[Mac-telephony-list] newbie

[Benjamin Kowarsch via List]

On Mar 3, 2007, at 9:04 AM, Francis Augusto Medeiros via List wrote:

> I bite the bullet today and got
> myself through eBay a Sipura SPA 3000.

We have a HOWTO article for the SPA3K at:

http://www.sunrisetel.net/software/asterisk/HOWTOs/SPA3K-FXO-and- 
Asterisk.shtml

Please note that this is a new site which is not yet live, a few  
items are still outstanding.

> 1 - Can I install Asterisk (or openpbx) on my Mac Mini PPC and get
> G729 working?

Yes, you can. To be legal, you will need to purchase a license from  
Digium though.

> I heard G729 is the best coded for voip these days...

G729 is a low bandwidth codec and as such it is not as good as G711  
(alaw/ulaw). Besides, the industry appears to be moving towards  
wideband codecs for superior sound quality. Even in the low bandwidth  
area, Speex is every bit as good as G729 and Speex is open and free.

My advice, use G729 only if you can't avoid it.

> 2 - My DSL provider blocks some incoming connections - I can overcome
> that choosing a higher numbered port for incoming, so dyndns works,
> right? Also, running it behind a NAT is no issue, or is it?

It depends on what you intend to do. Running a SIP service behind NAT  
is certainly not recommended. Running a SIP client behind NAT is  
manageable, although some SOHO routers don't always play nice. OTOH,  
if you use IAX then NAT is of no concern.

> 3 - How easy is it to configure on a Mac? Is the sunrise gui for
> openpbx ready?

see website

> 4 - Are there examples about how to configure dialplans and all that?
> I'd like to make it easy to call, but at the same time to have many
> options available, such as connecting to FWD, gizmo, another sip
> provider, etc, as well as super simple to use my PSTN...

Voip-Info.org has the largest collection of recipes and examples.

> 5 - Security - creating only extensions that will be authenticated
> prevents other people of using my pstn, right? Or is there an extra
> measure I should take?

make sure you don't use the default context (reject every call that  
lands in default), never use plaintext passwords, ideally use secure  
tunnels.

rgds
benjk