[Nottingham] [Talk] ***TODAY*** Wed 19/10/2005 Voice over IP {ML}

[Mike Cardwell]

* on the Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 12:42:21PM +0100, Martin wrote:

> Following on from the talk, a few links to expand on what I discussed:

I have some comments too.

> AsteriskAtHome (Asterisk + GUI + Full distro)
> http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk%20at%20%20Home
> http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net/

I've installed Asterisk at home on a box here and it was *scarily* easy.
You boot from the CD and it does it all for you with no interaction
required. It'll wipe your entire hard disk though without warning so be
careful.

Getting to the web interface was easy enough but you're not given any
instructions for login details. Instead of doing the sensible thing of
googling I brought it up in single user mode in order to get root, and I
set the htpasswd stuff my self from the command line. It still worked.

I'm having difficulty configuring it up at the moment. I have managed to
integrate it with sipgate.co.uk which is a very good service. You sign
up for free, and you choose a phone number you want from any area in the
country. I chose a Grimsby number (01472) as that's where I'm from
originally. I can now see if I phone that number it routes over the
Internet to my Asterisk box. Bare in mind this service is 100% free
unless you want to make outgoing calls through sipgate.

The problem I'm having is I can't get Asterisk to understand what to do
with the incoming call when it arrives. I've no idea what's going on at
the moment so can't really ask for assistance. Maybe I'll post more when
I've got it working or have a better understanding of the software.

Once I have this working I intend to buy and install one of these:
http://www.digium.com/index.php?menu=product_detail&category=hardware&product=TDM400P
so I can plug my asterisk box into my normal phone line and integrate
normal incoming/outgoing calls into Asterisk as well.

Ah yes. One thing that confused me in the meeting was that it was
suggested that Skype could work with Asterisk. As far as I understand
Skype uses a completely proprierty and closed network protocol and
completely closed software. I don't think it can integrate with
Asterisk. Please tell me I'm wrong because I would find that very
useful.

Mike

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