Topic: new to VIOP, what to use on LAN?

[SoftDux]

Hi all

I haven't used VOIP at all before, but want to use it in a type of a call centre setup. Let's say I want each user to have a mic & headset connected to his PC, which is then connected to the LAN, and the the sme server. Would I be able to set it up so that they could talk to each other in this way? What else would I need?

[arne]

A free SIP or IAX softelephone client is the only thing that is needed to speak to each other (Exept for the Asterisk server, the Windows PC's, the network, the headphones and the microphones.)

Zoiper does both the SIP and the IAX2 protocol so it's good for testing. http://www.zoiper.com/

The easiest way to connect to the "real world" (pot's) is to order for an sip telephony acount on some external sip telephony wendor. If you do it this way, there will not ne a requirement at all to buy any other hardware.

I am using such a sip based external connection pluss two Grandstream 486 adapters (to use ordinary phones as an alternative to the PC's). Rather cheap and easy to set up and have been running without a bug for approx 3 years now. 

X-lite is another sip softphone that used to be quite good. (Personally I prefere the old wersion.)

[SoftDux]

cool, thanx for the info

So, I presume you use Zoiper? Can anyone with a PC, mic & speakers talk to anyone else on the LAN? And if I want to use thie between different branches, over a VPN link via a 384K DSL line, would it work?

[arne]

Can everybody on the lan talk to each other. Yes, at least if they are loggen on to the Asterisk server.

If you configure for that it can also be possible to log into your Asterisk server via Internet.

I once tried to use Zoiper via openvpn. It worked, but it dis not work well enough. (Hacking, pauses etc.)

In general I think that sip telephony and VPN does not work to well togeter, but other users might have other experiences ?

[SoftDux]

thanx, I'll give it a try.

If the VPN is so slow, would you rather use the internet directly (aka no VPN connection) for this? Or is it too unsafe?

[arne]

I think it depends on what you mean by "unsafe".

I believe that most sip telephony is done unencrypted. I belive that it is possible to "listen to the line".

One other thing I am more worried about is the risk if anyone are able to log on to "my line" and use the "ip telephone line" at my cost.

Because of this last problem I had a discussion with my old sip telephony vendor and I requested them to apply a maximum montly limitation for the costs. They refused, and claimend it has not been any problem with such hacking, but I terminated their services and changed over to another prepaid service, as I didn't want to teke the risk.

Anyone alse that knows more about the security issues of ip telephony and how to handle these probmens ?

[SoftDux]

with unsecure, I meant unencrypted. VPN adds a bit of overhead, but if it's not needed for SIP, then one can disable it. I'll try it out a bit later though, since I don't have a mic to use right now....