Networking

FMC: The Future of Telephony with Vitelity's vMobile and Asterisk in the Cloud

FMC: The Future of Telephony with Vitelity’s vMobile and Asterisk in the Cloud

Thursday, May 15, 2014

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If making phone calls from a web browser is what you’ve always longed for, then you’re in good company with Google and its future direction in the telephony space. Call us old fashioned but this strikes us as a solution in desperate need of a problem. What’s wrong with a Plain Old Telephone or a smartphone for making connections with friends and business associates? The real head scratcher is the fact that the WebRTC and Hangouts push demonstrates that the… Read More ›

The End of an Era: Farewell to Dell and Microsoft and Windows

The End of an Era: Farewell to Dell and Microsoft and Windows

Thursday, March 27, 2014

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As some of you know, we use computers to do Real Work™ so we’re pretty much agnostic when it comes to operating systems and hardware. We have Windows machines and Macs and Linux servers from quad-core systems that will heat your house to Raspberry Pi’s and BeagleBone Blacks that can run full-featured phone systems. We also take full advantage of cloud-based solutions from Amazon to RentPBX to Copy.com when it is cost-effective to do so. And we give equal time… Read More ›

Crippleware: Is Red Hat Rewriting the GPL and the Future of Open Source?

Crippleware: Is Red Hat Rewriting the GPL and the Future of Open Source?

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

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We’ve always been a believer that things happen for a reason. And so it is with the recent CentOS "acquisition" by Red Hat. It’s no secret that CentOS was cutting into Red Hat’s revenue stream. While Red Hat had announced plans to create its own CentOS-like spinoff, the actual absorption of CentOS and its development team into Red Hat, Inc. was a surprise. So was the claim by Karanbir Singh that he individually owned the CentOS trademark. As we previously… Read More ›

Don't Hurry: A First Look at Google Glass with Google Glass Frame

Don’t Hurry: A First Look at Google Glass with Google Glass Frame

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

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It’s one thing to read about new technology, and quite another to actually try it out. We’ve been holding off on Google Glass awaiting support for prescription lenses. Well, it’s finally here. And Nerd Uno was one of the first to receive the new Google Glass Frames. Having spent the better part of a week with the new technology, here’s our review. Let’s start with the price tag. Ours came to $1,868.75. That’s before you add the cost of prescription… Read More ›

netTALK to the Rescue: Dumping Google Voice for Less Than 10¢ a Day

netTALK to the Rescue: Dumping Google Voice for Less Than 10¢ a Day

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

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The Google Voice Adventure with Asterisk® has been disappointing to put it charitably. Google never really saw the benefit of providing free phone service to millions of Americans because they never could quite figure out how to monetize the project. In the meantime, shady call centers were eating them alive with dozens if not hundreds of Google Voice trunks that were placing endless calls around the clock. The final straw was Microsoft deciding to keep Skype proprietary while adding free… Read More ›

Finally a 100% Portable PBX: Introducing GoIP, a SIP-GSM Gateway for Asterisk

Finally a 100% Portable PBX: Introducing GoIP, a SIP-GSM Gateway for Asterisk

Monday, September 30, 2013

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How far we have come! The original Asterisk® claim to fame was its ability to interface with proprietary phone systems and legacy telephony hardware, the glue that literally kept companies stuck to their overpriced PBXs. And, just as wired phone systems began to lose their edge, along came the Bell Sisters to introduce cellular communications with billing that began when the phone started ringing and an end to toll-free calling and extra fees for text messaging on top of exorbitantly… Read More ›

Practicing Safe SIP: Adding SIP URI and Free DID Connectivity to Asterisk

Practicing Safe SIP: Adding SIP URI and Free DID Connectivity to Asterisk

Monday, August 19, 2013

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Last year, we began our exploration of safe SIP options for Asterisk® by introducing a hybrid solution using VoIP.ms for a registered SIP trunk and IPkall for a free DID. Today, in addition to a free IPkall DID to accept incoming PSTN calls, we have a slightly different approach that provides a direct SIP URI address from Sip2Sip.info for your server. As with the original tutorial, today’s implementation preserves our Zero Internet Footprint™ design for total SIP insulation of your… Read More ›

Introducing NeoRouter 1.9 VPN: Still a Shining Star

Introducing NeoRouter 1.9 VPN: Still a Shining Star

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

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In a previous article, we introduced PPTP VPNs for interconnecting remote users and branch offices to a central network hub. Known as a hub-and-spoke VPN, the advantage of this design is it lets remote users participate as peers in an existing home office LAN. It’s simple to set up and easy to maintain. The drawback is vulnerability to man-in-the-middle attacks. Today, we want to revisit the more traditional client-server VPN which relies upon a central server but uses a star… Read More ›