCP server.

We charge $30 for Internet and $30 for phone, with unlimited domestic long distance, which includes a small margin that allows us to accumulate funds for maintenance and improvements. These prices are considerably lower than people here would pay for equivalent services, and people are pretty happy with the quality. The system is maintained by a small team of volunteer geeks, and our residents understand that we won't necessarily jump out of bed to fix a problem--we'll do the best we can, but don't guarantee 100% service levels. We don't enforce any bandwidth caps per-household, and that has not been a problem.

This kind of thing is entirely feasible, as long as you have a core group of geeks that consider it something they are interested in putting some time into. We have saved our residents many tens of thousands of dollars over the years, keeping that money circulating in our local community instead of shipping it off to some corporate behemoth. And for those of us who do the work, we generally find it an engaging and enjoyable use of our time, and find it satisfying to provide a useful service to our neighbors.

Oh, and I concur with an earlier poster--if you do it, do it wired. Provide one jack to each condo, and let the owners distribute around their rooms as they see fit. You might provide some wireless access in common spaces.

SipX does that, plus a whole host of other things too.. May be overkill for what you're looking for though.. That's your call to make..

I've used asterisk quite a bit and it works quite well. Also Sipx PBX is another good performer, although slightly harder to set up, easeier to configure. Sipx PBX is another open source solution that can be found over at the Sip Foundry. They have some good testing code that comes in handy when troubleshooting sip to sip issues. cluge

Wow,

Finally, A linux subject that the slashdot crowd is silent about. Since it references debian the ubuntu comments were inevitable.

In reality this goes far beyond a debian discussion and is actually great news for the business of linux. In general Carrier Grade OS's is a way of saying that the OS used for certain carrier/telecom applications must follow a certain set of rules and standards.

This is important because carrier grade linux has to support a ridiculous feature set in order to achieve guaranteed uptime status. The more distributions there are with these features the more they become into mainstream kernels.

Another key advantage is that most carrier grade OS's charge you an arm and a leg such as montavista, sun and others. This prevents the smaller players from really being able to get into the carrier business and offer services because of the exorbitant costs of such applications. However this doesn't really figure into most of the current American telecom companies but where it really does make an impact is in third world/developing countries. The telecom's there are either government run or private institutions that can only offer their services to the wealthy.

Combine a platform like this with an open source SIP server like http://www.sipfoundry.org/ and you have the makings of some lower priced and more ubiquitous VOIP solutions for developing countries.

I think that steps such as these are what will make linux such a key component in other countries where the infrastructure is not yet built and can be based upon the matureness of open source technologies.

Here is my synopsis of what CGL entails. The full article can be found here http://www.commsdesign.com/design_corner/OEG200208 27S0008

Overview
--------
The OSDL CGLWG (Carrier Grade Linux Working Group - whoo thats a mouthful) defines three main types of applications that carrier-grade Linux will support -- gateways, signaling servers, and management.

Categories
----------
To build an effective specification for the applications above, the CGLWG is working on seven categories: standards, platform, availability, serviceability, tools, performance, and security. Work within each of these categories is broken down into three priority levels: level 1 defines first release requirements, level 2 defines second release requirements, and level 3 defines future release requirements.

Category 1: Standards - IPV6, Posix etc etc

Category 2: Platform Requirements - Hot swappable devices, uptime, kernel hardware error correction blah blah

Category 3: High Availability - Hmm pretty self explanatory

Category 4: Serviceability
On the serviceability front, the CGLWG is currently trying to define requirements for resource monitoring, kernel crash dump and analysis features, structured kernel messages, dynamic kernel probing, hardware error logging, and remote access to the event log.

The best feature of CGL in my opinion

Category 5: Tools
Priority 1 in the tools category will focus on the development of debugger support for threaded programs, kernel debugger support, and a kernel crash dump analysis tool.

Second best feature

Category 6: Performance
In the performance category, priority 1 performance features required include millisecond real-time (less than 10-ms worst case latencies), pre-emptible kernel, RAID 0 (striping), application pre-loading, and a scaling analysis and report to identify scaling bottlenecks.

Category 7: Security
The current version (V1.0) of the carrier-grade Linux specification does not have any requirements for security, but this will be addressed in a future version of the document. Security is recognized by the CGLWG as a key component of high availability.

YIKES!!

