Is Asterisk a cost effective soln for small system?

Asterisk Asterisk General
1

I volunteer at a local not for profit group here and we have access to a PRI line for dialup Internet. The PRI supplier is willing to give us up to 10 DIDs on the PRI for free.

I am wondering if the cost of using Asterisk on our organization would be cost prohibitive. Other than the PC used to run the software we have no hardware to allow us to us to access the pairs on the PRI nor handsets etc. We would also have to be able to pass the data signals to our Baynetworks/Nortel Baystack RAC8000. The data would be from dialup connections for the internet service.

We would only need at most 6 handsets and would require to be able to receive and send faxes on one of the DIDs.

Sorry if this is in the wrong place.

2

The PRI supplier will either give you or specify what to purchase (they usually “give” it to you as part of the service) a device that will split the voice and data channels on the T1.

Out of that box you will connect to a T1 card in an asterisk server. For such a small install a 1200-1500 “server” (could be a workstation) with a single CPU, 1-2GB RAM and a 72GB hard drive will be more than enough.

The Digium TE122P is about $500 and would work well for you since I would doubt you would move beyond needing more than one T1.