5.24. Connecting Road Warriors and Remote Users

Problem

You want your traveling staff to be able to log in to your Asterisk server from wherever they may roam, or you have far-flung friends and family that you wish to share your server with so you can keep in touch and avoid toll charges.

Solution

They will need SIP or IAX accounts on your server, broadband Internet, and your server must be Internet-accessible. Then they will need either a soft IP phone, an analog telephone adapter like Digium's IAXy (pronounced eek-see) or the Linksys Sipura SPA-1001, or a hard IP phone. The IAXy and SPA-1001 are finicky to configure, but easy for your users.

Using softphones means your users will need their own computers with sound gear and access to broadband Internet. And, if they are behind firewalls, they'll need those configured to allow their VoIP traffic. Follow Recipe 5.6. Make sure your server has a proper, publicly routable IP address.

The IAXy and the SPA-1001 are very small, so users can easily travel with them. They'll need analog phones and broadband Internet to use these. The IAXy uses the IAX protocol, and costs around $100. The SPA-1001 is a SIP device, and is about $70. Both come with good configuration instructions. Your Asterisk server supports IAX and SIP, so either device works fine.

Good-quality hard phones start around $100. These are usually big, multiline desk phones, and not very portable for road warriors. But, they might be nice for Mom and Dad. They'll be easy to use, and have good sound quality. Not many hardphones support IAX, so you'll probably have to set up a SIP account for Mom and Dad.

Discussion

You'll want to configure these remote accounts carefully, so that you are not exposing internal or outbound calling services to the world. If you have PSTN termination on your server, your remote users will have your local calling area for free, and any other services you give them access to. The recipes in this chapter show you how to separate services and privileges.

See Also