Using Asterisk And VOIP To Save Your Small Business A Bundle

June 10th, 2007 • 5 comments Asterisk, Business, Linux, Trixbox, voip
Tags: Asterisk, pbx, sip, Trixbox, voip

Overview

By now most people have heard of the open source PBX Asterisk and what it can do, but how does this translate into savings for your small business? I have written this brief HOWTO to show how it has saved my company over $500 per month by leveraging the synergy of open source software and VOIP.

Why use VOIP?

The cost savings from using VOIP (Voice Over IP) over the traditional PSTN (public switched telephone network) are tremendous. By eliminating the need for using traditional phone companies expensive infrastructure (a switched phone line originating at your office and terminating at your customer’s), a small business can completely eliminate the need to pay per-minute long distance fees and outrageous access charges levied by Ma Bell to use their antiquated telephone network.

Why use Asterisk?

Anyone that has started up a new business office knows behind labor and their leased space, phones often rank third. For one you must buy or lease a PBX (personal branch exchange) from a company like Avaya. On top of the lease for equipment you pay for the actual lines and usage charges for local and long distance calls. If your business has a high call volume you could easily be paying a small fortune. Asterisk was created by Mark Spencer the CTO of Digium and is licensed under the GPL which has attracted lots of third party add ons that increase its functionality. What does this mean for the small business owner? No software licensing fees, no hardware leasing and the power of a fully functional pbx with robust features built for voip.

This sounds great! How do I start saving money with Asterisk?

THE GAMEPLAN

There are a few steps that we must take in order to get started with our new high tech phone system.

1. Choose a VOIP provider
2. Choose a broadband internet provider (DSL/T1)
3. Purchase a computer to install Asterisk on
4. Install Asterisk
5. Purchase Phones
6. Configure Asterisk to Communicate with Provider

Choosing a VOIP Provider

For my new office we chose Inphonex. They offer unlimited 1-800 calling plans which was very important to us as we have a high inbound call volume and have to offer an 800 number. Inphonex is Asterisk-Friendly, and was the only business class service that offered an unlimited 800 plan. They are based out of Miami and have written a HOWTO on how to setup asterisk servers to connect to their service as well. After three months I haven’t experienced any down time with their service.

There are a few other providers I considered such as Teliax,Telasip, viatalk. Perhaps someone could post in comments about their service or others?

Choosing A Broadband Provider

When choosing a broadband provider there are several considerations to take into account. The most important is the number of phones your company will require along with the compression codecs the provider supports. My new office requires only 4 phones at the moment. There are several bandwidth calculators that can guide you through your selection of required ip bandwidth and codec selection. A quick check of the Inphonex website shows what codecs they supports. They offer support for several codecs including G.723, G.729a, G.726 ulaw and alaw. This provides you with some compression options in case you need several lines over a DSL line.

Building Your Server

I built a bare bones computer by purchasing a case, motherboard, cpu, hard drive and network card at NewEgg. Any old computer will do, but starting on a fresh machine ensures to some degree that components will work for some time to come. Since this machine isn’t running any Microsoft bloatware, the machine doesn’t really need to be a supercomputer. My computer cost a total of $200. One of the advantages of running it on a linux server is that you can SSH into the machine remotely and manage it or you can access the web enabled GUI. I am using trixbox which comes with FreePBX already installed which makes managing your asterisk server easy even if you’ve never used linux or SSH before.

Installing Asterisk

I have installed asterisk on several different linux distros but the easiest way to get asterisk up and running on a dedicated server is to download trixbox. Trixbox is basically a linux distribution that grew out of the Asterisk At Home distribution of a few years back. Trixbox uses a database back end to store configuration values but other than that it is very similar to a typical Asterisk server compiled from the vanilla source. Trixbox also bundles in several features including an apache server, mysql database, FreePBX web based management, HUD, flash operator panel, and community based forums that are very helpful in solving configuration issues.

You will need to:

• Download an ISO image
• Read the quick start guide
• Read Inphonex’s configuration guide for trixbox
• Refer to the trixbox forums for help

Choosing Your Phones

I settled on GPX-2000 phones from Grandstream. I bought them from 888voipstore and everything went very smoothly and I got a very reasonable price. I paid $78.95 per phone for phones with every feature I could want. Configuring them to work with my Asterisk server was extremely easy as well. Grandstream phones come with a web based GUI:

Basically you only have to enter in the LAN/IP address of your asterisk box as your sip server and your phone works. Of course you still have to set up an extension on your asterisk box as well. Navigate in FreePBX to Settings-> Extensions and set up an extension number and choose a password like this:

Configure Asterisk for Inphonex

Inphonex is an asterisk friendly provider. Conveniently they have a simple configuration guide to setting up trixbox to work with their service. My working configuration is here:

allow=ulaw
canreinvite=yes
context=from-inphonex
disallow=all
fromdomain=sip.inphonex.com
fromuser=[myusernumber]
host=sip.inphonex.com
insecure=very
nat=yes
pedantic=no
qualify=yes
secret=[mypassword]
type=peer
username=[myusernumber]

My Register String:

For further help you can always search the trixbox forums or contact Inphonex’s support.

