Home phone VoIP

Soooo following on from the Home Server Owners thread. There seemed to be a bit of interest around the home voip solutions…

At the moment I run a VM on my dedicated server (OVH) I am using freepbx. I have a number of extensions some terminated on VoIP devices (unifi and yealink), I have a softphone on my mobile phone. I am using an old linksys ata to connect my PSTN line to the system. I have a couple of trunks one out on my PSTN line and one with a voip provider. I do some call routing i.e. send international calls out over the voip trunk.

I am not using an auto attendant although with two teenage daughters it might be a good idea. I am using voicemail and so far it’s the only way I have found for getting my PSTN line voicemail emailed to me, for that alone it’s worth it.

Couple of major things to think about… VoIP security is weak and freepbx isn’t the most secure. This makes accessing an extension hard, when I have the softphone on my mobile I connect via VPN. I would recommend not leaving SIP ports open to the internet.

We had a client who had self installed freepbx and one of their SIP trunks was compromised and scammers ran up £80k worth of calls in one weekend, they normally do £5k of calls a month, their SIP trunk provider was not interested in helping. In the end it turned out the provider had been compromised, but they refused to back down. Soooo buyer beware!

Feel free to fire questions away!

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Ouch… That’s quite the surprise to slap you in the face on a Monday morning :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve been interested in dipping into the VoIP-realm a bit more for some time. Used to work tech support for a small ISP that also did phone lines – most of the troubleshooting was done by others with more experience but I still found it quite interesting.

My only dabble thus far with VoIP is a little Obihai VoIP adapter that our home phone is using. Has been reliable as hell thus far.

People still make voice calls?

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I had my home phone disconnected a couple years ago, found it rather antiquated.

Same. XFinity actually let us do it this time, last year they said they “couldn’t cancel it”. Now, they gave us some loyalty # to call, and we did, and they cancelled the phone service (shed $20 off bill). That was nice of em.

We still have to have a phone line to get broadband in the UK, so there is no way (at the moment) not to have a phone line. My mum always calls the landline. I have got a local SIP number to, so there is only a phone plugged in because I am paying for the line

I cheaped out, got an Obihai 200 and using Google Voice for the two lines. Only paid for the hardware, service is free.

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Your mom is an oldschool bootycall.

I’ve used 8x8 for years, and referred many friends and coworkers to them. I think someone out there may still have a DTA-310 in use.

I picked up an interesting beast in an auction awhile back- it’s a multi-input POTS device which also takes a few bluetooth connections, so you can either bind your cells to it when visiting Grandma, or slowly drag her into the current era.

I haven’t had a non-cell in at least a decade, either. That said, I hate texting, because people are too damn slow and can’t spell for shit.

There was someone on LET offering SIP services for like $5/mo. I really thought about doing that, but I’m at the point of not really wanting to manage more shit.

I’d still like to setup something that didn’t need a lot more care and feeding than a basic Linux installation. I know FreePBX gets quite a bit of love, but I think that’s one that a former contract-job installed, and was hacked in under a week (on a semi-private network).

I totally agree. FreePBX isn’t really designed to be on the internet and it makes registering things like cell phones that don’t have a fixed IP leave a massive hole in your perimeter security.

I am probably going to move over to a hosted service soon, and just register my PSTN line with them…

It’s beginning to turn into a run your own mailserver type argument now. The offerings in the market are cheap and reliable.

https://voip.ms/en/rates/united-states

My favorite voip provider, unlimited plans are $4.25 in most places - or you pay <$1 for DID then per-minute outgoing. They host a few dozen servers across the country so you don’t need to run anything at home if you don’t want to.

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Anyone have any other suggestions for upstream trunking providers? I’ve been taking a look at Alcazar Networks but I’m still shopping around.