Telephone System

[Greg Kedrovsky]

Thanks a ton, Brad. This helps. I'm still fuzzy on details (hence a couple
questions below), but I think this is the route I'm going to pursue.

> Yes, but the point of asterisk is to be able to take a regular PC, add a
> couple of special cards to it (one that handles your incoming line(s)
> and one that handles your stations and provides voice resources) and
> then hook it up to regular analog phones.  With this cheap alternative
> to a hardware PBX, the software PBX gives you tons of features including
> call transfer, on hold music, auto attendants with your own recordings,
> call routing based on DID or caller ID, IVR (interactive voice
> response), and voice mail among many others.

So, if I understand correctly, a regular analog phone will be able to take
an incoming outside call from the telco, put that person on hold and also
transfer the call to another analog phone on the Asterisk system? My wife is
insisting on an intercom system in the house. And I am sure that I can solve
phone and intercom needs through a pbx system. But, I want to avoid the
investment in pbx phones (like the office phones we used when I worked for
Price Waterhouse, etc.). Is it just as simple as a "flash" (down and up on
the "hang up"), punch in the extension number to which you want to transfer
the call, and your done? Or is this more a function of a pbx office-type
phone?

Another intercom need is our front gate. My wife wants to be able to talk
with whomever arrives at our front gate and either let them in or tell them
to go away. Seems to me Asterisk would be able to function as a frontdoor
intercom, too, correct?

> Digicom supports and sponsors asterisk so it would be wise to choose
> their cards, although dialogic is a standard in IVR technology and their
> cards should work as well.  A quick search for digicom on ebay produced
> 2 auctions while a search for dialogic produced 5 pages of auctions, so
> do your research, but if the dialogic cards are compatible they will
> likely be gotten cheaper.  Assuming you are going to start with analog
> pots lines from the phone company, I would just get a 2 or 4 port pots
> card.  You can then add up to 3 more lines allowing you to conference
> call and handle multiple calls at once.  For the station card, you need
> to decide how many phones you will have that will have a unique
> extension and that is the number of ports you need on this card.

Therefore, if I need more than 4 unique numbers in my house, I need to get
more than one card? I will have only one incoming line, but will probably
have need for 8 to 12 inside the house.

> Keep
> in mind that every phone in the house will need its own dedicated line
> to the PBX (PC running asterisk).  IIRC, normal residential wiring will
> not work as it is daisy-chained from jack to jack and won't allow the
> PBX to have dedicated communication with each phone.  If I understand
> correctly that you are building a new home, it would be smart to run
> multiple cat5 feeds to each room and terminate them on a patch panel in
> a small noc or wiring closet.  You will then have plenty of dedicated
> cat5 to run voice or data over.

Yep. You got this right on. I am cabling the entire house in Cat5e. Each
room will have a network jack, phone jack and coax (TV) jack installed in
one modular (ICC) outlet. The network and phone jacks will both be cabled in
Cat5e with RJ-45 connectors. That way, I don't limit myself with RJ-10 (or
is it RJ-11) phone jacks. All of the cabling (Cat5e phone and net, coax TV)
will run up to my office on the second floor where I am installing a rack
with patch panels and my dedicated machines. So, this way I avoid the daisy
chain you mentioned and each extension in every room of the house will have
a dedicated Cat5e wire running up to a patch panel in my office. From there,
I have to figure out what to do with the lines.

It's here that I assume I will have to have a port on the Asterisk machine
for each line that I want to have it's own unique number in the house. At
present, there will certainly be more jacks than actual phones. My kids are
2, 4 and 6. But, I would guess that when the brush the teenage years, they
will appreciate my ability to expand our current internal phone system. :-)

Should I consider a dedicated Asterisk machine, or will my server work?
Right now the server runs a shared printer off the parallel port, NFS for my
Linux machines, and Samba for the rest. The LAN is less than 10 machines at
present. I'll also be using it for learning purposes, setting up Apache,
FTP, a mini ISP (learn mail, etc.). It's a PIII - can't remember how much
RAM I have in there, but it's not a buttload. I did put in a 120gig drive,
though.  :-)

> Voice over IP is supported by asterisk and might be very useful for you
> being in Costa Rica but calling the states a lot.  You can set up
> another asterisk system somewhere over here (wherever you call the most
> is best) and then assuming broadband is available at both locations, you
> can dial an extension from your place and it will call over the internet
> to your other PBX and from there you could dial out over the pots
> line(s) thus making local calls here from there.

Sweet! This is VERY do-able. I have several geek friends that might like to
pair up with this project.

> Once you bite the bullet and get the 2 cards, your possibilities are
> endless.

Thanks, Brad.

-Greg