2007-06-02

since i am implementing a voice over ip project at work, i naturally am also investigating options at home. for now i am running an asterisk server on my webserver and use it to call out to PSTN (mostly my girlfriend to her brother who is doing his civil service in sierra leone). fellow debian hacker klaus ita recommended a call by call provider: voipcheap

they seem to live up to their name and offer really nice rates. also austrian land lines are free as in free beer. you have to download a windows client to complete the registration which really sucks, but after delaying for more than two weeks i finally got around to do it today. 5 minutes later i am successfully placing my first free call to an austrian landline after adding something like the following to my asterisks sip.conf:

[voipcheap]
realm=sip.voipcheap.com
host=sip.voipcheap.com
username=<myname>
secret= <mypassword>
type=peer
qualify=no

(instructions found on here)