James Rathbun

As a network administrator I have the opportunities to work with a lot of networking equipment.  Long ago I lost track of all the firewalls and routers that I configured.  The list would read as a laundry list of equipment and include Cisco, Sonicwall, custom-built Linux servers and IPCop.  The cost of this hardware can be intimidating, especially for the home user.

For my home network, for years I would buy a reasonably priced wireless routers which could be purchased and Fry’s, Best Buy or any of the retail stores in the area.  I don’t recall ever purchasing a router online as typically you need it to replace the previous router which just failed.

I would purchase ”all in one” wireless routers which would be highly recommend by friends or coworkers.  Once installed, they would work great for about 6 months and then fail.  I would RMA the routers, and when the replacement arrived I would give it away, simply because I can’t do my job without my internet connection.   The last router I purchased was a dual channel wireless N router, and sure enough, after about 6 months, it again failed.   I noticed on this failure, that they way it failed was the key to my problem.

I noticed, that the first thing to fail would be the wireless connection.  It would randomly drop all the wireless clients in the house and the throughput across the router would drop to a crawl, and I would see extremely high latency.  The routers would then be extremely hot to the touch.  Keep in mind, that my routers sit in a well ventilated server rack.  When I restarted the router, it would boot up fine, and the symptoms would return once the port forwarding rules loaded.  I did have a lot of port forwarding going on for a variety of services, but it didn’t seem excessive and the routers web interface would allow much more.

When my last wireless router failed, I drove down to Fry’s again and buough a Netgear Prosafe VPN Firewall FVS318v3.  This is a SOHO router and doesn’t offer wireless.  I was insistent that I not have wireless in this router.  The router does have a VPN component built-in, but I don’t utilize this feature for my purposes.  When I opened the packaging, I was immediately happy.  After I threw away the instructions, I noticed the chassis is metal, not plastic, and it has a small cooling fan built into it.  After about five minutes worth of work, I had the router plugged in, configured, and completely up and running.  The most important issue for me, is that after almost two years, I have never had to restart it, and it has never failed for me.

The router I replaced was a Cisco Linksys Dual-Band WRT610N.  When I purchased the router, it retailed for about $200, so it wasn’t an inexpensive.  I came to the conclusion, that between the dual band wireless, and a hefty set of port forwarding rules I was simply overheating the routers.  I still use the Cisco, but it only provides wireless for the home office, and from time to time still needs a reboot.

Should this router fail for me, then my next step is to build an implement an IPCop solution.  I would prefer not to go this route due to the increase power demands and costs of running a computer as a router.  I have run IPCop servers for three years with no downtime, issue or rebooting, so I am very comfortable with that solution.

As part of my home PBX server project , I needed the ability to connect my existing home phone infrastructure into my Asterisk PBX server.  In addition to regular phones, I have a DVR and home alarm system and poor cell phone coverage.  The solution to connecting a regular phone to a modern PBX Server is a VoIP adapter such as the Linksys SPA-3102.  The great news is that this product is only about $80 if you shop around for it.  This may seem like more than it should cost, but when you consider the price of phones these days, and the monthly cost of phone server in the home, this cost is covered in just a few months of savings.

The Linksys SPA-3102 is a VoIP media gateway which allows you to connect your regular phone using an RJ-11 phone jack, and convert audio signal into a SIP compliant TCP/IP signal.  The original configuration for this device is that it replaces your home router.  Currently, my home router of choice is a Netgear Prosafe VPN Firewall FVS318v3.  I am very pleased with the reliability and performance of this router, is it succeeds where many other routers failed.  This fact alone forced me to set up my Linksys VoIP gateway a bit differently.

Connections

Connecting the VoIP gateway into my network is simplicity at its best.  Plugin the WAN interface into my internal network switch, plug the  phone into the green “Phone” RJ-11 connection and plugin your device.

Configuration

Once you have powered on your VoIP gateway, the next step is to configure the phone.  To accomplish this:

1. Connect the gateway with your web browser and login to your gateway.  The directions for this step are part of your packaging.
2. Once connected, click on the WAN tab, which allows you configure the network for the gateway.  Because I am not using this as my primary router, the WAN adapter is really just the LAN connection to my home network.
3. Fill in/change the settings to suit your network needs.  I prefer to a static home network as SOHO routers are not very sophisticated.
4. Once your WAN/LAN is completely configured, you may be prompted to restart the device.  Please do so, and reconnected to the gateway as need.
5. When connected again look for the painfully small link in the footer or navigation bar, which reads “Admin Login” and click on it.  Once clicked, many new options and tabs are available to you.
6. Click on the “Voice” tab to configure your phone line.
7. Click the “Line 1″ tab.
8. Enter the IP address or server name of your PBX in the Proxy text field.
9. Enter the Display Name, User ID, Auth ID and password you used when you setup the extension on the SIP server.
10. Reboot as needed.

Calling

Once you VoIP gateway reboots, you should be able to login to your sip server and see the extension registration.  Additionally, you may call from phone from another extension, or call in and out of the system depending on the configuration of your PBX.

As a lifelong outdoors man, I have hiked, rafted, backpacked and camped across most of desert southwest.  As such, I have learned very well what I do and don’t need when I leave the city. I am perfectly happy finding a clearing just off a tail and setting up a campsite.  A few years ago my wife and I purchased a four door Jeep Wrangler JK which we use quite often to go on day drives.  The challenge is load and organize all of our gear and carry it in a medium size SUV.

