Hardware recommendations

Asterisk Asterisk General
1

First post so please be gentle.
I was able to install Asterisk in a VM (which only means that i’m as smart as a monkey…cus it’s so simple even a monkey…)
I’m entertaining the idea of installing it for real on some dedicated hardware. The purpose is to enable telephony in a 4 person office.

Currently there are 2 lines coming in from the pstn that ring up 4 physical phones (patched together through a station set) simultaneously. That’s right, not round robin, when the phone rings, all 4 of em ring and then one of us answers.

Ultimately I would like to get a local line and an 800 number from the telco that would terminate into an Asterisk pbx. All standard pbx functions would then apply and I would have all 4 office phones plugged into the pbx instead of the station set. This would allow me to give out extensions and segregate phone calls.

Would I be able to accomplish this using the Digium TDM20B package? (TDM400P + S110M FXS Modules)
If so that would make for a very cost effective solution.

Also, could anyone point me to docs, threads, whitepapers or whatever on how to properly secure the PBX server? I know it’s using a slimmed down linux/unix OS but there must be some extra steps to take to lock it down. Last thing I need is to have my hero medal (after giving full blown pbx capabilities to the team) stripped cus we get hacked and p0wned for thousands of dollars over the weekend.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

2

Cost-effective hardware: A400P from Openvox for FXO or FXS modules, for your phones use ATAs like PAP2T.

For secure your box use iptables or external firewall, use blockhost for denial unknown ssh access.

3

Did you mean even a caveman can do it? :smiley:

If I were you, I would get a Linux embedded system, i.e. a WiFi router with lots of RAM + USB port, supported by any open-source firmware (preferrably OpenWRT) to host my Asterisk PBX system, add two USB/FXO dongles to bridge to PSTN lines, and use two Linksys PAP2T devices to terminate to the existing 4-line physical phones as extensions to the Asterisk PBX system. The best part going this approach is lots of savings in operational costs. For me, I use an old and long discontinued Netgear WGT634U WiFi router, whose AC/DC adapter is rated @12VDC 1Amps (~12Watts), to host my Asterisk PBX system. Since I don’t have PSTN line, there is no need for me to invest on a USB/FXO dongle.