[clue-tech] Asterisk

[Chris Hirsch]

Mike Staver wrote:
> Ok, I think I'm understanding a bit more - basically, if I wanted to
> go the easy route, I could install Asterisk on a standard PC or server
> here in the office.  The Asterisk server then simply plugs into my
> existing LAN.  I create a "trunk" that communicates over the network
> connection to a provider.  The provider would allow me to have as many
> numbers I need, which I then forward via Asterisk to the appropriate
> handsets, which also plug into my network.  I can then utilize my
> existing T1 for all of this.  My only concern because prioritizing
> voice packets over anything else. Chris, thanks for the AAH link, I'm
> reading about it now.  It looks easy to set up - my only concern would
> be if it can handle up to 20 employees at a company vs just being a
> home solution.  I'm assuming the channel card is for connecting
> directly to a T1, which I won't be doing at this point.  I will be
> using existing fax machines though - how can you accomplish this, with
> a different type of channel card?
>
Thanks Jim for the FXO/FXS definitions..I always forget how frustrating
all the TLA's are when dealing with VoIP :-)

Mike: Yeah thats basically about it...In a big picture way you pick how
you want to to receive calls and make calls (these *can* be different
with Asterisk). This can be POTS ie Qwest, T1, VoIP provider etc. (This
is the FXO side of things if using POTS). Then you need to decide what
kind of phones you want to use. This can be cell phones, analog phones
(with an FXS card), VoIP phones (note that I don't mention any one in
particular..some work better but you can use pretty much any VoIP phone
as long as they do SIP, or another supported protocol).

As for prioritizing packets, that shouldn't really be a big worry as
long you are on a 100Mbps wired network and you're not utilizing the
entire network. Asterisk *does* support QoS and as long as your switches
support QoS thats good too. The problem is that once your packets leave
your internal network there is an excellent chance that QoS is dropped
so your voice has the same priority as data. This is of course only
applicable if you're using a VoIP provider.

Don't let the "home" in Asterisk at Home fool you. It's probably more
powerful than many of the PBX's out there already. Asterisk can scale
from little home use all the way up to call centers.  I'm pretty sure
the "Home" part was because the developers also include a module to let
you control home automation stuff via X10.  The only scaling problem
would be hardware and not the software including in AAH itself. That
being said I'm using a PII for my home (5 phones) with no   problems and
I've got a business client with 6 phones using an older celeron with
256M ram. Really if you want to use the CRM that is built into AAH I'd
recommend a more beefy box just for a more snappy response. Asterisk,
however, works perfectly.

If you want to do fax receiving to real fax machines you want to look
into the FXS cards (or modules) that Digium sells. Then you can plug fax
machines into those and Asterisk will detect fax tones and route faxes
there. Asterisk is also capable of receiving faxes itself and routing
them to email addresses. A couple of years ago I had this working with
about half of the incoming faxes (older faxes seemed to work better than
newer) but it wasn't reliable. I've heard that major advances have
happened here and things should be better now. I'm actually looking into
this and should hopefully have a better answer here in the next few weeks.

Chris
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