Very simple home setup

Asterisk Asterisk General
1

Hi,

I’m new to these forums, so let me just say hello.

I’m doing some researching on buying/building a very simple home SIP<->POTS gateway. I have a Nokia E60 phone (SIP via WiFi) and monthly flat rate from my telephone company for most calls. I want to use my SIP phone the same way I would an ordinary DECT phone.

I’m pretty literate in Linux and I don’t think I’ll have that much trouble setting up an asterisk box, but:

Is Asterisk an overkill for my purposes? Maybe there’s already some SIP<->POTS gateway hardware out there?

Thanks for any advice.

2

I’ve pretty much implemented what you’re looking at. If you have some time for a project I’d definetly recommend to check it out. My experience:

  • Clone POTS cards for $15 on ebay are not working well; get a regular product. I’ve started with a clone which was borderline OK on 1.1.9. I never got it to work with Asterisk 1.2.4 though. I soon switched to VoIP and never looked back. I terminate two VoIP trunks in my Asterisk box, one is US, the other Germany
  • I started with Asterisk 1.1.9 a few years ago, and moved up to 1.4.2 through 1.2.4. 1.4.2 subjectively works great for home use - on an old PIII. Prior versions subjectively felt OK yet somewhat shluggish, in particular codec performance
  • Don’t use the GSM codec. Alaw works great but you might have to manually select it
  • I bought the Asterisk book “The future of telephony” to get the hang of the basics. I got it when it was brand new and matched the then current version of Asterisk; it might be outdated now and some features changed or have been updated. It still should be way better than diving blogs
  • Very rarely i lose the Asterisk connection while WLAN is present and therefore this situation shouldn’t occur. This might be a problem with my consumer WLAN base station/firewall after all, which is nothing fancy
  • I recommend you install a softphone to check out the spiel of multiple extensions
  • Don’t consider WLAN to connect your Asterisk box to your switch; unlikely you’d think about this (Linux), just a heads-up
  • As far as the Asterisk box is concerned; get one with minimal noise level, it can be unnerving because you never shut her down. I’ve also disconnected KVM and manage the box through X Window system sessions
  • Once you’re set up, you can take advantage of a single phone for both cell and landline calls, as well as multiple landline trunks which terminate in one voicebox Really cool and convenient and it works well (after a lot of tweaking). I’ve also ridded myself of telemarketers because automatic dialers don’t seem to hold while a call is transferred to the E60 (or other extension for that matter).