First of all, I want to say I am new to Asterisk. While searching for how VoIP works, I came across Asterisk and I started reading upon it. I found it to be a fascinating technology and wanted to use to go accomplish a long distance call between to central offices. Here is what I am trying to do but I do not know where to begin. Hope someone out there could point me to the right direction.
I would like two Asterisk servers that resides in two different location to communicate with each other; i.e. location XYZ would be USA and location ABC would be Italy
Each Asterisk servers will be connected to a local PSTN.
Users at XYZ will call user at ABC by dialing a local number, preferably 800 number so users can reach Asterisk server at XYZ from anywhere in the state. It doesn’t have to be 800 number. I just want the users to call the asterisk server from anywhere in the state; more of like a calling card with a pin number. The pin number will be used to identify users who have access to dial into Asterisk. Every user will be giving a pin number.
I want the servers to handle multiple calls simultaneously, inbound and outbound calls.
In short, the question is how many phone lines (PSTN) do I need to have in order to handle multiple calls simultaneously. Let say I want to handle 100 calls simultaneously, do I need to have 100 PSTN lines connected to Asterisk server?
Thank you in advance for guiding me
You can also use an ITSP. While PRI’s (E1/T1) are a bit more reliable VOIP tents to be a bit cheaper. You can also mix and match. You can use PRI’s for inbound and then VOIP for outbound and if the VOIP fails you can roll over to your PRI’s as backup.
Thank you guys… there are few more things that are not feasible to me yet. Just to quickly recap what I got out of the two reply, what I need is T1\E1 line and 100 phone numbers in both countries (a total of 200 phone numbers)…correct? Any recommendation of good T1\E1 provided in US? And how much does the price range? Plus I think it will be clear to me if someone tell me what equipments I need to get and how PRI, T1\E1, Asterisk are setup… just a walk through of the flow of setup….
A PRI would be the better solution. In the US they are T1’s which can handle up to 23 calls at once and in Europe they are E1’s which can handle 29 calls at once. You may not need multiple T1’s/E1’s. It depends on how you are going to set it up and how many concurrent calls you will have at once. You may want to use VOIP for outbound and your PRI as a back up. You do not need the amount of channels for phone numbers. Meaning you can have only one PRI and your carrier can give you 100 numbers for that PRI.
Where in the US will the server be hosted ? I have a carrier that I use that is based out of NY that I am very happy with. PM me for details on it.
It will be hosted in TN. And you kinda lost me when you said I can use VOIP for outbound calls. Correct me if I am missing out something here, do you have to have PRI to be able to make calls to landline?
If I need only one PRI line to handle 23 concurrent calls and the carrier will give me 100 numbers, then I can get only one phone number which can be dialed by 23 users from different location simultaneously. Am I right or way off?
What I am trying to achieve is something like phone card. Users around the states will call 800 or local number to call a land line at XYZ country (outside US). The Asterisk server located in TN will send the call to Asterisk server at country XYZ which then it dials out the land line number the user is trying to reach.
It will be hosted in TN. And you kinda lost me when you said I can use VOIP for outbound calls. Correct me if I am missing out something here, do you have to have PRI to be able to make calls to landline?
If I need only one PRI line to handle 23 concurrent calls and the carrier will give me 100 numbers, then I can get only one phone number which can be dialed by 23 users from different location simultaneously. Am I right or way off?
What I am trying to achieve is something like phone card. Users around the states will call 800 or local number to call a land line at XYZ country (outside US). The Asterisk server located in TN will send the call to Asterisk server at country XYZ which then it dials out the land line number the user is trying to reach.