Am I dreaming? - PBX & QOS router same box

Asterisk Asterisk General
1

  1. Are there any gotchas or issues with building an asterisk PBX and QOS router/Firewall on the same box with 2 ethernet cards??

  2. Could a LAN be built with:

  • 1 router and outside data circuit/internet connection for data
  • 1 router and outside data circuit/internet connection for voice

In my dream

  • I want to have the PCs and phones on the same subnet
  • They all use DHCP and default to the gateway/address of the data connection above let’s say it’s a high end broadband cable connection
  • The phones would then get their firmware updates and what not from the data connection but connect to the PBX/router for voice
  • The PBX/QOS Router would connect to the internet via a data only T1
  • In my theory/dream world all the voice traffic would therefore go in and out on the T1 because the PBX is the only piece of the phone system that really accesses the outside world and PSTN

The phones don’t really care about DNS and gateways accept to get firmware updates from the manufacturer,…right? and they can do that on the broadband/cable data connection…yes?/no?

No traffic from the PCs would ever go through the voice router because DHCP would point them to the data gateway/router,…right?

The PBX/Router would NOT run DHCP,…only the data router would do that.

Is this a sound model for a LAN with voice and data traffic segregated???

I could probably run the whole deal through 1 3mb fiber connection with an expensive hardware based QOS router at about $700 a month but I think it would be a better deal if I did it with a $300 data T1 for the phone traffic and a $150 broadband cable connection for the PC traffic. It would be about 25 phones with 20+ calls at a time and 25 PCs doing normal internet stuff and sending a lot of large attachments (document packages for the mortgage business).

Any opinions or advice would be greatly appreciated.

2

The only two gotchas that I am aware of are the CPU resources and the size of RAM. AFAIC, having an Asterisk PBX system hosted on a long discontinued Netgear WGT634U WiFi router is not a bad choice for personal use. The device runs on a 200MHz Broadcomm CPU with a 32MB RAM and a USB2 port.

3

Thanks for the netgear commentary but I would be running this PBX/Router box on a full blown ITX, small form factor, Atom 330 dual core PC with at least 2gb of RAM.

I guess I should have put that in the post.

You are a crafty and brave soul running a PBX on a Netgear WGT634U.

Thanks for your input,

Michael

4

OS on ATOM PC is Ubuntu 9.10 server with no GUI running NAT, firewall and TC queues for QOS.

5

Do you know how much of power is required to run an Atom 330? On my Netgear WGT634U WIFi router, its AC/DC adapter is rated @12VDC 1Amp or about 12Watts. That’s why a lot of Asterisk users have used a SOHO WiFi router to host their Asterisk PBX system to conserve the energy.