Green Field

Asterisk Asterisk Support
1

I work for a small company and we are about to replace our PBX. I am exploring replacing it with Asterisk, and am learning how much there is to learn about deploying this solution.

Here is what I am looking at and any recomendation would be appreciated. The growth I expect to happen over the next 1-3 years.

Envioronment:

  • 7 analog lines (plus 1 fax line) coming in

  • want to be able to expand to 20 inbound lines

  • need 20 phones (extensions) today

  • expand to 40

  • no hardware for asterisk server - recommendations?

  • implementation of the features one would expect

    • inbound/outbound dialing
    • transfer ability
    • voice mail
    • receptionist phone
    • conference calling
    • and probably things I have not thought of that are standard

If you would indulge me, I have a couple of questions to help me cut through a lot of the decisions that I need to make:

  1. What phone works best with Asterisk and is relieable/affordable
  2. What size server should I buy for this
    • expect 5-10 concurrent calls
  3. What hardware do I need to interface to incoming telephone lines
  4. At what point should I think about upgrading to a T1
    • besides cost of course
    • what hardware would I need then for the interface

Would be happy to provide more information if I have missed something. And I appreciate any help.

Next, I am probably also going to be looking for help implementing the solution…so, if you or your company would like to talk about implementation services…please reply with your contact info and I’ll send/call. Or you can PM me in this forum.

Thanks,
Chris…

2

i (or somebody else) will get you a much better answer later. but for now one quick question- are you stuck on having analog lines?
if you get a PRI (t1 phone line) or use VoIP for your calls, things will be much easier and possibly less expensive…

3

[quote=“IronHelix”]i (or somebody else) will get you a much better answer later. but for now one quick question- are you stuck on having analog lines?
if you get a PRI (t1 phone line) or use VoIP for your calls, things will be much easier and possibly less expensive…[/quote]

Actually - no we are not stuck on analog lines. It’s just what we have; but when we put in this new system, we are open to new things. I didn’t initially think we could cost justify a PRI line since only 7 (plus fax) are lines being used today. Altough, I have toyed with the idea of splitting the channels and replacing the DSL/Cable we have today with the data portion of the PRI. Frankly, I just don’t know enough about my options from a technical and cost perspective.

Altough, I am stuck on wanting to interface to the PSTN. I don’t have enough of a comfort level to do pure VOIP yet.

Thanks,
Chris…

4

Good afternoon, Chris.

You will certainly receive a long list of responses, both public and private, from service providers, installers, and VARs on this forum, all offering to come to your facility, place their turnkey solution onto your tabletop, plug in all the wires, show you that it works, give you a bill and a business card, and walk away.

I don’t know anything about any of them but I’m sure that they are all good people, competent, and give good value for the money.

I’m going to suggest, though, that you do it yourself, using a general purpose PC running a reasonably modern Linux distro, something like Fedora Core 5.

Nothing that you describe is at all difficult. I knew virtually NOTHING about Asterisk as recently as last Saturday morning (four days ago), and I now have a functioning PBX with one input line, one output line, a third line going to a desk phone, a voice greeting system that tells people what extensions to dial for each person (“Dial 21 for Eric, dial 22 for Bill…” etc.), and voicemail with individual mailboxes for each person and automatic emailing of the voicemail audio files (in .wav format) to their destinations.

All of this was done, as I say, in less than four days’ time with the help of IronHelix and the other fine people on this forum.

Do that, and you’ll end up knowing all you need to know to maintain the system yourself without having to call in a service person every time you want to make a change.

As for recommendations for hardware, my guess (and it’s only a guess) is that today’s de facto standard PC (2 to 2.5 GHz or so, 512 MB RAM, 100 GB hard drive) will be more than enough for the system and loading that you describe. But, I’ll happily defer to others on this forum who have more experience than I do (which as I say is just about everybody).

My interface card is a Digium TDM400 with one port for plugging in a phone (called the FXS port) and three ports for plugging in phone lines coming from the wall (called FXO ports). You can buy that card in any combination of FXO and FXS ports, and they also have another card which has 24 ports, again any combination of FXS and FXO (except that you have to choose FXO and FXS in combinations of 4, i.e. you can’t have 3 FXS and 21 FXO).

Digium (www.sangoma.com) products tend to work better in some applications. For example, Digium cards appear to be unable to detect when an outgoing call is answered, whereas Sangoma cards are able to detect that if your local telco provides the right signalling. This has created a minor problem for me that I haven’t found a workaround for yet.

If by any chance you are near the Boston area I might be able to come over and help you install it, free of charge, and we’ll learn together.

5

no we are not stuck on analog lines. It’s
just what we have; but when we put in this
new system, we are open to new things.

When you say “it’s what we have”, do you mean that you now have 7 analog phone lines and 1 analog fax line coming in from the wall, and 20 plain old analog phones as extensions, with their wiring individually running back to the room where your PBX is, and plugging into the PBX with RJ-11 plugs?

If that’s the case then I suggest (and remember, this suggestion is coming from somebody who could barely spell Asterisk four days ago) that you consider replacing the minimum of hardware now, then when you get that working you can, pretty much at your leisure, think about replacing your analog phones with IP phones and replacing your 8 analog lines with a T1.

