VPN Tunnels, Oh What Fun.

A few years back I was tasked by the boss to create a secure connection between one of our servers and a really big telco. I'll call them Acme Telcom to protect the innocent. He also wanted to use an opensouce solution. I had to pass a testing phase first and Acme Telcom said that the only the only people to have any success with it in the past used BSD as the operating system and blah-blah programs to get the VPN tunnel working.

Well BSD wasn't going to work for me since the server used some flavor of Linux (the exact name escapes me at this moment) and after reading some reviews and have a good-old look at the few programs out there I settled in on Openswan. I've never seen it written anywhere but I think
it is an acronym for Opensouce Secure Wide Area Network and the program allows you to create secure connections across the web.

I wasn't able to find much help on the web, which I considered kind of weird so I got the company to plunk down the bucks to buy me the book "Openswan" by Paul Wouters and Ken Bantoft, and published by Packt Publishing. The book was full of options for the program itself and discussed in chapter 9, interoperability with other vendor implementations. Which is definitely what I was looking for. All in all it was a good read and I would recommend it for its covering of the history of IPSEC alone.

Within a week of reading this book I was able to go from not knowing squat about VPN tunnelling to having five tunnels running simultaneously from the same server and pushing SIP messaging across said tunnels to Amce Telcom's POPS. Not to shabby if I say so myself considering I was the first to do this with Acme and Linux.

What Is A DID anyway?

A DID is a fancy term for what is basically nothing more that a phone number. It stands for 'Direct Inward Dialing' and it comes from an old term when a business would have several phone numbers assigned through its PBX that would make a certain phone ring when that number was called. It allows you to call that number without having to dial the operator or front desk first.

Welcome to the 21st century where now Voice-over-IP applications are making major inroads to the consumer. With VoIP customers both big and small littering the playing field it leaves a lot of room for suppliers of VoIP products and services to hawk thier wares.

One such service available is the DIDXchange available here. It was designed with wholesalers in mind and what they provide is a place for DID sellers and buyers to come together in one, centralized location. A supplier is able to post thier extra DIDs that they have available from anywhere in the world and buyers can select them and route them to thier customers. Bear in mind that DIDX is only able to provide an incoming service or 'origination' in telephony-speak at this time.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Lets say you 're Israeli student that is studying abroad and you get homesick a lot, or you are a business person with partners in Tel Aviv. Well my friends do I have a deal for you. Now you can get an Israeli phone number that will ring on your home phone or PC and beat the toll charges associated with a long distance call.

The idea is simple. You're in the United States (or wherever) and you get an Israeli number (or wherever - there are a lot more places.). Now your friends, family, business partners, etc., dial a local Tel Aviv number and they are able to connect to you, using VoIP and the plain-old telephone system. It is that easy.

The numbers, or DIDs for the technically inclined are sold through DIDX and in particular note 708443 (This is the DID seller's unique ID) in your wholesale DIDX buyer portal for good quality, hard to find Tel Aviv numbers. DIDX is setup to only allow wholesalers at this time so if you become one of these or know one let them know about the DIDX website.