As mentioned in the lesson about softphones and hardphones, the software Linphone will be used in this course to connect to the Asterisk server. It can be downloaded from linphone.org on a desktop or from the app store on a mobile device. It is free and open source software, which makes it a great pick for this lesson.

After installing the software open the application. If on the desktop, click on the Options menu and select preferences. This opens the settings dialog box. Click the Manage SIP Accounts tab. There should be an Add button that will allow for SIP accounts to be added to the software. Once clicked enter in the SIP identity and SIP proxy address.

The SIP identity will change depending on the context used in the sip.conf file. The account name is case sensitive. The IP address or DNS name of the Asterisk server will also need to be known. The first context [matthew] can be setup by typing in the following information:
sip:[email protected]

The SIP proxy address must be entered in as well. This again will need the IP address of DNS name of the Asterisk server. To configure this, enter in the following information:
sip:192.168.2.100

When the phones are recognized by Asterisk the connection can be seen in the Asterisk console. It will show the IP address of the phone and that the user is online. To see, open the Asterisk console with sudo asterisk -rvvv and use the command sip show peers.