(This is turning into more of an asterisk discussion rather than a purely
m0n0wall one. If it's annoying people we'll move it off-list, but judging by
others' comments here, it might be useful for the list, even if not strictly
on-topic.)

> I also have a BSD webserver box that's hosted in the USA that 
> I am considering installing Asterisk on.  It has gobs of 
> bandwidth and I was thinking that maybe we could use this as 
> a gateway, have the Asterisk server here pipe everything 
> through that server (therefore enabling trunking, reducing 
> our office bandwidth) and from there it would break out to 
> the other end of the call.

So, if I picture this correctly, you'll have SIP phones communicating SIP to
a local Asterisk server, which then fires the calls over IAX to your server
elsewhere, from where it heads via SIP to a PSTN gateway, then breaks out
onto the PSTN?

If bandwidth costs locally are very high, I can see this as being a viable
option. However, be careful adding the extra hops doesn't increase latency
too much. I get delays of about 26-30ms over the 1mbps/256kbps ADSL line
here. Much more than, say 70ms will start to become noticable and introduce
an echo.

> If this box became bogged down due to heavy VOIP usage, we 
> could easily migrate the VOIP to a gruntier box at the same location.

A modest asterisk server will handle a good few hundred calls without
difficulty.

> There are a few half-decent looking Australian SIP VOIP 
> suppliers that I would consider using with the Asterisk 
> server to enable PC to Phone calls.
> But the number of SIP/VOIP supliers in Australia isn't that great.

Is there any compelling reason to use providers in Australia? You may find
it cheaper to use a provider in the US or the Far East. However, I don't
know how the telecoms structure works in Australia - in the US you generally
don't pay for local calls, here in the UK you pay for damn near everything.
I remember a couple of years ago it was cheaper to call clients in Florida
than it was to call the folks next door.

> We generally deal with the SMB marketplace, so we're 
> generally installing Microsoft Windows SBS 2003 boxen at 
> these sites.

For some clients, having a Linux/BSD box on-site might be a cost-effective
alternative to the microsoft offering. I know of at least 2 of our clients
who use their asterisk server as a samba domain server.

Regards,

Chris
-- 
C.M. Bagnall, Director, Minotaur I.T. Limited
Tel: (07010) 710715   Mobile: (07811) 332969   Skype: minotaur-uk
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