After playing with the idea for a long time I decided it was time to implement a VoIP PBX. Reading up on the subject I found that I had 3 options which appealed to me: Asterisk (*) on Debian, AsteriskNOW (*NOW) or Trixbox. I opted for *NOW as it’s stripped bare and I hope I can add features as and when I need them. So far it’s gone well but I do have some additions I still need.

Installation of *NOW beta 4 (1.4.2) went fast on an Intel ISP2150 I had available, took about 30 minutes in total, including base config. Next I had to test it so I found a good free SIP soft-client in X-lite 3.0. And off I was phoning from laptop to laptop, surprisingly I had no issues with my WLAN.

The next move was to add two SIP accounts, Voipbuster and Xeloq. Both offer free national calls in NL additionally Voipbuster offers a range of free international calls while Xeloq has cheaper national mobile rates. Dialling from softphone to national landlines worked right away and the people I called didn’t even notice I wasn’t using my regular phone or line.

My server is now happily humming away in the datacenter and I have two 7960’s connected and registered across NAT, all is well so far. I’ve given some family members accounts and I’ve had a 2 hour conversation with my brother last weekend. We both have DSL and were quite happy with the quality of both the conversation and the connection. 🙂

Next my plan is to migrate my current landline number to a SIP carrier, not sure which one yet, and try to implement a SIP to Skype bridge. Further actions on my to do list are:

• Cancel my land line and save at least 18,50 Euro per month
• Get a (SIP) Siemens S450 IP dect phone to replace my current old Philips (pstn) dect
• Implement a phone book for the Cisco 7960 phones
• Implement some services for the Cisco 7960 phones
• Get a GSM SIP gateway and a mobile contract for backup/emergency calls and cost savings to national mobile numbers
• Implement a registry of calls (CDR?) so I can tell whether my bills will be correct
• Offer the SIP service to family members, using data from the previous point

Categories: VoIP
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