[TriLUG] Suggested Asterisk voip setup

Heath Roberts htroberts at gmail.com
Fri Jan 30 00:31:44 EST 2009


On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Hadrian Zbarcea <hzbarcea at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I want to try a voip solution using Asterisk.  My research was not
> very conclusive, so I hope somebody who did this could help.  I have 2
> (up to 4 in the future) AT&T landlines, I will have 6 voip phones for
> now, not heavy call volume.  I will need to buy all the hardware, so I
> am flexible there.  Do you have any recommendation for:
>
> 1. FXO card (Digium, Sangoma, Rhino?)
> 2. System and OS.  Is there any issue with AMD vs Intel.
> 3. Phones that work (Aastra seems good)
> 4. Good supplier/reseller (although they may all be pretty much the
> same)

Why would you want additional landlines with VoIP? I can see keeping the two
you have, but not adding more.

Aastra make good phones, so do Polycom.

For hardware, digium cards are great, but for just a couple of FXO ports to
connect to existing land lines, you may want to just get a couple of analog
terminal adapters. Linksys/Supira are cheap, work well, etc.

For software distributions, I'll echo the
Trixbox<http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=123387&package_id=192286>endorsement.
There's a pre-configured vmware image that you can probably
have processing calls in about ten minutes if you want to play. The trixbox
page says the vmware image "is not to be used for production" but I've not
had any issues with it. Trixbox Without
Tears<http://dumbme.mbit.com.au/trixbox2/trixbox2_without_tears.pdf>is
a decent starting guide.

You should also look at the combination hardware/software boxes from Digium
(Switchvox SOHO <http://www.digium.com/en/products/switchvox/soho.php>),
Aastra (Aastralink Pro
160<http://www.aastratelecom.com/cps/rde/xchg/SID-3D8CCB6A-5FAFD3A6/03/hs.xsl/27293.htm>),
and Trixbox (Appliance <http://www.trixbox.com/products/appliance>).

I've been happy with vitelity.net as a VoIP provider. I don't have a lot of
calls, so the $1.49/number/month was attractive to me, and they have
asterisk/trixbox configuration guides. Make sure you use an Internet router
that lets you prioritize your VoIP traffic.


-- 
Heath Roberts
htroberts at gmail.com



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