Newbie set up

hi people,

been looking over this asterisk now download and i think i’m going to give it a go. i have spare pc which can be used. i am hoping to have a system with 6 phones, however i just need to know a few other things, these are:-

  1. what phones can i use which use a data cable to connect up
  2. what hardware do i need to connect the phones to the computer

and the big question how easy is it to set up honestly?? bearing in mind i’ve been windows since day one!!

I’d suggest doing a bunch of reading in these forums and elsewhere first.

To get you started, especially with no experience in Linux, I’d download a pre-built distro like Elastix, Trixbox, etc. Get that up and running on your spare PC, then download some softphones to your other machines and start playing around. Once you get that going to your satisfaction, then start down the path of hardphones, VOIP providers, FXO/FXS cards et al.

As to your two questions, here are a couple quick answers;

  1. Phones - you have many choices here;

Softphones are ones you install on your computer and then use a headset with a microphone. These phones use your computers ethernet connection to connect to the asterisk box.

Hardphones have an Ethernet jack in them which you then connect to your switch/router and they communicate with your Asterisk box over the network. There are a plethora of companies that make them, Grandstream, Linksys, Aastra, etc. Do a search for “iP phone” or “sip phone”.

  1. Hardware to connect phones to computer - None if you have ip phones, they communicate over the network using tcp/ip. If you want to attach a regular phone, you’ll need to add either an internal card to your asterisk box, or get something called an ATA (analog telephone adapter).

Good luck!
-Lyle

thanks for the reply you have cleared some things up. i have just tried to install the asterisk now dist and it keeps asking for a linux rpath cd or some thing. do you have an idea what this is?

thanks

Sorry no I don’t. I don’t have any experience with AsteriskNOW.

I can tell you I’ve had great luck with Elastix.

-Lyle