Can I Simulate a Commercial VOIP Provider

Asterisk Asterisk SIP
1

Hello,

I’m brand new to Asterisk. I’ve read a lot, well, the free 3rd edition of the Definitive Guide, cover to cover. I’ve also got some old IP phones and downloaded a FreePBX install and started to setup and experiment locally between the extensions. My aim one day is to convince someone to scrap their proprietary hardware system and move to Asterisk/FreePBX…

Anyway that’s just background and not a question!

If I build a second Asterisk system with a few IP Phones and connect it back-to-back with my current test setup, will/can this second system appear just like a commercial VOIP provider? By configuring it with “real world” phone numbers and routing such numbers on my first system to the second system would this simulate a real-life setup?

Thanks

Andrew.

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It will look just like a commercial VoIP provider who uses Asterisk. I believe there are some smaller ones that do. You will probably not be able to simulate all the misfeatures of every provider.

The 3rd edition of the Guide is getting rather dated. I’m not sure that it covers chan_pjsip. You probably want one with real covers. like the 5th edition, although even that is for an end of life version. The 3rd edition will be useful background, but needs to be read in conjunction with later information.

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Thank you for your answer. Yes I know the document is well out of date and I’ve already had to research things via the community to understand new features etc. It’s still a “hobby” for me at this stage.
Andrew.

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Would it be fair to say that using Asterisk is automatically going to rule out a lot of the mistakes you could make with SIP?

So if you want to simulate a real VoIP provider, you might want to work with something that you can abuse in more low-level ways …

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Not sure I really understand that. I was just thinking of an easy way to test my real Asterisk set up e.g. handling “engaged” situations, call routing, hunt groups. I was just wondering if a 2nd system could “pretend” to be my VOIP provider at a very basic level to enable some basic testing before I connect for real. I know there are some SIP providers that provide free/cheap SIP trunks for development, but I have to use 4G and don’t get a public IP and as I said this is at the “hobby”/learning stage so paying for cheap SIP trunks doesn’t make sense when I don’t get to “play” very often.
Thank you anyway.
Andrew

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As I said, I believe some small providers actually use Asterisk.

The technical details are the same as the question on connecting two instances.

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