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Asterisk on a Linkstation

I’ve had a Buffalo Linkstation for quite some time now (Nov ’04) but I don’t use it as much as I used to. It’s original hard drive crashed and I ended up moving it’s duties to other systems. Eventually I got around to replacing the hard drive and starting looking for interesting things to use it for. I’d been interested in experimenting with Asterisk for awhile now but didn’t realize there were devices that could connect POTS (plain old telephone service) phones and lines to an Asterisk server without being PCI cards like Digium produces.

Then one day at a Chelmsford Linux Meetup someone mentioned that Sipura makes exactly what I need. In fact Linksys bought Sipura out, and now manufactures the SPA3102. It has one FXO and one FXS port to connect to an analog telephone line and analog telephone respectively and then connect either to an Asterisk server or directly to a VOIP provider. It turns out just about any unlocked VoIP DTA should be able to do this, but the SPA3102 is widely supported, cheap and no harder to set up than any other DTA.

So after getting the Linkstation back up and running using the Freelink firmware I installed asterisk – “apt-get install asterisk”. Nice and simple. I also ordered my SPA3102 from voxilla and setup an account with les.net and used paypal to deposit $25 with them. Once the SPA3102 arrived I used voxilla’s configuration wizard for the the SPA3102/3000 for asterisk.

The web form is fairly easy, but remember to write down the names of the extensions and devices because you’ll need them for your Asterisk configuration.

More later.

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+introduction
http://voxilla.com/tools/device-configuration-wizard/
http://forum.voxilla.com/linksys-sipura-voip-support-forum/configuration…
http://store.voxilla.com/voip-products/linksys-spa3102.html
http://les.net
http://www.counterpath.com/xlitedownload.html
http://nas-central.org/index.php?title=Category:FreeLink

added 10/16/07
Free DID in some Washington State Area codes

http://www.ipkall.com/
it might be possible to use grand central plus the free DID to get an area code you want
http://www.grandcentral.com
These guys offer 300 free minutes over a rolling 7 day period for a price of $10 every 120 days which buys non expiring credit for USA calls at $0.017 cents a minute. You get to figure out what that’s worth.
http://www.voipdiscount.com/en/index.html
http://www.sipdiscount.com/en/freedays.html

added 10/23/07
Got a New Hampshire DID from the Gizmo Project. $23.50/year for unlimited incoming calls (not all area codes and exchanges are that cheap).
http://gizmoproject.com/

I’m also looking at a few VOIP Termination providers who offer dirt cheap rates to almost all exchanges in the USA, the vast majority $0.01/minute or less. They also provide an AGI script that will compare their rate vrs a specified flat rate and allow your Asterisk to determine which provider to use.
http://connect.voicepulse.com/