OK, I finally got a stable connection. There are two ways, depending on your routers' capabilities. I used dyndns.org to give me an up-to-date connection at all times (no register statement required). After I did that I read the following on the Asterisk wiki:
"The "register" statement only works if you want to hook up a server with a dynamic IP to a server with a static (public) IP, i.e. on the user you must add "host=dynamic" in the iax.conf for that peer."
Probably would have helped to have read that sooner (at least I would have gotten to bed before 2am).
Here is a link to the full article:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index....dual%20servers
OK, I just lost connectivity from my remote to main (shouldn't have turned my back). I just downloaded Asterisk@Home 2.4 (currently running 2.2). 2.3 was blown through in a matter of hours so I trust there were major issues. I will install and report back.