I just got into Asterisk (this week), and I’ve just been reading up on it. I was turned onto Asterisk on a podcast: revision3.com/systm/asterisk/ .
In that video, they use an ATA to change the analog signal from the copper land line into a digital signal sent out via ethernet port to the Asterisk box. Using that structure, I’m not sure where the IP phones would connect.
Would this setup work?
Or would I have to go …
The first setup is ok.
Cheers.
Marco Bruni
I would highly suggest you NOT run asterisk in VMware (or any virtualization software). A crappy old desktop would perform 100 times better.
Search this site and you will see many issues people have with runningf asterisk in a VM.
Thanks to both of you. I really appreciate the input.
I’m really glad to know that I do not have to run the ATA directly to the Asterisk box, but I can just run it to a switch, then to the Asterisk box.
Also, I did not know that VMWare installs of Asterisk had been problematic. I’ll see if I can scrounge up an old machine.
If you asterisk is for home use, you may want to consider to invest on an open-source firmware supported WiFi NAT/Firewall to run asterisk on it.
I apologize, I probably should have specified this in my first post… I am using Asterisk at my small business (currently 2 employees). We are building a new office and I have decided to revamp our phone system.
update: I’ve purchased a used Dell GX150 to be used solely as my Asterisk box — p3 933Mhz, 256mb ram, hdd = 2gb CF card on CF-to-IDE adapter (so no moving parts other than fans)
yikes 2GB doesn’t seem like enough space to me.
I have 75 extensions and I am using about 10GB of diskspace. Granted I have more voicemail stored but I think you will be struggling to keep under 2GB. You would be better off with a SATA drive and daily backups to another machine (of at least the config files)
Hmmm, well “John Todd” on the podcast referenced above said “a P3 400 is typically sufficient for a home user and 256 megs are probably overkill even … and at the most 1 or 2 gigs of disk is all you’re gonna need.”
I have two seats at my business. Were John’s estimates wrong?
Are you positive he wasn’t talking about RAM or just the Asterisk install (not including the OS)?
I know there are some very small installs of Asterisk out there (check out the astlinux project) but I didn’t think they were 256MB or less for the Linux distro and Asterisk.
That is a quote of what he said in the video for using as an “Asterisk box” .
For over a week now I’ve been running AsteriskNOW v1.0.1 on a used Dell GX150 (p3 933Mhz, 256mb ram, hdd = 2gb CF card on CF-to-IDE adapter) and have had no issues. I’ve got ~400mb of disk space clear, and normally use about 220mb of the 256mb of ram, so I will be upping that to 512mb.
Thats just my update — some old/slow hardware isn’t really an issue for running asterisk for an group of 3, or less, seats.
Thanks for the help everyone!