[geeks] Asterisk PBX

[james]

On Tue, 2004-12-07 at 17:15, Ido Dubrawsky wrote:
> Ok...so I've decided to start playing around with Asterisk to setup a PBX at
> the house.  What I want to do is use a second POTS line I have to the house
> and terminate that as the primary line to the PBX (inbound and outbound).  I've
> looked at the asterisk website as well as the Digium website but I'm not sure
> as to what hardware I need.  I've got a standard x86 PC but do I need both
> the FXO and the FSO card for the Digium TDM400P card?  Also, I want to setup
> IP telephone on the "inside" of the house and for the Asterisk to be the 
> IP-telephony to Analog gateway...can it do that?  How hard is Asterisk to set
> up?

Asterisk is pretty easy, and http://www.xorcom.com has its Rapid ISO
which makes a bootable CD that installs the minimum required Debian
Linux and * pbx. Its free, btw.

And to avoid confusion... FXO ports connect to telco POTS lines, and FXS
ports connect to POTS phones.

I'd use one of the cheapo voice modems (for an FXO port) that Atom
mentioned and get an IP phone or two to start. If you want to stay cheap
until you decide you like it you can use the FireFly softphone which
runs on a PC and makes/takes SIP based VoIP calls to an * pbx (or other
VoIP system). FireFly is freeware and to the pbx it appears exacly like
a VoIP phone.