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August 24, 2004
So Nerdy it hurts
Okay, Now I think I have gone too far...
This week's project. I am building a PBX for my house.
I have no compelling reason to do so aside from the idle computer sitting under my desk, and an interest in learning the technology.
So here is what I did. First, I installed Debian Linux (Unstable) on my computer. Secondly, I installed Asterisk - The Open Source Linux PBX. Finally I subscribed to VoicePulse Connect!
I am now at the painful stage where everything is installed, and almost works, but It still doesn't work. I made progress today. Now when I call my telephone number, I can see my console rejecting the call. That means I am connected, but mis-configured. Gotta go read the instructions again (again).
The end product should be pretty darn cool. I should have a full fledged PBX system with Caller ID, Voicemail, Music on hold, IVR etc available to play with. Voicepulse provides a telephone number for 8 dollars per month, and outgoing telephone calls to the lower 48 cost 3 cents a minute. Incoming calls are free. I pay a little more to Qwest, and I only get one feature (call waiting) Voicepulse didn't have the 509 area code, so I bought a Portland, OR number. Seems that a majority of our friends live there anyway, so it should work out okay. Plus with the Cell phone generation, Long distance doesn't seem to be a huge issue.
My wife is (humoring me) pretty excited!
Posted by jreighley at August 24, 2004 11:34 PM
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Comments
Dude you are a geek! That is so awesome! I just built 2 slackware systems over the weekend and need to do some wiring so I can hook up an IDS. Already know tcpdump but I need to learn snort and ACID. Keep 'us' updated on how it goes, sounds pretty cool.
Posted by: 
Got to the Demo stage now!
When I dial my phone number, I get a "congrats" message. Now the external piece seems to be working, so I need to work on the internal parts. Getting a softphone to work with it, and configuring the extensions coverage paths etc. Making sure I am able to make outgoing calls..
Eventually I am going to need to invest a couple hundred dollars in hardware if I am going to seriously use this as my phone system. Right now it is a very glorious answering machine..
Posted by:
Josh Reighley at August 25, 2004 11:16 PM
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