Open Source Telephony Journal

VMwareVMware recently released version 3 of their Fusion product for the Mac.  For those who don't know, VMware is a software maker specializing in virtualization products that run on Windows, Linux, and the Mac.  Many OS's (most?) including Linux and PBX distros are installable as a VMware 'virtual machine', allowing it to run safely sandboxed on your existing hardware.  For those wanting to get started with Asterisk or any flavor of Linux, this is an excellent way to get started without dedicating hardware....

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Callcentric has just been added to my stable of providers.  Despite an initial problem things are now swimming on a 1.4 PIAF install.  Callcentric has earned a good reputation for themselves in a few of the VoIP forums. According to users posts, quality and service are quite high.  Callcentric reminds me of, and seems to share a model that's a bit like VoicePulse's aproach as a provider.  They aren't the cheapest and don't have the biggest feature set, but are very committed to delivering a quality level of service and reliability.....

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Voicemail is something everyone takes for granted, but not everyone fully understands all the options available to them.  For Asterisk users, here's a simple little cheat sheet I created for flushing out most of the options that voicemail offers.  Suitable for training and small enough to tuck under the phone.  (Click to download pdf)

Voicemail Instructions

Suppose you have a specific caller (or callers) that you need to send elsewhere, be it another extension, ring group, mobile or other external number. There are a few ways to do this, and it doesn't require a lot of effort. These instructions are for one of the many Asterisk aggregations that use FreePBX, but pure Asterisk installers should be able to gleen enough information to adapt it into their dialplans. The only prerequisite is that you have the calling party's caller ID number, as this is how the call will be processed and routed to another destination. Let's begin....

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This past week Digium rolled out new versions of asterisk for all currently supported branches (1.2.x, 1.4.x, & 1.6.x), with a security addition to combat IAX's DOS vulnerabilities that arise from the protocols use of a single port.  The new releases introduce token authentication for IAX devices and trunks, and have methods to put a limit on the number of unathenticated IAX connections.  Disclosure of the new security methods and how to use them can be found here, http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/security/IAX2-security.html.

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