blog.erik.rainey.name

I've recently been contemplating a switch over to purely VoIP services for my home phone. While I have several requirements, there are two really important ones:

• Asterisk Support (IAX) - This allows me to run my own PBX in my house. The benefits of doing so can be found here.
• e911 Support - Obviously, 911 support. e911 maps your mailing address as the address where emergency personnel should show up when you dial 911.

Out of all the providers listed on VoIP-Info.org's Residential Service Providers list, most do not offer e911, not to mention IAX support. For the ones that do, I decided to do a side by side comparison of them. Here is the fruit of that labor, Cost Savings of VoIP. This is not enough, however, to make a final determination. I'm going to start using the currently listed "cheapest" option, but I have doubts about quality. I'll update this spreadsheet as I get on with this evaluation.

I've been eating up alot of my free time installing and configuring an Asterisk server. Asterisk is an Open Source PBX (private branch exchange) which you can use as a mega-answering machine, a conference center for your family, and a home automation interface, amoung an infinity of other clever things. I've cataloged my worklog of installing and configuring it so that I can come back later and not worry about forgetting what I did. It should be a fairly concise, if not obtuse, guide to installing it yourself. It's not quite complete yet, I've got to add some more config information but the bulk of it is there.