Desperate to boost your credit?

June 4th, 2007 • Business, Finance, Loan Programs, Real Estate

One of my Digg.com friends Chris just passed along an interesting story on yahoo about some enterprising credit repair providers. They use a technique that many mortgage brokers/Loan Officers have known about for years called piggybacking.

Instead of spending several years repairing his credit rating, which he said was marred by two forgotten cell phone bills and identity theft, the 37-year-old real estate agent paid $1,800 to an Internet-based company to bump up his score almost overnight.

Instantcreditbuilders.com, or ICB, helped Estruch boost his score by arranging for him to be added as an authorized user on several credit cards of people with stellar credit who were paid to allow this coattailing. Parents also use this practice when they add their children to their credit cards to help them build solid credit.

The pitch to those who are essentially renting their credit history for pay is seductive: You don’t need to worry about users of this service receiving duplicate copies of your credit cards, account numbers or any of your personal information. It’s essentially free money, they are told.

In the past if a borrower needed a few points extra to qualify for a loan program loan officers would ask them if any of their family members had an account they could get authorized on. Once the borrower is authorized as a user on the account, they do a rapid rescore and 75% of the time the prior history would be attached to the newly authorized user. This company however is taking it to a new level.

The Reality of Foreclosure Investing

September 15th, 2006 • Business, Finance, Real Estate

The reality of foreclosure investing is very different from what people have been led to believe through late night infomercials and the hundreds of books written on the subject. Always remember these two key facts when dealing in foreclosures.

• Every active foreclosure investor works a lot more than people working 9-5 jobs.

• Serious foreclosure investors either have large sums of money of their own or have another investor backing them up.

read more | digg story

Interest Rate Watch

September 1st, 2006 • Business

Upcoming Economic Indicators

Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report for August, with its data on job growth and wage inflation, is expected to be an important influence on the Fed and its next decision on short-term U.S. interest rates, on Sept. 20.

July Data

Change in Average Hourly Earnings:
History +$0.07(p) in Jul 2006

Change in Average Weekly Hours:
History unchanged in Jul 2006

Change in Manufacturing Average Weekly Hours:
History +0.2(p) in Jul 2006

Change in Aggregate Hours Index:
History +0.1(p) in Jul 2006

Change in Real Earnings:
History -$0.01(p) in Jul 2006

August Expectations

Housing Boom 2.0 – How It Could Happen

August 27th, 2006 • Business, Finance, Real Estate

There are several signs that affordability could increase rapidly in the coming months.

• Falling Interest rates – According to the National Association of Realtors a 1% drop in interest rates increases buying power by 10%. In the last 3 months interest rates have dropped .32% – theoretically a 3.2% increase in buying power.
• Inflation appears to be contained. Treasury bulls are betting big on it. Consumer prices appear to be in decline globally as well.
• Some markets are still appreciating rapidly.
• Even in the face of rising interest rates home have been holding their values
• Some analysts are predicting an additional 28 bps drop in the 10 Year’s yield which would increase the downward pressure on interest rates significantly.
• The US central bank has pursued a policy of “asset targeting” since 1999, adjusting short term interest rates in response to movements of stock market indexes and housing prices. This is further evidence that the Fed could start lowering rates soon as more news of a slowdown in the stock market and housing continue.

Mortgage Spam: You Might Be Surprised Who’s Behind It

August 23rd, 2006 • 2 comments Business, Finance

According to a recent articles fromCNET and Politech, one ISP has successfully fingered a handful of industry heavyweights:

White noticed that the spam flood had two things in common: It was being sent to many ASIS e-mail addresses that were no longer active, and it directed (she would later tell the judge) the recipient to connect to Web sites such as wwmort.com, bbmort.com and xxmort.com.

On Oct. 27, White filled out a form on one of the Web sites using the fictitious name of “Bruce Wolf.”

The next day, ASIS says, the company received this voice mail from Francis Prasad: “Hi, this message is for Bruce. Bruce, this is Francis calling from Aegis Lending Corporation (in) Sacramento. Bruce, actually, I am the loan officer who has been assigned to handle your financial request…”

A legal brief that ASIS submitted includes transcripts of calls to “Bruce” from Aegis Lending, American Home Equity, Quicken Loans, Stateside Mortgage, Northstart Financial and National Fidelity Funding.

While I hear Quicken Loans has a wholesale side now for brokers I have never used them. AHE and Aegis however are two of the more notable names in the industry. Aegis is a generally known as a sub prime lender (although they do have a prime division now) and American Home Equity is a full service lender but their niche is stand alone seconds behind neg am loans. As the market continues to slide we can expect to see more of the same from companies desperate to increase sales in a declining market for shareholders.