3cx phone system

[nathan]

Has anyone used either Asterix or something like the 3cx phone system in there school. Both do what the normal phone system does but as it's based in software with as many extensions as you like. I think 3cx you pay by how many concurrent lines you want.

[pcstru]

I think there's a few Asterisk users around. I use it at home but not yet in the school. I keep putting off the replacement of the PBX - it's one of those nightmare projects I'd rather do almost anything else.

[Quackers]

We use Elastix which is just Asterisk but bundled with everything else you need. Configured it in 2009 and its just been left running on a Dell Poweredge ever since, rebooted it 3 times i think in 5 years.

[dhicks]

Has anyone used either Asterix or something like the 3cx phone system in there school. Both do what the normal phone system does but as it's based in software with as many extensions as you like. I think 3cx you pay by how many concurrent lines you want.

 

We use an IQ PBX, a copy of Asterix packaged into an all-in-one device and a web-based front end on top. It took a while to get going, mainly due to hardware issues at our end, but now it's ticking over well enough. I'm not sure if I'd bother buying another one, though - by the time we'd figured out what our hardware problems were we'd had to figure out pretty much how to configure an Asterix server anyway, so next time I'd probably simply buy a basic server, an interface card and install Asterix.

[nathan]

i do like the idea of easily adding your own extensions, they want £60 a time from us to add sip licenses on a panasonic phone system that was installed 3 weeks before i started my position. I'm sure a soft pbx would of worked better in our schools.

 

Are people using voip trunks or standard bt ones?

 

EDIT: If you are using sip trunks does anyone know any decent suppliers?

Edited March 24, 2014 by nathan

[Millgate]

Hi Nathan,

 

We deal with sip trunks. Feel free to email/pm me with details

 

Luke

[Meldrew]

We use 3cx here and we love it. You pay by the number of simultaneous calls external or internal. Very easy to use manage. There's plenty of updates come through with new features all the time.

 

Meldrew

[FN-GM]

We use FreePBX distro that is basically Asterisk with a GUI. you install the ISO it puts linux on and sets up asterisk all for you. We have 90 extensions on it and we don't pay a thing. It runs in a Vmware machine and we use SIP trunks for external connections. Edited March 24, 2014 by FN-GM

[nathan]

with regards to sip trunks, have most people got a dedicated broadband line or are they using there main school one with QOS?

[FN-GM]

with regards to sip trunks, have most people got a dedicated broadband line or are they using there main school one with QOS?

 

See here - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/how-do-you-do/132242-sip-trunk-over-your-broadband.html

[dhicks]

with regards to sip trunks, have most people got a dedicated broadband line or are they using there main school one with QOS?

 

We got an Ethernet First Mile (EFM) connection, with the idea being that we would move to SIP "trunks" at some point. Plans changed somewhat, and we're currently still using our BT lines, although SIP would definatly make sense at some point. Just to note that, as we discovered when sorting out our phone system, SIP "trunks" are really simply SIP servers, there nothing that complicated about them - you run some software on a server linked to a bunch of phone lines, you have a SIP trunk. You could, in theory, run your own co-located SIP server trunk, the knowledge of which might help you negoiate down the price of a SIP connection with providors.