I was looking at Asterisk for my company and I wanted to know what I need to set it up with a Linksys PAP2.
Currently my phone setup is just a VOIP toll free number hooked in with a Linksys PAP2 to a phone. I wanted to know if there was a way to setup Asterisk with just an network card or if you had to get some other hardware to run the system with the VOIP phone.
Any info or advice and I would be very thankful.
yes it is possible… Asterisk does not require any special hardware to connect to VoIP service or VoIP phones/clients. All you need is a standard PC running Linux with a network card. (with one gotcha- see at the bottom)
You will want to create entries for the provider and the phone(s) in sip.conf. Then you will need to set up extensions.conf to create routing between the two. You may also want to set up other features like voicemail, recording (check local laws) or call queues.
in extensions-conf- be very careful with contexts! keep outbound contexts that can make billable calls separate from inbound contexts (your IVR, etc.)
I highly recommend you read the book Asterisk: The Future of Telephony. It will explain all of what you need to know. It’s available in dead-tree from O’Rilley or you can download it under creative commons license from asteriskdocs.org.
The gotcha i mentioned earlier- you need to make sure your current VoIP provider (or whatever the pap2 is linked to) will allow you to get the SIP info for Asterisk. Many providers (such as Vonage) do not provide this information and will not give it to you if you ask. If you have vonage or another provider that refuses to release the SIP information, you will not be able to use Asterisk with that provider.
If this is the case, you can almost certainly get * setup with another provider, and then port your number over. If the number was assigned by the VoIP carrier (you did not port it to them) you may be in for a fight to get it transferred out.
Good luck!