I heard quite a lot about asterisk and I would like to give it a try. But as things get complex quite sonn I would like to ask the community for some basic answers (yes / no). I would like to figure out how each point will work on my own but kindly ask for your experience if the needed things are possible or not.
The plan is to setup an asterisk connected to voip-users via TCP/IP and to a carrier via ISDN lines. Both connections are as well internal as external.
Can I identify each caller by PIN, number of origin or however (what’s possible?) for accounting purposes?
How many digits is the maximum for an extension?
Can I put a caller “on hold” until the following things happened:
asterisk dials an external telephone number
asterisk submits a PIN (always the same) via DTMF
asterisk submits a telephone number (depending of the extension dialed by the caller) via DTMF
asterisk connects caller after “call connected signal”
Can one asterisk server recieve the call while another server (connected via TCP/IP, leased line) is doing the dialing as above?
Can I connect an oracle database for accounting purposes depending on the following information:
call recieved via carrier or TCP/IP
date / time
number the call is forewarded to?
Is a prepaid handling possible?
Thanx for your assistance…
I think I’ll be back if every question is aswered with yes
[quote=“bongout”]The plan is to setup an asterisk connected to voip-users via TCP/IP and to a carrier via ISDN lines. Both connections are as well internal as external.
Can I identify each caller by PIN, number of origin or however (what’s possible?) for accounting purposes?[/quote]
Yes. Of course how you do this will depend on how you configure your system.
For the Asterisk core there is no real limit, besides a practical one. Extensions may be numbers, ie:
9999999
9999
or alpha/numerics:
john
johndoe
[quote=“bongout”]Can I put a caller “on hold” until the following things happened:
asterisk dials an external telephone number[/quote]
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes, it is possible to network multiple Asterisk boxes for various applications.
Yes, via UnixODBC.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
As part of add-on packages (many opensource), yes.
great stuff - and thanx for the tremendous quick reply.
But one more small question:
[quote]bongout wrote:
How many digits is the maximum for an extension?
For the Asterisk core there is no real limit, besides a practical one. Extensions may be numbers, ie:
9999999
9999
or alpha/numerics:
john
johndoe
[/quote]
my questions was more directing the possible digits: here 13 (!) so in total
+country code - area code - number of my asterisk - 13 digit extension
+49-40-55 55 - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3
…
when asking that I forgot another thing:
can asterisk take that extion and use it for the number to dial (i.e. when extension A has been dialed asterisk will foreward the call to tel. B, looking in a database for B that belongs to extension A)… weird, isn’t it?
[quote=“bongout”]my questions was more directing the possible digits: here 13 (!) so in total
+country code - area code - number of my asterisk - 13 digit extension
+49-40-55 55 - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3[/quote]
Yes, as there is no limit that I am aware of (maybe 256 or something like that?) what you are proposing above is no problem.
[quote=“bongout”]when asking that I forgot another thing:
can asterisk take that extion and use it for the number to dial (i.e. when extension A has been dialed asterisk will foreward the call to tel. B, looking in a database for B that belongs to extension A)… weird, isn’t it?[/quote]
Yes, this is possible. There are applications within Asterisk that allow you to extend the dialplan in serveral ways:
Perl interpretors
Ruby interpretors
MySQL interfaces
AEL capabilities (new as of v1.2beta and the CVS head)
Python
etc
Really, the world is your oyster in terms of customizability, just have to keep scalability/optimization in mind when you customize.
