What is needed to make outgoing call or recive call (DID,?)

After setting up asterisk what will I need to make calls to regualr phone lines, or recive calls from regualar phone lines?
In the wiki I read about DID, VOIP providers, sip and a lot of other stuff. It got me confused.

1.Can someone tell me what I will need to make a call to regualr phone lines? Don’t care about the protocal, the technical part will get solved later

  1. What will I need for people to call my asterisk box from a regular phone line?

I have some language problems, and if I better understand the basic needs, I can google for the correct thing needed.

go do some more reading, there is tons of info to answer your questions. Go find the book ‘The Future of Telephony’ - free O’Reilly download.

p

[quote=“mixos”]
1.Can someone tell me what I will need to make a call to regualr phone lines? Don’t care about the protocal, the technical part will get solved later

  1. What will I need for people to call my asterisk box from a regular phone line?

I have some language problems, and if I better understand the basic needs, I can google for the correct thing needed.[/quote]

I don’t know how simply you need this put, you’ll need the phone line itself, the card that goes in the asterisk box (one of the Digium cards for instance), the asterisk box and asterisk, A sip phone plugged into the same switch that the asterisk box is plugged into… that’s about it.

Was that too simplistic? I don’t know what level you’re at

[quote=“jeg1972”]…A sip phone plugged into the same switch that the asterisk box is plugged into…[/quote]Or a soft phone running on a computer of course. Besides, the SIP hard phone doesn’t necessarily need to be on the same switch. It can access from outside as long as the ports are directed appropriately.

I have allready downloaded the book, and read it. But the technical language makes it extremly hard to get an in depth understanding of VOIP, and the whole asterisk.

There are so many different things to consider. DID, SIP, VOIP and this goes on and on. And when not fluent in english this is hard to grasp. I can communicate oraly in english after years of practicing, but techincal english like this is hard for me.

So, lets assume this:
I have asterisk running on a server., ready to configure.
I do have a broadband connection also.
All my inhouse telephones are two or some years old PSTN, connected with plain telephone cables.

What will I need to look for (sign up for) to be able to make asterisk work, so that I can make phonecalls from the old phone handset, and the calls get transferred via the broadband connection, rather then the telecoms wires.?

Can someone try to explain the difference between DID,VOIP, SIP and others I should be aware of?

What is the bare minimum I would need to setup asterisk? Once again I do not think of hardware or the asterisk server itself, but more what type of subscription/service I need to sign up for in order to make things work.

If needed I will explain even further.

Hi Mixos,

Do you want to be able to stop using your old PSTN lines and have all your phone calls put through broadband and handled by Asterisk or a mixture of both?

The system I am using at home is an asterisk server with a single port digium analog FXO card in the back and a connection to broadband. My PSTN phoneline is connected striaght into the back of my analog digium card and accepts all inbound calls for me using my old dial in direct (DID) number.

My outbound calls are routed through the asterisk server over broadband to a VoIP provider (I pay a flat rate each month for local, national and international calls). Choice of VoIP provider is a personal choice. Because I’m in the UK I use IP Clouds but a search of google should show up providers in your area or ask the folks on this forum for recomendations.

I maintain the PSTN number I had pre-asterisk so if the system falls over when I’m travelling it allows my family to plug the old phone into the wall (A comprimise with my wife who rolls her eyes when I get excited about technology that always translates into extra work for her). This also allows all her friends to contact her on her old number.

MY VoIP provider lets me call contacts in the states over braodband within my monthly payment which saves me a lot of cash.

When I’m travelling in the states I can VPN onto my home network and call my family for free.

For a clear explnation of setting up simple systems with VoIP and PSTN connections I’d recomend having a look at the Nerd Vittles website. It assumes you are using *@Home but the principles are the same.

Not sure if this answers you’re question but hopefully makes life a bit easier.

Really what I would like is to have a hybrid solution, keep the old PSTN, or at least one PSTN number for all three locations. The PSTN could serve as a backup if the broadband connection is lost, right?

I have looked further for VOIP providers, but I can not find any that will let me have a Greek number without charging too much. As it stands now, the two providers I found in Greece are charging serious money just for the monthly fee, and are higher on international and local calls as well then similar companies in sweden or uk.

Well, but I guess what I could do, is just to skip the greek provider, and have providers in uk, and sweden, and somehow set up asterisk to route phonecalls to my homeoffice as if it is a remote branch, yes?
When I call someone in uk from greece, I would still pay local fees, cause asterisk routes my calls over IP and via the UK VOIP, right?

Btw, I just bougth the real book on asterisk, is much better to have it paper when reading then to read the pdf. When I am done reading I will ask some more if things still are not clear.

I register SIP phone in Asterisk remotely (about 160km), so Asterisk PBX isn’t so ‘short-handed’ as ‘the same switch’ zone.