[Asterisk-Users] pppd dial-in over asterisk

[Kristian Kielhofner]

Ryan Sackler wrote:

> I'm sure most people are aware of the ability of pppd to answer calls
> coming in from a standard serial modem (or at least that is the way
> I
> understand it to work), authenticate the user and issue it an IP
> address. With the proper ip forwarding/masquerading techniques, this
> can serve as a fully functional ISP of sorts. It also offers a nice
> method for you to dial in to your linux box and get a shell into it,
> and access the internet, from any phone line. 
> 
> What I am interested to work out is a way to fool pppd into thinking
> that an incoming call over asterisk (IAX2), is actually coming from
> a
> device physically connected to the computer. I am completely lost as
> to how to make this work, but essentially I find the possibility of
> having a virtual 'modem bank' of sorts handled by asterisk, made of
> incoming voip calls placed from standard PSTN telephone lines rather
> intriguing. 
> Basically does anyone have any ideas on how to set up a ppp dial in
> server with the plain old telephone line substituted for an asterisk
> server accepting VOIP calls from the internet?
> 
> Thanks,

Ryan,

	Interesting idea, and I don't want to tell you "Don't waste your time", 
but ...

	Don't waste your time.  Look into faxing over any VoIP protocol be it 
SIP or IAX2 and you will see the difficulty people are having.  Most of 
the time you can't get a 9600 bps fax over a LAN with ulaw - let alone 
any meaningful data transfer at the higher modes over the internet (or 
anywhere else).  Data transfer using VoIP is much different than two 
human beings talking to one another.  We don't care (or notice) latency, 
jitter, etc. (to a degree, of course).  Modems, however, are much more 
picky.

	It seems odd that you want to do this anyways - if you want to obtain 
internet access using this, you will have to have it to successfully use 
IAX2 from a remote location anyways.  If you want to remote admin a box, 
there is obviously SSH.  Or am I missing something here?

--
Kristian Kielhofner