Networking

Meet Acer Spin 713: A Phenomenal Computer for All Seasons

Meet Acer Spin 713: A Phenomenal Computer for All Seasons

Monday, December 7, 2020

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It’s a portable office. It’s a movie theater. It’s a LAMP server. It’s a desktop PC. It’s a tablet computer. It’s a Chrome browser. It’s an Android platform. It’s a Linux server. And it gets almost 8 years of free software and firmware updates. Meet the $629 Acer Chromebook Spin 713. And, if you hurry, it’s $80 off at Best Buy today. The checklist of superlatives is almost too lengthy to mention: a touchscreen of unrivaled quality, a 12-hour battery,… Read More ›

Frozen in Time: Sangoma at a Crossroads or the Cliff

Frozen in Time: Sangoma at a Crossroads or the Cliff

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

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We are fast approaching the 18 month anniversary since the mass exodus of talent from Sangoma and Digium. During that time, Asterisk® and FreePBX® have languished in limbo with FreePBX commercial modules mired in discontinued encryption methods and the Asterisk and FreePBX feature set frozen. Sangoma’s acquisition of Digium gave the company a well-respected business phone system in Switchvox® while relegating FreePBX deployments with commercial modules to second-class citizen status. Now Sangoma has a difficult and expensive decision to make.… Read More ›

Coping with Coronavirus: Working from Home with Asterisk

Coping with Coronavirus: Working from Home with Asterisk

Monday, March 16, 2020

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If one can only claim to be an expert in one subject matter, ours would be working from home building and deploying Asterisk®-based VoIP servers. We’ve been doing it for more than a decade. And, as the need for social distancing becomes imperative with the spread of COVID-19, working from home is by far the best antidote. For those with jobs in an actual office, you still need your computer and you still need transparent office phone call access. With… Read More ›

Travelin' Man 3: A Plug-and-Play Firewall for Incredible PBX

Travelin’ Man 3: A Plug-and-Play Firewall for Incredible PBX

Monday, March 9, 2020

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Seven years ago we introduced Travelin’ Man 3 to simplify the task of securing the Incredible PBX® VoIP platforms. Today we want to reexamine the Travelin’ Man 3 firewall design for the benefit of those that are new to Asterisk® and FreePBX®. In the old days, FreePBX-based VoIP servers were notoriously vulnerable because of numerous bugs in the original FreePBX code which was developed by dozens of developers around the world with very different skill sets. Not only did you… Read More ›

The Very Best Cellphone Plans and Smartphones for 2019

The Very Best Cellphone Plans and Smartphones for 2019

Monday, May 6, 2019

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You can read reviews of the best cellphone plans and smartphones until your eyes glaze over and still end up scratching your head when it comes to making a decision. Our approach is a little different. It’s about making smart choices based upon the specific requirements for you and your family. Let’s get the obvious criteria out of the way first. The cellphone provider that you choose has to work in your home, on your way to work, at your… Read More ›

Interconnecting a Mobile PBX to the Asterisk Mothership

Interconnecting a Mobile PBX to the Asterisk Mothership

Monday, April 22, 2019

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The Holy Grail for a mobile VoIP solution is a simple way to connect back to your primary Asterisk® PBX via Wi-Fi from anywhere in the world to make and receive calls as if you never left. Let’s tick off the potential problems. First, many home-based PBXs are sitting behind NAT-based routers. Second, almost all remote Wi-Fi connections are made through a NAT-based router. Third, chances are the remote hosting platform blocks outgoing email from downstream servers such as a… Read More ›

A New VPN for All Seasons: Introducing OpenVPN for Asterisk

A New VPN for All Seasons: Introducing OpenVPN for Asterisk

Monday, April 15, 2019

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This month marks our twentieth anniversary wrestling with virtual private networks. Here’s a quick walk down memory lane. Our adventure began with the Altiga 3000 series VPN concentrators which we introduced in the federal courts in 1999. It was a near perfect plug-and-play hardware solution for secure communications between remote sites using less than secure Windows PCs. Cisco quickly saw the potential, gobbled up the company, and promptly doubled the price of the rebranded concentrators. About 10 years ago, we… Read More ›

VitalPBX in the Cloud: Providers, Backups, & Airtight Security

VitalPBX in the Cloud: Providers, Backups, & Airtight Security

Monday, April 2, 2018

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Last month we introduced VitalPBX, a terrific new (free) VoIP platform that’s about as intuitive as software can get. We followed up with a dozen Incredible PBX applications that really showed off the flexibility of this new Asterisk® platform. And today we’re pleased to introduce two new cloud solutions that offer our whitelist firewall design for security plus automatic backups. Both Digital Ocean and Vultr offer terrific performance coupled with a $5/month price point that is easy on your wallet.… Read More ›

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