Re: [PLUG] Asterisk advice

[Tom Diehl <tdiehl@rogueind.com>]

On Tue, 22 Mar 2011, Eric at Lucii.org wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> I currently use a Magic Jack as a second/business phone line but I want to get
> away from it.  I looked at NetTalk (Nettalk.com) for $70 and it looks most
> decent but it's features are limited and I've read some complaints about voice
> quality.
>
> Now I'm wondering if it would be better to set up my own asterisk box.  I know
> that I have to use a provider like Vitelity (or similar) to get my phone
> numbers.  I'll have to add a card to support the existing analog phone
> infrastructure in the house/office.  I have a couple of extra computers here and
> I'm reasonably certain that either one of them is up to the task.

If you get a sip phone you do not need a card for the analog phones. Depending on
your needs you might be able to get sip phones cheaper then it will cost you for
a good card to make the analog phones work.

> Is that about it?  Is Asterisk a bear to set up?  I'm a bit of a hacker but have
> only minimal telephony knowledge.  I keep seeing trixbox community edition
> mentioned... is that a good way to get up and running?

I would suggest staying away from TrixBox. IIRC Trixbox forked Freepbx
and broke it.

Digium has AsteriskNow and it works well for me. Using freepbx to administer 
AsteriskNow takes a lot of the pain out of things. I have also used pbxinaflash
which has a very active community and you can also administer things using
freepbx. The reason I switched to * now is that piaf has a lot of closed
source scripts that make understanding what is going on difficult.

As for voip providers, I have used FLowroute, voip.ms Vitelity and a few other pay 
as you go providers. I am currently using Flowroute as my primary provider with
voip.ms as a backup. I gave up Vitelity completely because I was having 
difficulty completing calls during mid afternoon and frequent dropped calls.

Hope this helps,

--
Tom Diehl       tdiehl@rogueind.com      Spamtrap address mtd123@rogueind.com
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug