Skype + Asterisk for Home Phone Service 3

Posted by JD 07/08/2010 at 11:30

I’ve been interested in saving some money on home phone service since around 2001 when I dropped the babybell service for a VoIP solution. Over the years, I’ve switched providers and ended up with the cable company phone service to get the best quality for the buck. Now they’ve raised the prices and I’m looking again. I’m not interested in Vonage at $25/month when a $3/month plan will cover me. Further, I already own the necessary equipment to get this all working. You may already own the equipment too.

It always seemed that a $3/month SkypeOut account could be linked to a PBX (Asterisk/FOSS) to make this happen. A few months ago, I asked about this on Lifehacker, but didn’t get any acceptable answers.

FLOSS Podcast = Open Source Knowledge

Today, I was listening to the FLOSS Weekly podcast about AskoziaPBX and the guest mentioned that Skype to Asterisk connectivity was available. Some quick googling and found that link with over 10 Skype+Asterisk solutions. There was also a link to the Skype Blog and a $66 solution. About 50% of the possible connectors appear to be free software, which is nice.

Prerequisites

If you already have a SIP ATA (SIP-phone converter) lying around, then you can probably do what I’m doing with very little cost.

  1. SIP-ATA device. I own a $45 Grandstream HT-502 and an old unlocked Sunrocket Gizmo ATA. Both worked the last time I used them.
  2. Computer running 24/7/365 that can run Asterisk or another compatible PBX (Asterisk is the MAC Truck, but there are lots of simplified and based on asterisk PBX solutions like Askozia and FreeSwitch that are more like the tiny, cheap Ford Courier trucks. Those tools will still carry a small load of stuff in the back and should be fine for home use. I’ll drop the PBX into a virtual machine running under ESXi to start. I’m not interested in running another bloated MS-Windows install either. Linux is required for me.
  3. Skype+Askterisk Connector – exactly which one will be decided later. I’m leaning towards FreeSwitch + Skypiax. Now called Skypopen.
  4. Skype Account with some SkypeOut money. Drop $1 into the account for testing or sign up for the unlimited $3/month plan that provides a real inbound phone number too.
  5. (Optional) Google Voice number – I’ve been giving out my GV number for a few years (even before Google bought it). It is listed on my business cards, so there really isn’t any need to “port” my current home number.

I’ll post more if I get this working. At this point it is just a high level thought with a good possibility of working. It appears people have this working on both Linux and MS-Windows systems, so how hard can it really be?

I don’t have this working yet, but will attempt to get it working in the next few days.

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  1. JD 07/17/2010 at 08:23

    First, thanks for asking before taking it. Very much appreciated.

    Here are my thoughts on copying content – mine or anyone else’s.

    1. Partial quotes are fine provided they are less than 10% of the post. The knowledge is free, just rewrite it in your own words if you want more length.
    2. A link back to my blog is needed, but it doesn’t need to be named or especially prominent. I like my link style (obviously).
    3. Saying what I got wrong is appreciated!!! That’s how we all move forward.
    4. Better explanations and more details for any of the steps would be nice for everyone!
    5. Quality translations into a different language is not considered “copying” by me. Machine translations are not good.

    Lastly, please post a link here back to your blog article here so my readers can learn too. I performed some analysis on XYZ topic and posted an article here … is all that I request. Cross linking is good on the web, right?

    I have a twitter account but do not use it. Here’s why I don’t use it or other centralized services. .

  2. JD 10/21/2010 at 08:03

    The last few days, I’ve been setting up a FreeSwitch/Skype gateway on a current Xen VM. It was a clean VM, unused for anything else, however, getting the audio to work has been an issue.

    FreeSwitch is working without Skype. I can connect from a SIP client and dial extensions, dial into conference rooms, and leave voice mails. Doing much more isn’t possible, since I do not have an external SIP provider.

    Skype seems to work without Skypopen. I’ve purchased a real phone number and have used it from multiple clients – N800, Win7 x64, Linux.

    So, what remains as a problem? Well, the Skypopen interface and the audio drivers. ALSA 1.0.20 is recommended and I’ve installed that. Skype client for Linux 2.0.72 is recommended, but I could only find v2.0.0.72 and it isn’t the statically linked version. I’ve been forced to use the Linux Skype x64 beta on that server. It worked as far as it could with the snd-dummy driver (as required).

    At this point, I don’t have a good alternative that will work on Xen, so I plan to try again on ESXi or KVM. If I ever do get this working, I’ll write a new article about it. It definitely is not a trivial exercise.

  3. JD 12/17/2010 at 07:41

    It appears that Google-Voice via gtalk can connect to FreeSWITCH using the Dingaling module. Some people have complained that inbound calls have a large delay, but outbound call quality are excellent. There is a possible work around for the delays on the FreeSWITCH wiki.

    I did install FreeSWITCH on Ubuntu 10.04 running under ESXi. According to the setup article, you can only forward google-voice to the PBX – it cannot be forwarded to any other phones and work. Call screening must be enabled – I assumed that was in the GVoice settings, not in FreeSwitch. It isn’t working for me today.

    Be certain that you secure your PBX/switch before you put it on the internet. Fail2ban is just 1 step in this process. You’ll probably want to change the user name for each extension as a matter of practice AND change the default extension password from 1234. * Disabling any unused extensions* and moving them to non-standard values would be a good idea too. There are other things needed for SIP/PBX security. These are definitely not enough unless you want to buy long distance for anyone around the world.