[TriLUG] Options for replacing Panasonic PBX with Asterisk

[Jim Ray]

dude...slap in one of my TalkSwitch units, and you're in business.  
holler at me offline if you want the skinny.  it does VoIP and POTS.

http://www.neuse.net/phone

regards,

jim

Jim Ray, President
Neuse River Network, Inc.

tel: 919-838-1672 x111
toll free: 800-617-7652
cell: 919-606-1772
http://www.Neuse.Net

Ask about our Clean Technologies.  Established in the Carolinas 1997.



Rick DeNatale wrote:

>I woke up this morning to my wife telling me that our phone system
>seems to be dead.
>
>We've got a Panasonic TA-624 system at the house.   It seems to have
>reacted badly to last night's storm.  It did this once before, and I
>had to reset it and reprogram it.  This time, it doesn't even seem to
>want to power up.  It's strange because it's well protected both with
>a whole house surge protector on the meter, and with a phone line
>protector.  Nothing else in the house seems to have been affected,
>including a wireless phone which is in parallel with the Panasonic
>system behind the same phone line surge suppressor.  That seems like
>it would make it hard to pursue as an insurance issue, either with the
>homeowners policy, or with the insurance provided by Wake Electric
>with the whole house protection.
>
>So I'm faced with fixing this system, or replacing it with an asterisk box.
>
>Of course my preference would be asterisk, new toy, more
>programmability, configuration backup, etc. etc. The main concern is
>cost.  Right now, the Panasonic system has capability for 4 (or it
>might be 8) incoming PSTN lines, although I'm only using 1 at the
>moment, and 16 internal lines, of which we are using 12 if I'm
>counting correctly.  We've also got 8 proprietary Panasonic phones,
>which would be useless in an Asterisk system. Of course basic phones
>these days are pretty cheap.  We'd be losing some of the function
>though like intercom and station buttons and indicators, which is
>somewhat troublesome.
>
>But that seems to be adding up to quite a few FXS cards, and a lot of
>money.  Some of these extensions might be paired to save the need for
>quite so many ports, but...
>
>Unfortunately, the budget is going to be pretty slim for this.  Are
>there reasonable alternatives?  I've also looked at things like the
>Digium IAXy which would be nice from a wiring point of view (all of
>our internal phone lines are Cat-5 running back to a pair of Home
>Director structured wiring boxes).  But $100 a pop, is too painful to
>consider.
>
>Any thoughts?
>
>--
>Rick DeNatale
>
>Visit the Project Mercury Wiki Site
>http://www.mercuryspacecraft.com/
>  
>