[TechGuy]

Anyone ever use www.asterisk.org ? I bought some of the cards from Digium to get it set up, but they sent me the wrong ones and won't return my calls or emails... I'm sure it was an honest mistake (sent me the $150 1-port cards instead of the $350 4-port they charged me for)... I'm hoping to catch someone this afternoon.

Anyway, anyone ever use Asterisk? It's pretty sweet from what I've seen so far. I'm hoping to set it to do long distance over something like VoicePulse Connect as well as answer the phones, etc...

[Ddruid]

Hmm, I'm interested to hear how this has turned out. We are currently considering building several Asterisk boxes to be placed at our tower sites for voip capability. We are a WiSP in SeMO and have numerous towers, most of which have no (current) pots access and poor cell coverage. Our local calling area from our office is extremely small (ie two towns both of which have about a population of 1500), but our wireless coverage area is about 1600 miles, so it would be nice to drop into a 'local' calling area when contacting clients to avoid ld charges..

[TechGuy]

To be honest, it's been more painful than I expected. Not because the software is hard to figure out, as some had suggested to me. That's gone pretty well. But Digium, the company who makes the primary Asterisk hardware, doesn't seem to care a whole lot about their customers. For example, the 4-port TDM card we ordered came with an FXO for only one port. After three phone calls and two emails (no emails or voice messages were ever returned), they finally sent us the other three FXSs... except one is bad. So I've been going back and forth for a few days with them and they require ssh login access (?!?!?!) in order to diagnose this hardware failure... yeah, I don't know. I'm thinking I should have looked around a bit for other compatible hardware.

[TechGuy]

Called them again today and was told that "John" would call me back after lunch... still nothing. Beginning to wonder about my $500 investment...

[Ddruid]

Hrm.. We had planned on buying the equipment direct from digium, perhaps we should go with an outside source or just avoid digium all together.. This has not been the first complaint I've heard of about digium customer service policies, in the end all (the ones I've heard about) were taken care of in the end..

It doesn't surprise me that they would want access to the box. I dunno whether I would do it or not personally..

So far how has the install process gone? I'm really not that familiar with voip/telephony, luckily for use our 'mother' business is a Clec

Let us know how tings go, I am really on the fence on whether or not to order from them..

[TechGuy]

Install was a piece of cake and we'd be up and running if it weren't for the hardware... We gave Digium ssh access immediately (on Friday), although I don't know what they'll be able to see... everything is detected, but there's no dialtone on the one port. If I switch the bad FXS to another port, that port dies. *sigh* Guess I'll have to call them AGAIN tomorrow... (no return call again today)...

So, to summarize thus far: Go for Asterisk, but not with Digium.

I'm going to reply here to keep track of how long and painful this process is with Digium... somewhat for my own records.

[Ddruid]

Any updates? I have ran into some problems here lately that has pushed back my schedule atleast 4-8wks before I can even start to think about implementing asterisks.. I have, however, got a pair of IPMUX's running through our network to provide 4 T1's via ip (tdmoip). I can't say I'm too overly happy with them at this point, they are *extremely* noisy, even with absolutely no traffic there is a constant stream of UDP packets.. At full bandwidth the T1 consumes about 1.8mb/s per T1..

[TechGuy]

All of my phones are currently hard-wired into a TDM card (no VoIP yet, although I hope to do so only to have a phone from my home)...

As for my Digium problems, they finally sent me a new chip and our system went production yesterday. We had a problem this morning that extensions 1 and 2 wouldn't ring (but, interestingly, would answer the phone if you picked it up while Asterisk reported it as ringing)... Not sure what that was about. A restart cleaned it up, though.

I'm currently working on a little sh script for cron to check my voicemail box and call my cell phone if I have mail...

[Ddruid]

How are things working?

My 4-8wks turned into a 12 months I have finally gotten around to start setting up an asterisk server. I have spent a few hours today and got one setup on my home network, just using soft-phones for now. I have one of the tdm cards coming with 2 fxo and 2 fxs for our office. I will likely purchase some grandstream phones to leave at our pop's, our remote towers get crappy cell coverage.. Hopefully I will be able to get everything up and configured in the coming weeks..

[Ddruid]

Well, I have gotten our Asterisk 'Network' setup and semi-functional. Right now I have a total of 4 up and running in different calling areas. It will take a little time to get ROI, but because of the boxes I was able to drop 4 pstn lines ($15-$25/mo ea). I am running IAX2 between the boxes to make pstn calls into the particular calling areas, just routing by prefix now (cheesy LCR). I have alkso fitted my network monitor (running nagios) with asterisk and an FXO port, I am going to see if I can make it place calls with a voice indication (using festival) when I have an alarm. I outfittd my physical alarms (tower lighting, burglar, power outage, etc) with ata device to be able to make pstn calls through the network.

Which IP phones are you using? I ordered a Grandstream 102 and A Sipura phone, I like the Sipura much better than the GS..

[Squashman]

I have been wanting to try this out for some time now. Just cant afford any of the hardware to at least test it out. I see some stuff on ebay that seems to be alot cheaper then what Digium sells.

I am very proficient with Linux but know nothing about Phone systems so I would just like to try it out with one telephone line at my house first. What exactly do I need to accomplish this? I really don't understand all the technical terms about FXO and FXS.

[Ddruid]

If you are just making IP calls then you do not need any of the station cards, the only time you need the FXO or FXS ports is when you want to integrate PSTN. You use an FXO port to connect to the POTS. You can connect any standard analog telephone to an FXS Port - Digium's explanation. You can install asterisk and run simple Softphones like x-lite at no cost. If you just want to take incoming calls and make outgoing calls over your telephone line all you will need is an FXO port.

Some good reads:
Barebone asterisk
Asterisk Wiki
Getting started with Asterisk
Asterisk documentation project
Pots & Asterisk

From my home server, the TDM400p is the card is in the lower center with the green(fxs) & red(fxo) modules:

[Squashman]

Thanks for the links and stuff. I am just looking to try it out at home first and then maybe test it out at my wifes workplace. They have a Panasonic Phone system. Three lines come into it and 8 phones are connected to it. Anyone can pickup any line. If any line is busy it rolls over to the other.

How hard would this be to setup based on your experience?

[Ddruid]

Not hard at all, when you configure the FXO ports you can assign them to a 'Call Group'. When you configure the extension you have it 'dial' that group and it will automatically pick one that is free.