[Asterisk-Users] [new user] VPN or NAT? (and a FAQ)

[Rob McGee]

I live in Tennessee, USA, and work 1000km away in Texas. Thanks to the 
wonders of broadband I never leave home (well, not for WORK, that is. 
:) I'm setting up an Asterisk system whereby I'll have an extension in 
Texas, so clients can reach me at a local telephone number.

We have a VPN set up already (OpenVPN, which I highly recommend to 
anyone needing such a thing.) It does encryption. While the throughput 
is slightly less than a direct route, it's still pretty responsive. (I 
never did any benchmarking beyond a simple comparison of ping times and 
a few scp's.) Each side has a dedicated firewall/gateway router (one of 
which, a 386, is definitely NOT suited for service as a * server) and a 
separate VPN gateway behind the firewall. I'm thinking that the VPN 
servers will become the * servers.