Asterisk - Open Source PBX

I've been fooling around more with VoIP stuff. I remembered hearing about an open source PBX system called Asterisk a while back. At the time, I didn't really understand how I might be able to use such a system. Well, with my new interest in learning more about VoIP in conjunction with the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), I decided to look into it again.

As it turns out, you can use Asterisk as a SIP (Session Initiated Protocol) client. What exactly does that mean? Well, if have a SIP account (many broadband phone providers use this protocol) then you can use Asterisk to interface with it. So you can have Asterisk answer at the number of your SIP account and set it up to do anything that a regular PBX can do.

I signed up for a free DID (Direct Inward Dialing) with Stanaphone. They give you a free New York phone number that you can receive unlimited phone calls on. Then I downloaded Asterisk Win32 and installed it. It's really meant to run on Linux systems, and you can get the "real" version of it at www.asterisk.org. Then all I had to do to have it answer the free New York number was add the following line to the sip.conf file:

register => <phone number>:<password>@sip.stanaphone.com

without the <> symbols, of course. Then I launched AsteriskWin32 and I was in business. Now when someone dials the New York phone number, the AsteriskWin32 system running on my PC answers! Neato! I'm going to fool with it more and see if I can't get it set up to do some forwarding to other phone numbers. Stay tuned...