Category Archives: Installation

Asterisk Installation

Making Mobile Calls With EQO

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Here’s another player offering a downloadable mobile VoIP-enabling software application. EQO Communications (pronounced “echo”), a provider of mobile Internet phone services, announced its new EQO Mobile version. EQO was originally designed to add Skype functionality to mobile phones, however EQO is now offering their own mobile VoIP solution with EQO Out “credits” for PSTN termination. The new version, which still runs on Java compatible phones, will let users make international and long distance calls as well as send and receive IM and text messages on their mobile phones at local calling and messaging rates.

After you sign up on the EQO site, you’ll receive an SMS link on your phone for download & installing the app. You’ll be able to send instant messages through EQO on many of your favorite IM services–AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Jabber and Yahoo Messenger. Calling another EQO user is free, but calling a regular mobile or landline phone requires using EQO Out credits, which is still cheaper than standard mobile rates since it uses a local gateway (and therefore you get local rates).

Joanna Stern from Laptop Magazine was able to test the new software from a Blackberry Pearl. According to her:

“The easily navigable interface makes chatting through numerous IM services extremely easy. We especially liked the ability to close certain IM network lists to make our list more succinct. While we didn’t get to try out any overseas phone calls, we called one of our colleagues here in New York on his cell phone. We could hear him just fine, but he reported a slight delay on his end. We were able to try an EQO-to-EQO call with EQO’s CEO Bill Tam. We heard Bill quite clearly on the other end and found the calls to go through very quickly. In both cases the voice quality was much clearer than calls over a Wi-Fi network.”

Another plus is that EQO’s new mobile application is available for hundreds of mainstream mobile handsets. Its Java application is available for BlackBerry, Motorola, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung & other devices. A Windows Mobile version is expected to be released in the coming months. For more info, check out www.eqo.com.

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.