And while we’re on the subject of VoIP… TrixBox now has a 2.0 version available. I downloaded and installed this on another machine, before realizing that, like Dorthy, all I had to do was click the heels of my ruby slippers together three times, and I could upgrade my current Trixbox to version 2.0. And indeed that is all it takes; running the upgrade script, letting it chug for an hour or so, and then going in on the FreePBX interface and running the module upgrade procedure for FreePBX.

2.0 includes new versions of almost everything, including a release candidate 1 of FreePBX 2.2.0. So, now I have TrixBox 2.0 with FreePBX 2.2.0 which manages Asterisk 1.2.13.

Over at the Digium they are touting the Asterisk appliance, which is intended as a Trixbox competitor. This comes with Asterisk 1.4.0, beta a notch more recent than the version provided with TrixBox. I flirted with this; installed it actually, but then ran into some problems. I was intrigued however, to see that there was some additonal support for H.323 video…does this means that Asterisk will someday compete as a videoconferencing multi-point control unit (MCU)?

While the new interfaces are fine, the great news from my perspective was that the update blew away my IAX2 trunk configurations for VoicePulse. It left, however the VoicePulse SIP trunks, and I’ve been using them for two days without difficulty, not a single reboot or missed call. Call quality seems to be consistantly good. If this continues, I may actually get confident enough to apply for a phone number for the VoicePulse trunks and use them for inbound calls as well as outbound.

I’ve been using VoicePulse for calls now for a little over a month. Calls within the U.S. have a rate of up to two cents per minute. Calls to Germany were charged 2.7 cents per minute. The one outlier was a charge of 75 cents per minute to directory assistance in the U.S. What a rip!