Synology NAS hosted home Asterisk Server: The plan

Readers of this blog will be aware that I purchased and setup a Synology DS211J a few months back, if not you can check out the series of posts starting with "Finally getting a backup solution". Readers will also be aware that I have started a new job that involves equal parts sitting at home turning into a slob and travelling around meeting clients and working on site. So what I am currently trying to do is optimize my home office and communication solutions.

At home I've got a NodePhone account and it is currently connected to a base station and linked into a few wireless handsets. This works pretty well for a home phone, but none of the handsets have headsets or speaker phone so conference calls are going to be a killer. Unfortunately NodePhone doesn't support multiple registrations in its current guise so simply logging in on the laptop with a headset or something similar isn't going to work.... or is it!

The plan then is to have an Asterisk server log into the NodePhone account and then let my current router and it's inbuilt ATA log into the Asterisk server, plus also I will be able to have other computers and phones logging into the Asterisk server and sharing the line out and also allowing me to register to the Asterisk server remotely and call the home phone as well as make cheap international and other calls. Now the beauty of the plan is that I should be able to install Asterisk on my NAS creating a NAStrisk solution (terribly imaginative name) that means I don't need to have another server on the network and the associated upkeep.

So the stages for this (as far as I can tell are):

1. Install ipkg package manager on the DS211J
2. Install the Asterisk ipkg and its dependencies.
3. Configure Asterisk and make some local test calls.
4. Configure router to let SIP traffic through to the NAStrisk
5. Get NAStrisk connected to NodePhone account and forwarding calls to other sip accounts locally.
6. Connect routers ATA to the NAStrisk so that the WAF isn't affected.
7. ....
8. Profit

Hopefully I'll have the time to get this going in the next week or two, of course I will be posting here as I go, so you can all feel my pain bask in my success!