VoIP Hacks: Tips & Tools for Internet Telephony (Paperback)

Description

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is gaining a lot of attention these days, as more companies and individuals switch from standard telephone service to phone service via the Internet. The reason is simple: A single network to carry voice and data is easier to scale, maintain, and administer. As an added bonus, it's also cheaper, because VoIP is free of the endless government regulations and tariffs imposed upon phone companies.

VoIP is simply overflowing with hack potential, and VoIP Hacks is the practical guide from O'Reilly that presents these possibilities to you. It provides dozens of hands-on projects for building a VoIP network, showing you how to tweak and customize a multitude of exciting things to get the job done. Along the way, you'll also learn which standards and practices work best for your particular environment. Among the quick and clever solutions showcased in the book are those for:

• gauging VoIP readiness on an enterprise network
  
• using SIP, H.323, and other signaling specifications
  
• providing low-layer security in a VoIP environment
  
• employing IP hardphones, analog telephone adapters, and softPBX servers
  
• dealing with and avoiding the most common VoIP deployment mistakes

Table of Contents

Credits  

Preface  

Chapter 1. Broadband VoIP Services 

      1. Get Connected  

      2. Use Pure VoIP Dialing with Your TSP  

      3. Wire Your House Phones for VoIP  

      4. Use a Softphone with a VoIP TSP  

      5. Prioritize Packets to Improve Quality  

      6. Got 911?  

      7. Update Your VoIP ATA Firmware  

Chapter 2. Desktop Telephony 

      8. Access Next-Gen Voice Features  

      9. Track Vonage Account Info on Your Desktop  

      10. Pick a Desktop VoIP Client  

      11. Sound Like Darth Vader While You VoIP  

      12. Grow Your Social Network with Gizmo  

      13. Record VoIP Calls on Your Windows PC  

      14. Handle Calls with Windows Software  

      15. Let Your Mac Answer and Log Your Calls  

      16. Run Phlink Even When Logged Off  

      17. Greet Callers Differently Each Day  

      18. Use Caller IDs in AppleScripts  

      19. Control iTunes from Phlink  

      20. VoIP While Fragging  

      21. Google for Telephony Info  

      22. Telephonize a Sound File  

      23. Record an Audio Chat on Your Mac  

      24. Create Telephony Sounds with SoX  

      25. Mix the Perfect Announcement  

      26. Sound Like a Pro Announcer  

      27. Record a Videoconference  

Chapter 3. Skype and Skyping 

      28. Get Skype and Make Some New Friends  

      29. Skype Your Outlook Contacts  

      30. Skype People from the OS X Address Book  

      31. Enable Site Visitors to Skype You  

      32. Speak Jyve  

      33. Teach Your Browser to Speak Jyve  

      34. Carry Skype in Your Pocket  

      35. Degunk International SkypeOut Calls  

      36. From Podcasting to Skypecasting  

      37. Answer Your Skype Calls, Even When You're Not Around  

      38. Use Custom Rings and Sounds with Skype  

      39. Emote by Sight and Sound with Skype  

      40. Skype with Your Home Phone  

Chapter 4. Asterisk 

      41. Turn Your Linux Box into a PBX  

      42. Attach a SIP Phone to Asterisk  

      43. Connect a Phone Line Using an FXO Gateway  

      44. Connect a Legacy Phone Line Using Zaptel  

      45. Forward Your Home Calls to Your Cell Phone  

      46. Selectively Forward Calls  

      47. Report Telephone Activity with Excel  

      48. Kindly Introduce Telemarketers to Mr. Privacy  

      49. Build a Four-Line Phone Server  

      50. Master Music-on-Hold  

      51. Record Calls  

      52. Get Your Daily Weather Forecast from Your Telephone  

      53. Put a Happy Face on Asterisk Using AMP  

      54. Run Asterisk Without Root, for Security's Sake  

      55. Link Two Asterisk Servers with PSTN  

      56. Link Several PBXs over the Internet  

      57. Route Calls Using Distinctive Ring  

      58. Tune Up Your Asterisk Logs  

Chapter 5. Telephony Hardware Hacks 

      59. Record Calls the Old-Fashioned Way  

      60. Make IP-to-IP Phone Calls with a Grandstream BudgeTone  

      61. Build a Custom Ringtone for Your Grandstream Phone  

      62. Tweak Your Sipura ATA  

      63. Build a Bat Phone  

      64. Brew Your Own Zaptel Interface Card  

      65. Build a Speed-Dial Service on Cisco IP Phones  

      66. Power Cisco Phones with Standard Inline Power  

      67. Customize Your Cisco IP Phone's Boot Logo  

      68. Configure Multiple IP Phones at One Time  

      69. Customize Uniden IP Phones from TFTP  

      70. Control the Lights Using Your IP Phone  

      71. Use a Rotary-Dial Phone with VoIP  

Chapter 6. Navigate the VoIP Network 

      72. Monitor VoIP Devices  

      73. Inspect the SIP Message Structure  

      74. Audit a Network's QoS Capabilities  

      75. Graph Latency and Jitter  

      76. Explore NAT Traversal  

      77. Shape Network Traffic to Improve Quality of Service  

      78. Create a Premium Class of Service  

      79. Build a $100 PSTN Gateway in 10 Minutes or Less  

      80. Make IP Phone Configuration a Trivial Matter  

      81. Peek Inside of SIP Packets  

      82. Dig into SDP  

      83. Sniff Out Jittery Calls with Ethereal  

      84. Log VoIP Traffic  

      85. Secretly Record VoIP Calls  

      86. Log and Record VoIP Streams  

      87. Intercept and Record a VoIP Call  

Chapter 7. Hard-Core Voice 

      88. Build a Killer Telephony Server  

      89. Build an H.323 Gatekeeper Using OpenH323  

      90. Turn Your Linux Box into a Fax Machine  

      91. Build an Inbound Fax-to-Email Gateway  

      92. Teach Your Asterisk Box to Speak  

      93. Build a Mac PBX  

      94. Monitor Asterisk from Your Perl Scripts  

      95. Build a SoftPBX with No Hard Drive  

      96. Build a Standalone Voicemail Server in Less Than a Half-Hour  

      97. Automate Your Voicemail Greeting  

      98. Connect Asterisk to the Skype Network  

      99. Forward Your Home Phone Calls to Skype  

      100. Get Started with sipX  

Index