Newbie - Help to understand Asterisk

Asterisk Asterisk Support
1

I am sorry for the ignorance.

I am need help to ensure I am understanding all of the parts needed for a VOIP PBX.

I would need to install Asterisk on a linux server. (I have one with nothing to do right now anyway)

I need to then get VOIP phones. Whether it is soft or hard phones. At this point, I can have intraoffice communications through the Asterisk server.

In order to connect to the outside world, I then need to get VOIP service through one or more of the providers. (Vonage/ATT/Etc) This is where I am a bit confused. Can I just use my current internet connections or do I have to bring in a T1 and use the hardware that is noted on the Asterisk site? I have a large bandwidth connection now and have plenty of bandwidth to spare (30Mbps) right now. Can I just hook the Asterisk server to my current network (in front of the router)?

Is there something I am missing?

Thanks,

Scott

2

If your only aim is to connect your server to some voip provider, you don’t need any adjunctive hardware.
You have to buy a telephony card (Digium or others) if you want to connect to the PSTN.
C.

3

VOIP stands for Voice Over IP (Internet Protocol). IP is what your internet connection talks - a T1 doesn’t talk IP (although, of course, you can do IP over a T1, but that’s another issue).

A better name for VOIP service provider is ITSP -Internet Telephony Service Provider - which makes it quite clear that this is about doing telephony over the internet.

Yes. You will probably have to make sure you configure the router to work with the ports asterisk uses and configure asterisk to deal with whatever network topography you’ve got.