I’ve never done a round-up post before, so now must be a good time. Here are a few cool things I’ve found recently:

How to use VPN to solve VoIP problems

As some of you may be aware, when I’m not busy with my day job at NASA, I run a small VoIP company. The why and when of this company is a story for another day, with intrigue, betrayal, ex-CIA agents, con artists, lawsuits and utter, utter sleep deprivation. But, as I said, that will have to wait.

It’s a simple enough business – multi-line phone service for homes and offices, complete with distinctive ring, cool automated phone trees, time-of-day dialing, etc. And it has always had one nasty technology problem in it – NAT.

Anyone who has ever dealt with VoIP has run into all the various ways that NAT can go wrong. And I thought I had worked out ways to deal with most of them – at least, until I started working with some new hardware.

Let’s skip the gory details, and summarize by saying that I’ve been forced to deal with this problem in a decisive, and final, fashion. Read the rest of this entry »