Good Day,
I am new to linux and have been experimenting with different distributions. I was eventually told about Asterisk. I was wondering if anyone can help me to find an affordable kit to practice using Asterisk at home using my two incoming phone lines. Can anyone help me? Thanks!
there isn’t exactly a kit like you need but it is easy to get what you want.
First you need a computer running Linux. Redhat-based distros (fedora/centos) work quite well.
Asterisk can be downloaded free from www.asterisk.org
Then for your two lines you need two FXO ports. This would probably be a card, either digium tdm400 or sangoma a200.
Next you need some extensions. These can be softphones (ip phone software on your PC that uses a headset), IP phones (VoIP telephones that plug into Ethernet), ATAs (analog telephony adapter, a box that connects to * via SIP and provides 1-2 FXS ports (plug phone into a FXS port)) or you can also get FXS ports on interface cards along with your FXO ports.
Personally i’d suggest a Grandstream BT200 or two, they are cheap ($60 or so), relatively easy to use, and are great for learning about * and SIP.
Also see www.voip-info.org, this is a Wiki site which is basically a large user-editable database of information on all things VoIP. If you have a question, the answer is probably here.
www.voipsupply.com is a decent reseller for voip gear
Hope that helps!
Thank you very much! Just what I needed to hear! Thanks for the link!