If you bought two Digium TDM2400P cards, for example, you could set one of them up as 24 FXS ports and the other one as 8 FXO ports and room for expansion. Plug those into the PC and plug in the wires you already have, and install and configure Asterisk. The advantage of this is that you won’t have to tear out and replace your whole infrastructure, and throw away all those analog phones. Any NEW phones that you need, beyond the ones that are already wired in, can be IP phones and just plug into your LAN, where they will work seamlessly and interactively with the phones you already have.

Whether all of that will work at full loading on the 2.5-GHz machine I mentioned in my last post, I don’t know … but my guess is that it would.

I’ll defer to anyone here who says that what I suggest isn’t workable or isn’t the best approach… as I said, just about everybody here has more background in this stuff than I do.

One thing about the fax line… It might not be so easy getting that to work with Asterisk, although there are people here who have done it. I’m still thrashing about with that problem. But, meanwhile, my fax is working perfectly fine the way it is, so unless you need people to be able to send faxes from their desks (in which case my guess is you’ll be better off with something like Hylafax, which can run on the same machine that runs your PBX), you may not need to be overly concerned with that in the beginning.

6

[quote=“eric-nh”]>> no we are not stuck on analog lines. It’s

just what we have; but when we put in this
new system, we are open to new things.

When you say “it’s what we have”, do you mean that you now have 7 analog phone lines and 1 analog fax line coming in from the wall, and 20 plain old analog phones as extensions, with their wiring individually running back to the room where your PBX is, and plugging into the PBX with RJ-11 plugs?
[/quote]

I meant that we have 7 lines coming in from SBC. And we have 20 extensions today. I fully expect the phones we use today to not to be used in this new solution. The phones and PBX are going to be liquidated.

I’m speaking a little out of depth here - which is why I am asking for help…

Basically, I think I want new phones that use ethernet wiring (we are going to be putting in new wiring in the building as part of this process). So if I understand this correctly, if we have new phones that run over ethernet (voice only network - no data), then we do not need FXS ports.

Then we will only need FXO ports. Is that correct?

[quote=“eric-nh”]
One thing about the fax line… It might not be so easy getting that to work with Asterisk, although there are people here who have done it. I’m still thrashing about with that problem. But, meanwhile, my fax is working perfectly fine the way it is, so unless you need people to be able to send faxes from their desks (in which case my guess is you’ll be better off with something like Hylafax, which can run on the same machine that runs your PBX), you may not need to be overly concerned with that in the beginning.[/quote]

That might be the solution - just leave the fax plugged into the outlet from SBC and not try to go through Asterisk.

Thanks,
Chris…

7

if I understand this correctly, if we have new
phones that run over ethernet (voice only
network - no data), then we do not need FXS
ports. Then we will only need FXO ports. Is
that correct?

Correct. But, you really shouldn’t have to have a dedicated voice-only network. You should be able to just plug your IP phones into your regular data network and plug the Asterisk PBX into the same network, unless your data network is REALLY heavily loaded down which shouldn’t be the case if you’re running at least fast-ethernet speed (100 Mbps).

8

[quote=“eric-nh”]>> if I understand this correctly, if we have new

phones that run over ethernet (voice only
network - no data), then we do not need FXS
ports. Then we will only need FXO ports. Is
that correct?

Correct. But, you really shouldn’t have to have a dedicated voice-only network. You should be able to just plug your IP phones into your regular data network and plug the Asterisk PBX into the same network, unless your data network is REALLY heavily loaded down which shouldn’t be the case if you’re running at least fast-ethernet speed (100 Mbps).[/quote]

I might be confusing some terms here. Each phone is going to need it’s own cabling running back to the wiring closet - just as each PC does. I consider that a seperate network.

We’re actually installing new wires when we do this upgrade. So we are going to run two wires for each drop (1 data, 1 voice). And at times the data network can be very crowded. We transfer multiple GB files in rapid succession. So, since we have to run all new wiring, why not seperate the two networks.

Chris…

9

the last install i did, i was fortunate in that it was all new cabling for the IP phones. the Asterisk server and phones shared a switch which was then uplinked to the rest of the network, and this meant i could dispense with any QoS on the LAN … still needed on the 'net connection of course if you’re going to run any VoIP trunks.

if you’re going to run 24 FXS entensions, you might even want to look at a channel bank instead. a multi-span T1 card would provide you with a connection to the PSTN and a link to the channel bank.a

10

You have seven inbound lines?? I would look at dumping five of those for some Unlimited inbound DID’s (maybe grab one or two in other area codes)
And look at outbound calls maybe a VOIP service for some routes would save money.

Remote Offices ~ Boss needs / wants office phone at home office things like that

Asterisk can do many things for you.

Maybe grab a VM image of Asterisk@Home or Trixbox (bundled packages with Voice Mail with webbased GUI and CRM software BAh Bah…

It will not interface with your lines but will give some idea as to things you can do…
Yes it can wake up in morning and turn on the coffee pot and call to remind you to bring home milk…

trixbox.org/
dumbme.voipeye.com.au/trixbox/tr … _tears.htm
nerdvittles.com/