I am a residential phone user looking to put in a VOIP system for my family. Kinda tinkering. From what I understand, I will need a gateway to transition my spectrum voice line into a VOIP pbx system. Am I missing something? Is there a beginners guide somewhere I can look at to get me started?
Are you doing that just for curiosity or for a special reason? Although Asterisk is able to do so and having your own little Asterisk server is a nice thing every family should have, you might be on the wrong track. Therefore, I double check. If you have not more than 8 phones on a site, you might be better off with a ‘single-cell DECT’ solution.
I am currently in the process of construction of a new home. So the wife and I have been discussing the need for old copper wire telephone jacks. There are currently planned to be 2 jacks in the house. We have in the past had our cable provider supply us with a voice line. This ultimately requires that our phone line be located close to a cable outlet. We both find this idea a little old style thinking and are looking for a new solution that uses modern technology.
There is also the added benefit of expanding to a second phone line for business purposes. This looks to be something much more easily done if all I would need to do is get and SIP trunk service along side a residential line.
If you have the choice, I would just run cat 6 Ethernet cable from a wiring closest or patch panel where the cable/pone services enter the building to RJ45 wall outlets in many places in possible. I have done that, and my only regret is that I didn’t put in more of them. If you need to run phone lines, RJ11 connectors from phones just plug into RJ45 wall outlets, so there’s no problem there.
Good luck,
Ian
Yes, same advice from me: You are able to run those good old phones even via Ethernet cables, just change the connector on the phone. On your patch panel, you insert your traditional land-line. Not sure where you are in the world, but Gigaset offers a box which offers DECT and runs over land-line or Internet (VoIP/SIP) as you like.