Doubt on what hardware needed just for pabx functionality

Asterisk Asterisk General
1

Hi, (first post)

I’m here with some doubt about what hardware to get to do what i need for a small office.

my primary doubt is what do i need to get to hook a asterisk box (pc) to a telephone line? the reason why i ask this is that i dont want a voip service, just the functionality that asterisk provides for incomming calls.

I think this is what i need: http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1126197006057&packedargs=site%3DUS&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper&lid=0605756327B13

i noticed some devices like the one i just listed have only one rj45 connector. does this mean I need to have another NIC on the asterisk box to connect to the network?

I dont need to buy another router for the internet, or a service provider, just the hardware to convert the signal from a normal phoneline to the signal the network card can understand.

The other thing I’m not sure about is, can i have an extension number on a different location over the internet? (softphone)

This setup will be used in a small computer shop that has one new office, sales mostly and another place for the actual bench techs, with more security and all.

I’m new to this, not a tech newbie, but not quite sure on this yet.

Thanks in advance.

Rodrigo.

2

You need an FXO port for each line you want. You can either use devices like you linked or get an analog PCI card from Digium that will have between 4 and 24 analog ports per card. If you use the devices above they can all get hooked onto a switch so you only really need one NIC in the asterisk server.

3

Thanks for the help

so, I need a fxo port for every ext. I want or for each phone line i want?

I thought i only needed one “converter” device to connect to the pstn line, and the ext. in the office would work through the relugar network going through the asterisk server.

Thanks again.

4

you need 1 FXO port for each line from the PSTN

If you use SIP phones for local extensions correct they will just hang off the network (depending on size I would highly recommend either a physically seperate voice network or use of a managed switch and use VLAN’s with QoS)

If you want to use analog phones for local extensions you need 1 FXS port per extension.

I highly suggest you buy\download the book linked below.

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510480/index.html

5

[quote=“swaterhouse”]you need 1 FXO port for each line from the PSTN

If you use SIP phones for local extensions correct they will just hang off the network (depending on size I would highly recommend either a physically seperate voice network or use of a managed switch and use VLAN’s with QoS)

If you want to use analog phones for local extensions you need 1 FXS port per extension.

I highly suggest you buy\download the book linked below.

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510480/index.html[/quote]

Thank you.

i have a pdf copy of the book i got from www.asteriskdocs.com

thats all that the site had

here is the link for the file fyi… i’m guessing its ok to download it directly from the publishers site.

downloads.oreilly.com/books/9780596510480.pdf