[asterisk-users] Use of VPNs

[Conrad Wood]

On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 07:18 -0500, Barry Fawthrop wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> Is the use of a VPN between IP-PBX and VoIP Provider a useful tool?
> Since the QoS and general traffic of the Internet can never be 
> predicted, would the implementation of a VPN between Client and VoIP 
> Provider increase voice quality and/or security or is the converse true ?

if you do it right then yes, you'll get extra security.
Voice quality is likely to degrade due to the added overhead. 
However, some people reported ISPs mucking about with VoIP traffic and
encapsulating that into say IPSec or OpenVPN traffic should help.
I run VoIP traffic over OpenBSD IPSec connections quite happily (in UK,
using Mistral/Netkonect DSL) and are confident they don't get
intercepted or abused.
I encapsulate on a seperate box, not on the asterisk box directly to
avoid cpu spikes and to be able to shape QoS in my VPN.

Conrad