[ale] Slightly OT: recommendations for VOIP/SIP to replace POTS

Alex Carver agcarver+ale at acarver.net
Fri Nov 11 00:29:08 EST 2022


I didn't say he needed to run Asterisk, just that any SIP device should 
have a firewall in front. You already have that going with the NAT. I 
just made a more general assumption to state that it needed protection 
in some way.

On 2022-11-10 06:55, DJPfulio--- via Ale wrote:
> On 11/10/22 02:18, Alex Carver via Ale wrote:
>> Whatever you do, set up a firewall in front of your terminating
>> device (be it the ATA, a machine running Asterisk, etc.) and filter
>> both inbound and outbound traffic to terminate at the VoIP provider's
>> servers. Otherwise you may find yourself the unwitting accomplice for
>> all sorts of phone calls.
> 
> When I was first setting up my VoIP stuff, I tried asterisk for a bit, 
> then ran  freeswitch for a few years (much better call quality), then 
> moved to external service providers because running a PBX inside a VM on 
> a busy VM host was causing latency and jitter issues.
> 
> When running a PBX, the bad guys will hunt you down. I've never seen 
> this at home, but in a few businesses, I have.
> 
> But we don't actually NEED to run a PBX. With an ATA sitting on a local 
> IPv4 LAN, behind a router that blocks all inbound traffic (normal home 
> LAN stuff), the VoIP ATA will still connect, register, and works fine. 
> Just need a SIP service, which you'll need anyway. Have my ATA sitting 
> on the ISP's 10.x.x.x/24 LAN subnet (like other IoS crap) while the 
> public subnet is bridged through to my real router.
> 
> * $40 ATA device
> * Standard phones connected to the ATA
> * Solid internet with sufficient speed for g.711a/u (128Kbps / active 
> line) and
> * $5/month prepaid VoIP+E911 provider.
> 
> That's all you need.  $60/yr for a quality phone service with the PBX 
> run by professionals remotely.  There are cheaper VoIP options, but when 
> I was searching the call quality was really bad. VoIP.ms is all 
> pre-paid, which makes managing risks of PBX abuse automatic.  Plus the 
> config to block callers is very simple.
> 
> Here's the link to sample configs for ATAs: 
> https://voip.ms/m/samples.php At the bottom of that page are 3 groups of 
> samples configs - PBXes, ATAs, soft-phones.  Your computer or smartphone 
> or tablet can run a softphone. When traveling, this can work with many 
> hotel internet connections - basically giving you access to your home 
> phone from almost anywhere.
> 
> I'd appreciate if you used my sign-up code for VoIP.ms.  We both get $10 
> for using the code - win-win!   https://voip.ms/en/invite/MTI0OTUw
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