[kwlug-disc] UBB, VOIP, and my wallet

[Chris Irwin]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 16:38, John Van Ostrand <john at netdirect.ca> wrote:
>> I already have a server running 24/7. It serves media to my TV via
>> mediatomb, and provides storage and backup for my other machines
>> (mine+wife's laptops, my desktop). I may end up getting a lower-power
>> dedicated device, but for the moment I'll just use as much of what I
>> already have as possible.
>
> In that case you can get FreePBX and install it on your existing server. You won't get some of the add-on features that Trixbox provides but it gives you a web GUI for configuration and a great leg up on dial plans.

My server is running Ubuntu right now. Something failed part way
through the install, FreePBX is not in the repos... I gave up and
purged it all and decided to go the VM route for the moment.

I first tried askozia, which is *extremely* simple. About two hours
and I had my inbound line, a call group feeding a sip softphone & my
cell phone, voicemail to email, etc. Remember that I'm coming from
zero experience. Askozia is somewhat limited, though. Three big things
bothered me:

- Default mailbox greetings read extension instead of inbound phone number
- No custom mailbox greetings to avoid above
- No transcoding voicemail to another codec (my phone won't play wave
files from asterisk for some reason).

It does have some nice features, though:

- Only about 30MB (In comparison, trixbox a full centos system...)
- It's a firmware model, so you can pass it upgraded firmware images
from their website to upgrade, just like a router. It also has a
single-file config backup.
- Simple web interface
- Doesn't store email locally. Email & forget

I'll post back about my experience with trixbox, but I'm getting the
feeling I'm the only guy not using it...

> It can only effectively provide shaping for outgoing packets. We discussed on the list the possibility of shaping inbound traffic by shaping outgoing or dropping some incoming packets but for most intents and purposes you can only directly shape outgoing traffic. At least your callers would hear you correctly.

I would imagine that would still be worthwhile. I have 5m down, but a
tiny 800k up.

-- 
Chris Irwin
<chris at chrisirwin.ca>