VoIP and ADSL on the cheap?
Well, if you think you can handle Asterisk, then using the Linux box to serve all your purposes at once does make some sense. A few things to think about: A) You’ll have to carefully maintain patchlevels on any box exposed to the outside world. B) Separating your firewalling from your other services is a very good idea, from a security perspective. C) If you buy the integrated box from your provider, it becomes their responsibility to maintain. Hacks against these things are pretty rare (at least, I’ve never heard of any), but should something come up, it’s up to them to fix. This can be a plus or a minus, depending on how responsive they are. If you like tinkering, definitely go for doing it yourself… you’ll learn more, and you have absolute control. As long as you’re okay with the ongoing maintenance time cost, go for it! I don’t know a lot about Asterisk, but everything else you can probably do with your existing hardware. If you want Asterisk to work like a normal phone (as in, y
