i am looking to use my google voice number and an IP phone (cisco/avaya) with asterisk. i got the idea to try it when i realized there were open source pbx solutions.
before trying to start this project, i realized that there were a few diff versions to go with. the ones that i read about were freepbx and now. after watching the asterik starter vid, it is apparent that asterisk is the code behind the pbx system and that there are GUIs available for those of us that dont want to tweak what works and use a GUI.
i downloaded ISOs for NOW and FreePBX and i tried to boot them up in a virtual hyper-v environment and did not have any luck completing the install. i wanted to compare them before dedicating x86 hardware to either system. after that didnt work i did some googling and it seems that there are issues with installing some of the releases in a virtual environment. since i dont plan on having it in a virtual environment, i decided to stop messing with that.
at this point i assumed that asterisk now and freepbx are separate systems, but when i got to the forum i see freepbx listed under the asterisk now sub forum.
my setup is for a home office/test environment.
what i would like to do is:
-setup NOW or FreePBX
-configure the PBX server to use my google voice number
-buy a used cisco or avaya ip phone that i can use with the PBX server which would be using google voice for in/out calling.
which software is recommended for that? NOW of FreePBX?
This sub-forum is really for people not using a GUI.
FreePBX proper is just the GUI support code. You are probably thinking about FreePBX Distro, which does seem to compete with AsteriskNOW.
I can’t really tell how the overall package differs. The web site gives the impression that there are less user choices when installing FreePBX Distro, but that may be a limitation of web site.
If you are using community support, rather than paid for support, in both cases you use the FreePBX web site for support in actually using the GUI, except for some Digium specific components. If you install from AsteriskNOW, you use the sub-forums here, with AsteriskNOw in their name, for installation support. If you install from FreePBX Distro, you need to get that support from the FreePBX web site.
I don’t know how good the Google support is in FreePBX but generally, the GUIs lag behind the raw Asterisk code.
i was actually comparing the GUI version for both (NOW/FreePBX).
i won’t be doing anything with raw code, so i guess it is best to end this discussion here.
it seems that there are a lot of options for a beginner. i did a little more reading after i started this thread and it seems as if FreePBX is the better GUI option over NOW.
i will probably head over to the FreePBX forums and see if anything is possible with FreePBX and google voice via the GUI, if not, i will have to shelf this project.
Also check out Elastix and PBX in a Flash. There may be others, but I am most familiar only with those two, which are one of the most popular WebGUI based Asterisk systems.