[asterisk-biz] How Realistic is Hosted VoIP for SMBs?

[Kristian Kielhofner]

GlobalOfficePhone wrote:
> Kristian:
> 
> Astlinux is one potential solution. I remember reading about GumStix 
> whic you first showed at Astricon. One of the applications suggested for 
> Gumstix was to enable local phones behind a NAT to communicate with a 
> remote Asterisk server. That would enable the local phones to bypass the 
> Asterisk server and exchange the audio between the phones directly.
> 
> Is what you are suggesting with AstLinux?
> 
> Thanks.
> 

You bet!

	Seriously though, something like AstLinux/Gumstix/Soekris/WRAP/whatever 
would be EXTREMELY powerful for these exact situations.

	At Astricon, I was using a Gumstix to do nat traversal, encryption, AND 
IAX from two Polycom IP430s to a remote box (through no less than three 
layers of nat).  Like this:



Polycom IP 430 (100)
	|
	|
	SIP
	|
	|
Gumstix
	(encrypted IAX)
	|
	|
NAT
	|
	|
NAT
	|
	|
	(still encrypted IAX)
	|
	|
	(Remote Asterisk box)
	|
	|
	(SIP)
	|
	|
Polycom IP430, gateway, whatever

	I know this diagram is terrible, but it shows my point.  Why used some 
closed source, proprietary solution when you can use any hardware 
supported by AstLinux (which is fully customizable too, btw), Asterisk, 
Linux, iptables, etc to do the job at a fraction of the cost?

	Plus, this would allow the full capabilities of AstLinux/Asterisk - 
dundi?  no problem.  OpenVPN? sure  IPSEC to a Cisco? easy! SCCP? MGCP? 
IAX? SIP? - all supported!

	Of course, standard features like QoS, vlans, traffic shaping, DNS 
proxy, DHCP server, DHCP client, NTP server, FTP/TFTP/HTTP/HTTPS 
daemons, PHP for a web interface, etc are all there in about ~45mb or so.

	I don't mean to sound like a total salesman for AstLinux, but I 
strongly believe that this is one area where it can really shine. Check 
it out!

http://www.astlinux.org

P.S. - This is asterisk-biz, so...  If you want all of these features in 
an easy to manage package with 
termination/origination/support/management/monitoring, Star2Star can do 
that for you :) http://www.star2star.com

	Yes, in addition to developing AstLinux, I work for Star2Star. :)

--
Kristian Kielhofner