VOIP & Asterisk

[plexer]

Just installed a test asterisk box here using the iso from trixbox.org which is what asterisk@home is now called.

Also found an excellent guide on http://www.sureteq.com/asterisk/trixboxv1.2.htm which is easy enough to follow.

Ben

[TechMonkey]

Been thinking about this for a while, starting just an office PBX to play with and then seeing if we could change the school one over.

I can never quite work out the connections though. Coudl we plug it straight in to our phone socket and have it manage our extension number calls? & what do you need to connect it to the phone any modem or a special card?

[plexer]

To plug an asterisk server into a phone socket I believe you need one of these:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Its-Real-X100P...QQcmdZViewItem

If you are just using ip phones then you don't need anything to start with.

You can buy ata adapters that will turn a normal phone into a voip one and still allow the normal phone to connect to the pots system.

Ben

[Geoff]

It's designed to replace an old fashioned PBAX (in BT speak this is something called a 'Meridian'). If you have one of these lurking someplace (it's usually a grey box on a wall someplace with little blue lines on it) then Asterisk will work but you will need to buy a line card for your machine.

If you want to just plug it into a standard telephone line you can do that too but you'll need a different sort of card.

There's more info about the various combinations at the asterisk hardware page:

http://www.asterisk.org/hardware

[plexer]

Just an update for people on this I've been playing with the Trixbox installtion and I bought one of those X100P cards from ebay and have had a knightmare getting Trixbox to recognise it.

I found another bootable iso asterisk installation from http://www.xorcom.com/rapid/index.html and this installed the card no problems.

Setup of Rapid was basically just that rapid and it comes with different extensions preconfigured. Doesn't have as nice a web gui as the trixbox install but it does have webmin that you can install on it.

Ben

[Joedetic]

Is there any client software that you could use instead of IP phones?

Ie...if you just plug the box into the network you have VoIP working with client software and headsets on machines etc?

Or should I play with something else for that sort of thing?

[plexer]

No you can use soft phones I use x-lite from xten.

www.counterpath.com

Ben

[Joedetic]

Ah great... ta!

[CyberNerd]

Last night I posted about the wonders of Gizmo and benefits over skype.
Gizmo supports SIP, and therefore asterix.

http://www.gizmoproject.com/asterisk.html

http://www.gizmoproject.com/

[plexer]

Looks good.

I presume I need a different interface card to plug my asterisk into the pbx phone socket in my server room as with the X100P everytime I called the phone or tried to route an external call it just killed the phone.

Dunno if it's a digital PBX extension that the card doesn't work with or maybe wrong lead.

Going to try it at home on POTS.

Ben

[john]

you may find the phone your plugging it into in your server room is a digital extention. Try it on a Fax / Alarm line in your school and see what that does

[plexer]

Thats what I think hence

Dunno if it's a digital PBX extension

Dunno what card to use though to make it work.

Ben

[john]

an ISDN card perhaps as it may be an ISDN phone, I know mine used to be, or just swap it to an analogue extention. A good way of guessing is does the phone have a fancy LCD display on it or lights to indicate VM etc then if so its probably a 95% chance its a digital extention. If its some bashed up old BT handset on the end of a piece of wet string, it maybe you main PBAX is having a sulk

[plexer]

It's definately a digital extension when you say it like that as I have a sub master phone on the system.

Bought the asterisk box home tonight to try it on pots and I just left myself a voicemail on my mobile via x-lite on my laptop plugged into the asterisk box so the X100P does work fine.

Will have to see if we have any spare analogue extensions to plug it into, was hoping to use my server room one as I can get an outside line from there but not upstairs in my office so could then use a voip phone to dial out from anywhere

Ben

[john]

oooh, Sub Master Phone How Swankey (says me with his swanky IP phones ). Or you could just get a full on Cisco / BT / Alcatel IP phone system, the SMT and Governors will be like excellent call savings, and then when you say you wont need any more phone cabling installing again as its just pure network, no voice panels etc they will go YES YES YES lets get it