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Re: [LUG] Tomorow - paignton and asterisk...

 


On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 02:37:21PM +0000, Gordon Henderson wrote:
> 
> So as I've er...  volunteered to talk about asterisk tomorrow, are there 
> any pressing questions people want answering? I was just thinking of 
> putting something together about what it is, and how it works, and 
> something about VoIP in-general, but if anyone has any specific interest, 
> then drop me an email and I'll see what I can do...
> 

From my reading so far, I would be very grateful if you could provide any light
on any of the following:

- What holes do I need to poke in a network firewall: going from this, what
  sort of network structure would you recommend and how would you protect the
  VoIP from poor security, loss of privacy / eavesdropping, spam. Going on from this 
is the
  whole issue of encryption.

- Voice quality (largely answered in your earlier email)

- What sort of hardware, software, providors do you like using? Follow on
  questions: 
        - How can we determine who are good providors / bad providors? (A random
          selection of vendors include: Skype, tuxphone.co.uk, sipgate.co.uk,
          tesco, voipstunt, voipcheap)
        - Hardware
                - What sort of phones?
                - Routers, firewalls, Analog Adapters?
        - Software: 
                - for softphones, any issues

- If I buy a VoIP number from one providor, then can I keep the number and
  switch providors?             


Using a PBX

- Are there advantages to having your own pbx or using a centrex type service
  (eg both www.gradwell.co.uk and www.tuxphone.co.uk offer a £8.50 number +
  "unlimited" UK minutes to landlines). 

- for PBX there is Asterisk, but there are also various flavours of this.
  (Freepbx, AsteriskNow, Trixbox). Any preferred implementations (or any
  implementations best avoided)

- Some websites stated that Asterisk should not be installed as(by) root. Does
  this matter in Debian? (For others reading this, Debian installed very easily
  and I had a working system running on my lan in about 30 minutes: I have not
  tried going outside the lan as yet)

- There seem to be two protocols involved: SIP and IAX2. What do you recommend
  and why?
        - SIP has more hardware
        - IAX is more modern, uses less bandwidth and is easier to set up thru
          firewalls
          
I have not asked the question as to whether the PBX should link directly to PTSN as 
frankly the hardware costs of that alone seems to be around £200+ mark; and hence 
seems more corporate; unless there are general issues involved.


And happy new year to all

-- 
Henry
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