# \[HELP\] pre-noob question on Asterisk possibilities **URL:** \ **Category:** Asterisk Support\ **Created:** [August 5, 2005, 9:49am UTC](https://community.asterisk.org/t/help-pre-noob-question-on-asterisk-possibilities/875 "2005-08-05T09:49:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![eis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bcef8e/32.png) [@eis](https://community.asterisk.org/u/eis)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2005, 9:49am UTC](https://community.asterisk.org/t/help-pre-noob-question-on-asterisk-possibilities/875/1 "2005-08-05T09:49:33Z")
Hi all! I’m pretty new to VoIP and have do not have any experience in setting up or using Asterisk. I’m hoping to get some comments from experienced users on if what I have planned is doable in general 😉 Here’s my situation/plan: I’m working for a company with roaming employees that each need to be available via two different numbers corresponding to two different office-locations. They have 10 numbers per location still ‘hosted’ by standard phone-company which I would like to port to a VoIP-provider. The main-office has a pretty good internet connection (2MBit) so I would like to install an Asterisk at that location handling all the calls and use VoIP-phones capable of handling more than one line (preferably Sipura SPA-841). 1st question: VoIP-Provider says mapping more than one number to one account is not a problem. In the documentation I read I only found Asterisk listening on which digits are pressed and deciding what to do or where to route the call. Can Asterisk be used with multiple incoming numbers? If so – with multiple accounts? Or will I need to use two machines one for each account? 2nd question: The two locations (and external) are connected via vpn so I would like to have connection from phone to Asterisk stay within the company-network – will there be any problems connecting to Asterisk through vpn? 3rd question: One thing the employees do not want to miss is the option of dialing from pc (for example out of Outlook). Is there something similar to tapi-drivers? If yes – could one choose which line to use for dialing? (info: Clients are all Windows-machines) Like I said – no experience on my side – these are general questions before even starting this project since I could be getting something really basic completely wrong 😉 Any help/comments/recommendations are very highly appreciated! THX eis ---
**Author:** ![bgtroll](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c57346/32.png) [@bgtroll](https://community.asterisk.org/u/bgtroll)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2005, 10:03am UTC](https://community.asterisk.org/t/help-pre-noob-question-on-asterisk-possibilities/875/2 "2005-08-05T10:03:25Z")
1st answer: You need only one machine. Yes you can have multiple incoming lines - not sure for the world - look for ’ predictive dialing’ or something like this ( ${DNID} - is the variable) 2nd answer: There is no problem to use Asterisk in vpn. 3rd answer: Do you mean softphones?? If you mean some software phone , try Idefisk (IAX protocol | [download](http://www.asteriskguru.com/tools/idefisk_beta.php) | [manual](http://www.asteriskguru.com/tutorials/idefisk_softphone.html) ) or some SIP softphone like X-lite ,… ---
**Author:** ![eis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bcef8e/32.png) [@eis](https://community.asterisk.org/u/eis)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2005, 10:12am UTC](https://community.asterisk.org/t/help-pre-noob-question-on-asterisk-possibilities/875/3 "2005-08-05T10:12:07Z")
wow - that was fast! 😃 concerning 3 - no, what I really mean is at this time they have ISDN-Phones with headses and are able to right-click-and-dial from desktop. Is there a way to rebuild this option - like triggering the VoIP-Phone. Using softphones in general could be an alternative for office-workplace but what we need is to be able to unplug phone - go to other location - plug in again. Other location could as well be ohter pc or completely without pc (for instance) … but I guess I will think about the soft-phone-option since these would be much cheaper 😉 concerning 1 - so if we had to accounts, to each mapped 10 differnt numbers Asterisk could logon to both and recognize which line is being called? and then even go through digits-pressed options? thx eis