Telephone System

[brad]

Greg wrote:
> 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?

Yes it will.

>  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?
> 

Any analog phone should work.  I am not sure the codes that asterisk
uses to do everything, but it should be something like * or # gives you
a menu and you work your way through the menu to do what you want.  The
most commonly used features should have nice shortcuts like you
mentioned with the flash.  I imagine you can forward voice mail, add
comments to them, etc..

> 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?

Should work great.  Add a little sign that says "pick up the phone and
dial 0" and when the person does that they will get the operator.  Or
have them ring another extension, say 101, and they will be greeted by
an Auto Attendant with your recording that gives them instructions.  Or
have them hit *9 and they will get a dial-by-name directory where your
wife's visitors will ring her, and yours will ring you.  Keep in mind
that a station phone can be a cordless phone, so you can walk around the
house with a little cordless on your belt that talks to the base station
and a wireless headset like they do in the GAP or Home Depot.  You will
not need to be 'tied' to a desk.

> 
> 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.

Not necessarily.  This will depend on your local teloc.  You should be
able to route more than one phone number to a pots line.  Some telco's
offer distinctive ring to handle this and others you may have to forward
the other phone numbers to the main number.  There is a chance this will
mess up asterisk's ability to detect the called number though. Asterisk
will detect both the called number and the calling number if the telco
passes it to you and you can route however you want depending on either
one.  Of course you can only have one call active at a time if you only
have one incoming line.

> 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.
> 
Perfect!

> 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. :-)

Try not to correlate phone numbers with phones or phone lines.  As a
PBX, like Jonathon said, you become your own phone company.  You tell
the telco what to route to you (one number or one thousand) over
whatever line or lines you have to them.  They don't care if you have
one analog phone or 50 digital phones.  Your PBX will receive what the
telco routes to you and it will be YOUR decision what your PBX does with
a call.  Also, think of all of this as very dynamic, not so hard-coded. 
The PBX will know every phone individually because it has a dedicated
line to each phone.  It will then (or you can yourself) assign a station
ID to that phone.  You will set yourself up with an extension and you
can 'travel' around the house logging into different phones and the PBX
will know how to find you since you have told it that you are now at
station ID XX.  Log in at your office phone and you will get your calls
there, log in at your easy chair and you will get them there.  You can
set call routing based on time of day as well, and can have the system
'hunt' for you by calling pagers, cell phones, other phone numbers
somewhere else, and finally take a message and email a notice to your
pager or cell and email the full message to an email address.
> 
> 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.  :-)
> 

On your small SOHO setup I think it will work fine doing everything. 
The most processor intensive voice resources are handled by chips on the
cards.

Good luck!

Brad