My goal is to build a chuck box, or camp kitchen, which is a simple box to store all the kitchen supplies needed for a successful camping trip.  The chuck box needs to balance strength, weight and most importantly for me, size.  The chuck box needs to contain all of gear and would enable to set up our campsite in no time.  I am hoping to keep it small enough and lite enough that I can easily move it with no help.  The Jeep 4 door Wrangler does not have a large about of cargo space especially for a family of three and a yellow Labrador.

I have several goals:

1. I want the chuck box to fix in the back of the jeep with the back seats usable.
2. The box must contain all of our cooking gear,  including a stove, pots, frying pans, dutch oven, plates, utensils, cleaning supplies, etc…
3. Everything is carried securely AND  organized in such a way that it keeps down the noise potential when driving on the back roads.
4. The box needs to be light weight yet strong enough to survive the pounding of camping, ‘jeepin’, etc…

In my continuing efforts to keep up to date with the latest of technology and lower my own monthly expenses, I have built a home phone server for my home office.  As cell phones continue to gain in popularity, and coverage areas expand, this may seem like an old solution to a modern problem.  I know several households that no longer have a home land line, and they just use their cell phones.  This is a great idea, but sadly for some of us, it not a solution for a variety of reasons.

1. Cost: I want to have a phone line, voice-mail, etc… and NOT pay way too much money for a large corporation.  I am planning on running the phone server and utilizing Google’s free Google Voice service which provides incoming and outgoing phone service.  In time they may change for this service, but other companies offer phone numbers and service for a starting cost of about $4 / month.  This is much less expensive that my current monthly phone bill.
2. Lack of Coverage:  Cell phone reception at my house is poor depending upon your service provider.
3. Old technology: I have several devices in my home, such as alarms, DVR’s etc… that do not use the Internet to connect to the service provider.  This is a sad state of technology, which is the reality of the times.
4. Call Routing: A phone server will allow me to send calls from multiple sources, and route them to different locations depending upon their source.  Also, as an example should someone call, and wish to speak with my wife Heather, I can easily transfer the call to her cell.
5. Call screening: During political seasons, and living in a swing state for the presidential elections, I tend to get a lot of political calls.  During the last election cycle, I would receive up to 20 phone calls per day.  This is the sad state of our political system and really annoying for me.  When the calls start coming in next time, I may force the caller to press the ’1′ key on their phone to complete the call.  This should stop all ‘Robo Calls’.
6. Continuing Education: A big part of my goal here is to teach myself how SIP phone servers work.

Many people, Blogs, consultants, etc… have written a lot about setting up an Asterisk SIP phone server with Google Voice.  I have not invented anything here, and rely heavily on their hard work and dedication to their craft.  So that being said, here is what I did to get Asterisk running with Google Voice.

Download  the ISO file for PBX in a Flash.  PBX in a Flash is essentially and CentOS distribution, which includes all the software required to get the phone server online.  The installation was pretty straight forward and the website http://nerdvittles.com/?p=791  has the process documented reasonably well, so I will give credit where credit is due.  The process did need a bit of time on my hardware, and this is due to the fact that I installed the system on hardware which is several years old.  Actually, a nice part of the system is that the PBX will run on old hardware.  I was looking for an old laptop to use, but settled on a desktop several years past its prime.

Once the system restarted, I was able to quickly create two extensions, and had my phones running in a matter of minutes.  The first phone I have is a LinkSYS SPA942 and it was very easy to set up utilizing the web interface.  The second phone is actually a LinkSYS Voice Gateway with Router SPA3102.  This is a great device which plugins into my network switch and has the ability to connect a regular phone to the SIP PBX server.

So my next steps are voice mail, more toys, test reliability and setting up two different caller IDs depending upon which phone dials out.  This is for the most part continuing to learn the system, but important to me none the less.  I cannot wait to call my phone company….

So, this week I have started up several projects this week, or rather, they are a continueation of projects that I have been working for a while.

Phone system:  I am in the process of migrating my home phone service into a  Linux based SIP phone server.  My goal is to improve my home phone service and dramatically decrease the monthly cost.  Many people are doing away with their home phone service and moving to cell phones, which I can respect and envy.  However, this is not an option when you have home alarms and DVR’s which requrie a phone line.

Additionally, at my house cell phone service can be spotty.  Currently, I have the server built and am working on final tuning and configuration.  More on this to follow…

Camp Kitchen:   My family and I do a lot of out of doors activity, hiking, camping, jeepin, etc…  From our last campout, my wife and I determined that it is time to build a dedicated camping kitchen.  My goal is to have a single box, which can be used to store all of our gear in a small package which easily fits into the back of our jeep with all of our other gear.  I hope to store and organize our stove, pots, pans, utensils and cleaning gear.  More on this to follow…

Website: I continue to reorganize, work on and update my website.  To that end, I have purchased the domain JamesRathbunPhotography.com  for my photographs.  This domain is now powered by WordPress.  I am typically not a fan of CMS systems and there limitations quickly limit my ability to develop content to my liking.  However, with the new website, and the fact that I am now blogging more, any limitations are quickly surpassed by WordPress’s ability  to quickly and easily publish articles.  The next minor goal is to continue to find widgets to improve the site, and fix some bugs on the server.