A very stupid question

I have a girlfriend that lives in Colombia and I live in the USA. My question is how can I call her via VOIP long distance for free if possible. I look at magicjack.com and skype. It looks very promising. Any suggestions would be greatly appriciated

You could install trixbox or asterisk on an old computer (PIII is sufficient), and use a softphone such as x-lite or zoiper

why not use skype or msn or some instant messaging client if you both have pc's and internet access..?


setting up trixbox (which is asterisk - a freeware pbx) seems excessive just to talk to each other...

With all respect I am using trixbox for my business and you have to pay for the service. I am in another country and would like to use something fast and free if possible.

call quality on skype is very good, and good add ons/extras also

The service you're paying for, I imagine, is to connect to the telephone network -- origination or termination. VoIP is free.

Is it possible to create an asterisk Box here in Colombia and forward calls from my asterisk box in the USA to this asterisk box here in Colombia and thus not having to pay the long distance minutes? In other words:

cell
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Asterisk BOX -USA ----> ext 102 --forwards call --> Asterisk Box Colombia
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Cell Colombia


I can see the cost from the cell to my PBX and the cost from the PBX in colombia to the cell but what about in between(forwarding the call from PBX to PBX)

I am just curious but VOIP works via UDP packets and etc so why can I just forward these packets or conversation using netcat or a utility and cut out the middleman? I hope I explained this correctly?

If a skype call is free from a skype customer to another skype customer in whichever country via TCPIP then why cant I do the same with my asterisk servers and the only fee would be the cost of recieving calls on my DID and vice versa on the other end in this case colombia. I hope everyone can understand what I am saying. Skype is simply a direct ip to ip conversation so why can I do the same via Asterisk but in two different countries?

Yes, you can connect two asterisks via iax or sip. You wouldn't use netcat: there are protocols for doing this. On trixbox, you'd be setting up a 'trunk'; you'd then route calls through the correct trunk. E.g. you could have Asterisk-USA extensions start with 2 and Asterisk-Colombia extensions start with 1. Three-digit extensions would be routed to the inter-asterisk trunk depending on the initial digit. Regarding paid calls, my international calls are often cheaper than domestic ones -- all my calls go through a voip provider connected to a trixbox. If it works for you, you can get a colombian DID (telephone number) through a voip provider and receive calls to that number on your asterisk machine in the U.S. Then your contacts in colombia would be dialing a local number (from their perspective) to reach you in the U.S., and you'd be paying low rates to reach them through your voip provider. But, connecting two asterisks is betterer and cheap if you don't need the middleman. The cell phone adds a little complexity to the picture (and kind of forces you to eliminate the middle man), which you might solve, for example, by pairing each cell phone with an extension on its closest Asterisk server for incoming calls. For outgoing calls, the cell would have to first dial into the Asterisk server (using an external DID, not an extension) and then dial out through the server -- this called DISA, direct inward system access.

In short, it's possible to connect two servers. The protocol of choice is probably IAX over SIP, since SIP is something similar to ftp when it comes to firewall rules. Some links:

1. For straight Asterisk. Not sure if the link has good info, but the site is a good source of info in general:
here

2. For trixbox. This is a popular source. There's a section called "How to Connect 2 Boxes":
here

You can. And, if everyone were using voip phones (e.g. a software phone), you could give each of them an extension on your Asterisk server,
no matter the country they lived in. There would not be a need for two servers.

Hello,

In my opinion it should be possible. You could connect using different protocols depending on your network setup. Have a look at this wiki:
Asterisk = Dual server. Two years ago I worked at a company in Belgium as IT Manager. During my time there they migrated from Siemens PBX to Asterisk based phone (don't remember the correct name, only that it was build around Asterisk). They set it up between the six offices of that company, spread out throughout Belgium. All offices were of course connected using the same provider on SDSL connection, using static IP. Don't know if that would have anything to do with it, but at least it's worth checking it out.

Kind regards,

Eric

Beaten by Berhanie

thanks for the replies so what I should do is setup an asterisk box here in colombia and one in the USA, setup the trunks to speak to each other via sip or aix, create extentions, forward any incoming call on that local extention,forward the call to the appropiate extention and then have that extention DOD to the other country and then forward the incoming call to her cell phone in Colombia and do the same if she wants to call me in the states. Something like this:

The difficult part is forwarding the calls from the local extention to the other asterisk box extention. Where would on begin?

How can I interconnect two Asterisk Servers with a SIP trunk ?

I believe you can setup an external SIP extension to your trixbox. I've never played with trixbox so I can not provide any details.