Jim, I got the Voicepulse Connect plan for Asterisk. (I think that is what they called it). Indeed it has a cost between 1/2 cent and 2 cents per minute no matter what the calling area is. Also, I have to dial the full eleven digits, although I'm sure I can modify my dial plan eventually so that if the prefix is 658, that it will automatically prepend 1-802.
So, my initial use would be to use it for long distance, for which I've recently been paying MCI about 7 cents...+ a monthly fee. Voicepulse for Asterisk inbound numbers are $11.00 per month. However, I don't think they charge the 2 cents per minute on the inbound calls. Many thanks for the tip about an Underhill number, that might be the way to go. As far as local calls are concerned, I wonder if we could get Burlington Telecom to do a peering arrangement by hosting an Asterisk box in their rack and terminating calls in our local area. Even if they would do that I'm not sure it would be less expensive than Verizon. If I can get it working again, I have a Digium Z100T that seemed to be working reasonably well on a second phone line at the house, for which I pay about $20.00/month. -- Larry -----Original Message----- From: Vermont Area Group of Unix Enthusiasts [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Lawson Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 12:01 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: comcast anyone? follow-up and questions regarding routing... Hi Larry, That's interesting about the changing IP addresses since you moved to Comcast. I liked having the same IP for several months, but I still run ddclient, so it probably won't make a huge difference now that I am also on Comcast. Regarding Voicepulse, it does seem like they're out of Burlington 802-658-xxxx numbers, but I see plenty of Underhill numbers (802-813-67xx) numbers available - at least, according to their web signup app. I believe that Underhill is in the same LATA as Burlington, so you could use that. I'm curious what plan(s) you are using with VoicePulse. My understanding about their plans is that if you want to hook up Asterisk, you need to use their Connect for Asterisk plan, which has no "free" local calling, OR purchase one of their retail plans (for which they send you a locked ATA) and in addition to that, buy the "Open Access" plan which will allow you to use softphones/other ATAs/Asterisk, in which case you are paying for minutes that you aren't using if you're only using Asterisk. I have been trying to find a way to make local calls within the Burlington area over VoIP, using Asterisk or other BYOD plans that's less expensive than a POTS line from Verizon (that is, without violating any of the providers' TOS). So far I haven't been successful. As far as router firmware, I run OpenWRT on my Linksys WRT54G version 2. But there is no way to escape iptables if you have any level of complexity in your firewall rules. I used to use Cisco acls all the time so I'm used to it. Perhaps someone else has a suggestion in that area... Jim Lawrence Keyes wrote: > Following up on the follow-ups: > > One change I have noticed from Comcast is that I really do get a different > IP address every time I reboot the cable modem. My Adelphia setup was > relatively static (although I had other Adelphia cable modems which also > changed IPs on every reboot). > > I have my TrixBox server currently working on Comcast now, and I'm able to > make VoIP calls out with VoicePulse. My problem was with my cheap crap > router, a DLink DI604 which, even though it says that my box was in the DMZ > was still somehow blocking ports 5060 and 4569. I swapped this out to an > old Linksys BEFSX41 and the problem was solved. So it wasn't Comcast. > > Voicepulse tech support was very helpful and so far call quality seems to be > really good. The only issue right now is that Voicepulse can't provide an > inbound number in the local Burlington calling area because apparently > Verizon has lock on them. Seems weird, I'm going to call the PSB and ask > about this. > > I took a detour in thinking that I might set up a router box but then got > really bogged down in looking at the whole IPTABLES thing. I also note that > since some of the Linksys routers run Linux, there are alternative > open-source downloadable FLASH versions of the router software that can be > installed. Can anyone suggest an approach to take in either automating > IPTables, or going the third-party flash route? > > I'd like to be able to have a little Linux-based router box that I could be > sure was doing what I want it to do, but I kinda glazed over when I started > looking at raw IPTABLES. > > -- Larry > > -----Original Message----- > From: Vermont Area Group of Unix Enthusiasts [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Rubin Bennett > Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 5:52 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: comcast anyone? > > Follow up to my own post... > I finally got my last customer back online today (yes, that's 12 days > out of service!!!). It was a municipality, and they had a "School" or > comp(lementary) account as dictated by state law, and apparently the > "Rate Code" that the modem was configured for wasn't configured in their > billing system, so the modem could get online and the PC could get an IP > address, but no traffic was moving anywhere. I called in (yet another) > favor from my friend at the headend (I totally owe him beers!) and in > about an hour it was online (but not before I spent 3 hours holding and > arguing with their call center droids about what the source of the > problem was). > > Yep, all in all, a distinctly frustrating experience... I think > ComCastic has taken on a meaning that their marketing department never > intended it to have!!! (Car dies in the middle of nowhere and it's going > to be an hour before a wrecker shows up... now that's just frigging > ComCastic!) > > -Rubin >
