So now we have Asterisk set up for home use. What can we do with it now? If you happen to have mischevous teenage kids, you can log all your calls! Maybe you want to have a seperate line for those teens. The great thing about Asterisk is flexibility. You can do almost anything you can think of.

Here are a couple ideas for you.

• Call logging
• Call forwarding
• Virtual phone lines
• Call recording
• Conferences
• Cheap phone service
• Voicemail
• Wakeup calls
• Reminder calls

There are a thousand and three other things to do with it, but that’s just the first couple things that come off the top of my head.

P.S. I want to hear what you guys use Asterisk for in your house. Post a comment with your ideas.

There are hundreds of distro’s of linux that you could run Asterisk on. There is even a Windows port out now. However I would hesitate running in on Windows as it’s still beyond buggy.

You could choose to run it on Knoppix (my personal favorite), or Slackware, maybe straight up Debian. Why not go for a Red Hat install? Or maybe even a Damn Small Linux perhaps? There are so many to choose from. The problem with choosing one is all about neccessity. Personally, I love to use Debian based OS’s. That’s why I choose Knoppix, or in the case of what I have installed now, a modified version called “Auditor“. It comes packaged with tons of penetration testing software which I find quite useful.

I would reccomend heading over to www.DistroWatch.com and finding a distro that woul work for you. Like I said before, it’s all about neccessity. If it’s got what you need, then use that version. I like having all the security tools, so I choose to use Auditor. If I didn’t need them, I would go with plain Knoppix, however it suits my needs. So go out there and look around. See what would fit you.

A computer. A clunker. A piece o’ trash! Nothing exciting really. If you’ve got an old dusty computer sitting in your closet, pull it out and throw knoppix on that bad boy!

Currently I am running the Asterisk PBX on a 1.3 Ghz, 20 gig computer with a 4x cd drive… I have a nice new cd burning drive sitting in a computer next to me (the computer doesn’t work but the cd drive does) but I just haven’t gotten around to putting in the new drive yet seeing as how I don’t really use it. But anyway, I scrapped it together using parts from OOOOLD computers I bought from a thrift shop and I got the case and motherboard from some guy I had some classes with. The point is, you really don’t need much at all. As long as the computer can run linux, you’ll be fine.

Here are two protocols that I have played with using Asterisk. They are the most common in my opinion as well, IAX and SIP. Of course you’ve also got H.323 but I’ve never played with that one.

So first of all, I bet you are asking yourself, what the hell am I talking about protocols and geese and tear ducts, oh my! Well, a protocol is simply a way that a call is made. It’s the system that it goes through. SIP is going to be through a standard telephone line. If you connected your Asterisk box to your home phone line, that’s SIP, thus you would have to set it up using SIP specific terms and utilizations. IAX however is a bit more interesting to me. IAX is a protocol that Mark Spencer actually created. It’s in the second version now, so it’s usually referred to as IAX2. Continue reading →