So there it is CGL 101. It will enable small development teams to offer real solutions in the behemoth telecom field.

-------------

OpenWengo:
SIP compliant VoIP client (+ Video ?), Firefox extension, GPL: http://openwengo.com/

Ekiga:
VoIP and video conferencing application (H.323 and SIP) for GNOME, GPL: http://www.ekiga.org/

PhoneGaim:
VoIP system based on the Gaim instant messaging software and the SIP protocol, GPL: http://www.phonegaim.com/ (sponsored by Linspire: Some controversy exists over the perceived difficulty faced by non-Linspire users who wish to install PhoneGaim on their Linux system.)

sipX:
SIP based products (pbx, softphone, and supporting products), LGPL: http://www.sipfoundry.org/sipX/

Google's Libjingle:
Implementation of Jingle and Jingle-Audio (proposed extensions to XMPP), BSD License: https://sourceforge.net/projects/libjingle/

KPhone:
VoIP application for the KDE desktop environment, SIP, GPL: http://kphone.sourceforge.net/


Skype: http://www.skype.com/

Google Talk: http://www.google.com/talk/

Gizmo Project: http://gizmoproject.com/

I have used both Asterisk and sipXpbx http://www.sipfoundry.org/sipXpbx from SIPfoundry. If you are going to go straigt SIP based I would recommend sipX with Polycom phones. A good source of info for sipX is the wiki, found here http://sipx-wiki.calivia.com/index.php/Main_Page.

VoIP not only needs to catch up but also be open like email, and unlike the divided IM space.
Unfortunately Skype is not the application which connects to an open network.

Only applications like Gizmo http://www.gizmoproject.com/ and many other ones (which I don't use) connect to the International Standard-compliant Protocol known as SIP.

If you want voice chat (VoIP) on Linux then you have a good selection too (I don't know which are SIP compliant and which are not though):

http://www.phonegaim.com/
http://cockatoo.mozdev.org/
http://www.gizmoproject.com/
http://www.linphone.org/
http://www.wirlab.net/kphone/
http://www.minisip.org/
http://www.sflphone.org/
http://www.sipfoundry.org/
http://www.twinklephone.com/
http://www.openwengo.com/
http://yate.null.ro/
http://www.divmod.org/projects/shtoom

In addition to the number of good IM clients for Linux (especially GAIM), if you want voice chat (VoIP) on Linux then you have a good selection too: PhoneGaim : http://www.phonegaim.com/ ( http://cockatoo.mozdev.org/ ( http://www.gizmoproject.com/ ( http://www.linphone.org/ KPhone : http://www.wirlab.net/kphone/ Skype : http://www.skype.com/ ( http://www.minisip.org/ SFLphone : http://www.sflphone.org/ SIPfoundry : http://www.sipfoundry.org/ Twinkle : http://www.twinklephone.com/ openwengo : http://www.openwengo.com/ Yate : http://yate.null.ro/ shtoom : http://www.divmod.org/projects/shtoom Best to get one that connects via 'SIP' and is entirely standard-compliant, then you can connect to anyone on other standard networks (except those in closed networks like Skype(???)).

sipXvxml - VoiceXML processing engine

The sipXvxml project combined with OpenVXI v2.0, sipXportLib, sipXmediaLib, and sipXtackLib produces the SIP voicexml engine used to power the sipXpbx's project's voicemail and autoattendant features.

License

sipXvxml is distributed under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

Documentation

Coming soon!

There is an installation guide at that covers how to get started. There is also a link on the project page to an administration guide that goes into more detail (this is the Pingtel documentation - requires registration, but is free and covers the same material).

There is an installation guide at that covers how to get started. There is also a link on the project page to an administration guide that goes into more detail (this is the Pingtel documentation - requires registration, but is free and covers the same material).

http://scm.sipfoundry.org/rep/sipXvxml/main/README

Not much to it.. eh?

We're working on it, but it'll probably be a bit of time before we can dig up the time to add all the necessary features. (n.b. this is still alpha code. I'm pointing it out in case anyone wants to help develop).

We're working on it, but it'll probably be a bit of time before we can dig up the time to add all the necessary features. (n.b. this is still alpha code. I'm pointing it out in case anyone wants to help develop).

We're working on it, but it'll probably be a bit of time before we can dig up the time to add all the necessary features. (n.b. this is still alpha code. I'm pointing it out in case anyone wants to help develop).