Monthly Archives: April 2007

Installing Asterisk on a Linksys Router

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Here’s one of the better Asterisk-related hacks I’ve seen lately (though it’s nothing really new). The Linksys WRT54G series is, after all, flash-able, and it’s mostly Linux-based (saved for some versions that use another firmware). So this essentially means you can flash and re-flash your WRT54G router with another Linux variant, and you can configure it to run various Linux-based software, such as Asterisk.

Here’s an old but useful guide on how to install Asterisk on your WRT54G (or variants) router. It basically involves installing OpenWRT on your router and then installing Asterisk. OpenWRT is a Linux distro specifically intended to run on these embedded devices (meaning they’re not really computers, but they run their own operating system), and this depends on how much space and processing power your router has.

Reportedly, a version of Asterisk 1.4.x for OpenWRT is already downloadable at the OpenWRT forums. These are also available for download here.

And what are the interesting applications of using Asterisk on a wireless router? For one, you can use your router as a wireless gateway, so yo ucan use WiFi-enabled VoIP phones as your VoIP clients. This works pretty much like how a cordless VoIP phone would, and even one that works with WiFi. But you no longer need a separate Asterisk installation on another computer connected to the network. The router takes care of that. Some communities have reportedly installed WRT54Gs with high-altitude aerial antennae so they can use their VoIP phones to communicate even when outdoors (particularly useful in rural areas or farm lands, where wireless is preferred to wired networks).

We’ll discuss the specifics of installing Asterisk on routers later on.

25 Interesting VoIP Startups

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Sure, you’ve heard of Skype or Vonage. Of course, you know about Asterisk. But if you haven’t been watching the VoIP industry much, you’d be surprised to learn there are a handful of startups out there that are looking to servicing the consumer market (read: those who just want a telco-like company to service their VoIP needs, instead of having to install their own hardware/software).

Residential Services

VoIP News lists 25 of these startups that each have their own advantages and features. Here’s a summary.

SunRocket – This new company features very low calling rates to Asia–as low as one cent per minute. Not a big company yet, but they are fast growing.

Via Talk – ViaTalk offers flat rates instead of per-minute calling charges. It’s said the charges are so low you pay by the year instead of monthly. Starting from $199 per year, you get the whole shebang of VoIP services like voice mail, e911, caller ID and even fax.

Streamlined communication

First Hand Technologies – First Hand lets you integrate your telephony system to make it easier to reach everyone in your organization, whether they’re mobile, at home, or even out of the country. People can call your office number and they can get connected to your mobile phone if you choose so.

Grand Central – This service lets you connect ALL your telecoms devices such that they ALL ring when you get a call on your assigned number. You then have a choice of answering whichever phone or device you currently have access to (or send the call to voice mail). Everything can be controlled via Web interface.

LignUp – This is an integrator that offers consulting services to companies that want to unify businesses’ messaging platforms. “e 100 percent software, native-SIP platform enables solution integrators and service providers to quickly create unique, high margin VoIP applications and services.”

Logitel – Logitel is a company that integrates VoIP with mobile telephony, apparently the first company to do so. Logitel also offers back-office services for their client companies.

We’ll continue the list of interesting VoIP startups in our next post.

How Secure Is Your VoIP System?

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Recently, we wrote about PGP for VoIP, and how developers are integrating such security systems into Asterisk. But here’s one fundamental question: how secure is your VoIP system? are you aware of any vulnerabilities you might face through the course of your setup, use, and maintenance of your system?

Remember that your VoIP network is only as secure as the rest of your network. It’s not like plain old telephone systems, where people would need to physically access the circuit (whether from within your office, the interconnection to your local exchange carrier, or within the phone company itself). There are various risks involved, and these usually come in the form of fraud and theft (such as theft of information due to eavesdropping), and spam via VoIP. After all, valuable information is usually exchanged through voice communications (including financial information, medical advice, stock trading, and so forth), and these can be easily intercepted by third parties without adequate security.

Enterprise-oriented solutions are usually more secure than end-user solutions. This means that commercial-grade systems usually come built-in with encryption and risk-detection mechanisms. Still, it pays to double-check with your service or hardware provider just to be sure.

For instance, here are five fundamental things that IT managers should look out for.

