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Asterisk and Linux to Build Secure VoIP Connection
Beave writes "Using Linux and the
Asterisk PBX, it is possible to build a secure, cost effective VoIP (and traditional PSTN) PBX solutions.
This article shows you how to take advantage of various hardware, software and tricks to accomplish this goal within a limited budget."
Be sure to check out this article on a sweet Asterisk implementation.
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At my office we all have our own x-boxes, and using the X-box live service, we are able to happily communicate with each other at a very competetive pricing structure.
The solution offers a simple text messaging scheme, and conference calling facillities.
I can fully recommend this solution to any businesses looking for a cost effective VoIP.
It is also loaded with spyware. Sharman Networks (creators of Kazaa) wrote this software. Use at your own risk.
although I have to pay them anyway for the callerid
:)
You'll still get it even if you don't pay for it because it's a PITA to truly turn it off in the switch and the telcos never bother.
Call 'em up, ask 'em what the caller-id charge is for, when they explain tell 'em you don't need it and please take it off and voila' - you'll still have it without having to pay...
Likewise, as primary network and telephony guru at my firm, my Cisco CallManager based system, despite being primarily LDAP and SQL based as far as configuration is concerned (except of course where we are using H323 at gateways instead of MGCP) the interfaces necessary for the creation and move-add-changes of users is grueling. It makes me what to develop my own front end, ut of course if I start writing to their databases my support would go out of the window.
Its easy to build pretty GUI's over configuration files. It would be nice if by following some sort of reasonable open standard for the backend data storage, we could create flexible and extendable interfaces as well as services.
Does anyone know whether Asterix as any ability to manage MGCP/H323 based hardware such as vg248's or x6608 PRI blades?
I have two incoming phone lines here. Is a PBX like Asterisk only cost-effective for office environments where they are paying thousands per month for bandwidth, or can this also be used to replace my current 2 line POTS setup?
I have some spare computers, and would love the add voice mail, caller id, etc. Just wondering about keeping my existing phone numbers and monthly costs. When would I break even?
Everything I have read and everyone I have talked to said there is no spyware in skype (as they claim). It is easy to check, spyware would communicate with the mothership somehow, just run a packet sniffer.
What leads you to believe it has spyware? Because the Kazaa guys wrote it? Any actual evidence?
Finkployd
They connected their Asterisk PBX to the PSTN through a $500 card to a T1. How can I connect my Asterisk to my cablemodem (3/0.5Mbps)? What does it connect to over the WAN to complete calls to the global PSTN? Is it 100% reliable, with a complete footprint in urban areas, and failover to the rest of the POTS phones in the world?
Simple, use ethernet and get a voip provider instead of using a PSTN T1. I currently use http://connect.voicepulse.com/, and that works great for me. Pretty cool, because you can have multiple incoming calls over one connection.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
How hard would it really be? With the system as much computer controlled as it is, if they have your account number (maybe pulled it up automaticly when you called?) wouldn't it just be a simple "ok, your caller ID service has been discontinued" and have the system turn it off?
>but the telcom admin of a large corporation isn't going to want to look at a text file to figure out his dialplan or use some arcane interface >when on a more mature system he can use a simple command like 'display dialplan'.
.conf file any day.
except, 'show dialplan' already works in the asterisk cli, I just typed it a couple of hours ago.
>Not to mention the questionable logic of running your voice system on a white box computer.
Netfinity's are cheap on Ebay, I just got one for $400 Cdn 4 way Xeon w/ 4 gig RAM. Fully supported, documented, and you can't kill them with a sledgehammer. My Asterisk install with FC2 runs just fine on it, thank you. I simulated over 100 concurrent SIP sessions and the CPU's barely broke a sweat.
>match the simplicity of the interfaces found on proprietary systems.
Oh, it is to laugh. I'm currently supporting 80 seats running a $120,000 Mitel ICP3300 that uses something that can loosely be called a GUI, but is actually a wrapper on the CLI. Even to do simple things you have to go from GUI1 to GUI2 to CLI1 to CLI2...it's a fucking joke. In Asterisk, after you do your intitial setup (allocate your channels to a call processing context etc), you only edit voicemail.conf and extensions.conf. It's a blessing.
There is a dumbed down GUI at voxbox but it's pretty primitive. Gimme the
I'm in the industry also, and I don't understand why Asterisk couldn't be an enterprise-grade application. Sensis here in Australia (one of the largest unified web/voice service centers in the country) runs on a proprietary soft PABX, which is a Windows-based solution. While the unified messaging capabilities and user interfaces are a bit more developed, the hardware on which they run is the same. It costs much less to build a fully redundant data server than it does a fully redundant proprietary voice server. I think it's a good solution for anyone willing to give it a shot.
What I don't understand is why people seem to lose perspective of their telephone maintenance when they start talking VOIP. Just because you change to an IP platform doesn't mean you can't still outsource maintenance to a company dedicated to keeping your voice systems up and running. Chances are if you pulled out your old PABX and had an experienced company install an Asterisk solution, you could pay roughly the same amount for 24x7 cover that you're already paying on your Nortel or Avaya switch.
I would like to know if any other telecomms CPE providers have considered Asterisk as a managed solution offering. Provide or partner with a data carrier for SLA'd data connections, use SIP handsets on the desktop, and locate the Asterisk server off-site. You could probably even think of it in terms of a server farm and tennant a certain amount of CPU cycles to smaller businesses. Consolidate voicemail hardware between companies, etc. With the proper carrier channels, you could offer relatively cheap call termination by placing POPs in key cities and bill as a monthly service.
Anyone out there doing this sort of thing?
We have an 18-year old ROLM 9751 switch that thinks it's the year A4. Our voicemail is Octel running on OS/2 that thinks it's the year 104.
The old telecom equipment is generally rock solid but if it dies it will take time to fix even under contract. The last time we had a card die we were without phone service for a full day as they had to Fedex a replacement from Toronto to Vancouver.
As a backup against a catastrophic failure of the switch and/or voicemail I've set up an asterix box pre-configured with all the extensions and trunks.
Switching to a complete VOIP setup using softphones at the start and adding VOIP handsets as they can be obtained could have us up with a complete PBX within 2-3 hours.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
If you're running a UDP protocol, you've still got UDP headers and IP headers and optionally Ethernet headers, wrapped around whatever you're carrying
Not Ethernet headers if they're running OpenVPN in tun mode, which is the intelligent configuration here (tap mode, the bridging configuration where Ethernet headers are used, is mostly used just by folks who want to do Windows networking over the tunnel without a WINS server). OpenVPN also uses LZO compression, which should help with any non-payload data. (That said, it temporarily disables compression if the stream is made of noncompressable data -- and in the case of precompressed payload, that's pretty darned likely to be the case). (Hrm -- it'd be intelligent to still compress the non-payload info... I don't actually know if the code does that, but am now tempted to go take a look).
So yes, you make a point -- but even so, it's not as bad as it could be.