Tag Archive for 'the lake'

First, this is something I’d always dreamed about, so excuse me if I’m a little excitable. I had previously posted up that I was using a Linksys SPA941 to connect to Vonage’s softphone service. The next logical step was twofold: a pbx and a real sip trunking service.

PBX:

Choosing to run a digital VOIP PBX in your house is a big step, taking away your regular analog phones (without adapters, anyway) and replacing two wire phone line with cat5/6.  I looked at several options when choosing a pbx software, the most popular of course is Asterisk and it’s variants. Some of the limitations and built in flaws of * really worried me though, and I started looking around again.  I run pfSense as a firewall here at home, so when I noticed a ‘Freeswitch PBX’ Package show up on the list available packages I jumped into IRC and installed it.

Sip Trunking Service:

I couldn’t continue my relationship with Vonage- it just wasn’t flexible enough and I would always have to have a line tied to their stupid box. I was dumping POTS all together, all SIP all the time at my house. As such I did some research and signed up for Aretta to get a DID and the calls flowing. The setup was easy and nothing I’ll go over here, jump into IRC if you’re having a problem and numerous people will help, and read some documentation to get started. I also later added a number with Viatalk. Each provider has plus’s and minus’s. I’ll give you a brief rundown of each of the providers I’ve chosen:

Aretta:

• + Local Numbers
• + Outbound Caller ID # transmitted as sent (meaning I can send a number other than the one they have)
• + Unlimited Channels
• + Unlimited Trunk accounts and CDR’s for each trunk
• + Backup PSTN and PSTN Forwarding (send calls to your Cell if the PBX goes down)
• + Really wants to help support FS clients and likes FS
• +/- Billed per min per channel, an affordable rate depending on use
• -  Billed per min, even on 1800 calls
• -  Is new at dealing with Freeswitch and doesn’t have many clients using it

Viatalk:

• + Cheap ($180 for two years of unlimited talkign)
• + Works all the time, without fail
• + Lots of FS users using it
• -  Two channels (one in/one out or two in or two out)
• -  Outbound caller ID will always be your #
• - No local DID’s

As such, I have a Viatalk with a Cincinatti # for my job, and Viatalk with several #’s for other uses.

Phones:

With a system comes phones. The SPA 941 worked fine for a while but lacked some fun options. I stumped up some cash and bought a Snom 870 a few months ago, and really really like it. But on my pbx are running the snom, the spa 941 and a couple older polycoms. Anything that is SIP compliant should work, but I STRONGLY suggest you get something that can be configured via web interface for your first phone.

FusionPBX:

Fusion is a software layer that sits on top Freeswitch and makes configuring it into a PBX a breeze. It’s a progression from the config pages in pfSense and is a really nice product that I maintain a watchful eye on. A newer FS port for pfSense is coming, and with it a full Fusion Package, meaning a really really sweet PBX and interface for the pfsense firewalls.  Find the developers and users (like me) on IRC in #fusionpbx on freenode.

Summary:

I now have a phone system that has IVR’s (menu’s etc) available, sends my Voicemail to my email, hunts around to find me (including forwarding the call to my cell but yanking the call back to leave vm on the PBX), can register phones without being on the same network (the lake house, for example), lets me conference with a virtually unlimited number of people and most importantly has my own choice for hold music from Mp3′s. It works great and while tinkering is part of what I enjoy about it, would run pretty seamlessly without my intervention. A success if I do say so myself. Stay tuned and I’ll detail some fun configuration stuff and talk about more advanced features (phone provisioning, etc).