  • First is protecting the actual voice stream from eavesdropping.
  • Second, is ensuring that the message gets from point A to point B without being modified en route.
  • Third, you should make sure that Web interfaces and APIs that monitor traffic are secure and authenticated.
  • Fourth, you should monitor the interconnection with the regular telephone lines (POTS), to make sure these are free of toll fraud.
  • Fifth, you should secure the underlying TCP/IP network against attacks itself. One good way to be easily detect attacks on the VoIP network itself is to have separate LANs for voice and data. If your network is being attacked or is experiencing severely heavy loads (such as from DDOS attacks), then voice quality severely degrades.

PGP for VoIP, Anyone?

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Most of us who lived in the days pre-WWW remember PGP. Actually anyone who has ever needed to send email or any message securely would remember PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy. These days, it’s the de facto standard for encryption. But this is for data. What about voice? Specifically, what about VoIP?

Apparently, PGP’s creator Phill Zimmerman is still working on making our lives more secure from eavesdropping, and yes, his work now is about VoIP. VoIP news shares a feature where Zimmerman’s latest project is introduced.

The concept behind this latest endeavor is the possibility of man-in-the-middle attacks in VoIP conversations. In public switched telephony (your plain old telephone system), it was easy for governments to eavesdrop into conversations because they have power/control over the telcos. But it’s not so, the other way around. But with VoIP, the playing field is leveled. Now individuals can eavesdrop on anyone (with the right tools), even government officials. Therefore there’s a need to ensure top grade security, especially for sensitive calls.

Zimmerman and company created a product, Zfone, which incorporates the best features of PGP into voice communications. And this is done by doing away with the public key setup that most security systems use. This is purely peer-to-peer, meaning only you and the person on the other line should have this “key” and you can be sure that it’s the same person you are talking to. It’s like meeting someone face to face the first time. The next time you meet, you’ll know it’s that same person.

Zfone, the ZRTP-based product Zimmermann sells through a company with the same name, also incorporates “key continuity,” where you hash the keys just used in the conversation, and they become part of the keys for the next conversation, thus assuring that you’re talking with the same person as the last time.

“You check to see if there was a previous, retained shared secret from the earlier call,” Zimmermann says, “and if there was, you mix it in with the key that you’re generating for this call, so that if there was no man in middle in the last call, there cannot be one in this call.”

The numbers generated by this process should match up, even a hundred conversations later, Zimmermann says. “You don’t have to lie awake at night worrying about whether they heard you talking six months ago in that call that you forgot to check.”

Zfone offers plenty of features, including a GUI for management, and a packet interceptor that turns software and hardware VoIP clients into secure connections. Zfone also has licensing deals with other VoIP providers and open-source solutions, including Asterisk. Zimmerman is hoping this could be adopted as a standard in the VoIP industry and community.

PBX Prompts for Asterisk

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TMC recently reported that PBX Prompts is releasing voice prompts for Asterisk and other open-source telephony systems. Based on research done by PBX prompts, there is good demand among businesses and integrators for high-quality voice prompts to replace the default voice prompts in several open-source telephony systems.

“Over the past two years, we have heard over and over again about the difficulties many small medium businesses and value added resellers have had finding high quality professional voice prompts for Asterisk Open Source PBX systems,” said Garrett Smith, Director of Sales and Marketing for Sayers Media Group. “Based on these experiences we have created PBX Prompts with the help of these very same companies in order to deliver on a simple, easy to use, ordering interface and installation process for those who want an alternative to the default Asterisk voice for their phone system.”

PBX Prompts’ advanced and custom voice prompts are recorded in professional sound studios. There are no minimum orders, and the turnaround for orders is a quick 72 hours. PBX Prompts will initially launch with full sets of voice prompts for Asterisk-based systems. These will include Spanish and English, in both male and female voices. Next up will be French, German and Japanese voice prompts. And then in the upcoming weeks, versions for Fonality, SwitchVox, Pingtel, and other phone systems will be introduced. PBX Prompts will also be introducing custom packages for clients who need non-standard voice recordings, which may include voice mail greetings, and auto-attendant menus.

The current voice prompt packages range from $49.99 for standard packages that feature up to 500 voice prompts, to $129.99 for advanced voice prompts for Asterisk systems, featuring up to 600 prompts. PBX Prompts also offers free packages for Asterisk systems, with up to 100 of the most popular prompts up to May 1st.