evilrouters.net

i’m curious if anyone is using voip at home, with service from a commercial voip provider — and integrated with asterisk. i’m one of the younger generation who hasn’t had a home phone in almost two years. the last year that i had one was only so i could have dsl and a fax at home (for my business). i use my work-issued cell phone (blackberry) for all my phone calls (except when i’m in the office).

i’ve been toying with the idea of setting up an asterisk box at home lately. i don’t really need to, but when has need ever had anything to do with the reason a geek does something? because i wouldn’t really use it much, i’m looking for something cheap.

what i’d like to do is just use voip at home without being tied in to any vendor-specific hardware (i.e. if i switch providers, i still want to be able to use it), and to be able to purchase an “x minutes/month” plan. i want something that’ll integrate with asterisk and give me a fixed number of minutes per month for a fixed cost. i’d probably pick up a couple of cisco ip phones to use.

if i can get that working, i have another house in another town that i’d connect as well. it has dry dsl, so there’s no actual phone there (i’m only there once every few weeks). i’d put a cisco router in there, set up an ipsec vpn between that house and my primary residence, and put a cisco ip phone there as well (assuming the latency and jitter are okay).

i’ve briefly looked into broadvoice and packet8 and would be interested in any opinions or recommendations.