On Thu, 2004-05-27 at 23:10, Niall O Broin wrote:
> All this talk of Asterix has made me think. I support, and am often in,
> an office in Germany. Phone calls from there are very cheap - I think
> it's 5c / minute to call Ireland, and even less to the U.S.A.
Germany is somewhat the cheapest on calls overall. Actually, during the
day it's cheaper for me to call via my danish or german voip accounts to
irish cellphones than directly inside the country.
> However, the call costs are dwarved by the fixed costs of about 25 EUR/month per
> extension. There is a large PBX in the building, provided by other than
> the incumbent telco, and our phones are extensions off that. Each phone
> is connected effectively to a single ISDN channel, and has a DID number.
>> So, how would I replace that with Asterix? It seems from what was
> mentioned here that I could stick in an Asterix PC (< 500 EUR) with a
> couple of ISDN cards (< 100 EUR) (thus giving me 2 x couple outside
> lines) and a bunch of ISDN phones at 70 EUR a pop and I've a complete
> replacement for what's there.
How many ISDN phones are you talking about ?
Let me just summarize:
If you use the "cheap" solution, you'll take a ISDN card for about 25-50
EUR pr. S-Bus (2 channels), however the ones, that you use internal,
you'll have to supply with power. I use a old NT1 for that.
The more expensive solution is a complete, powered and terminated, 4 or
8 port ISDN card (4 port = 500 EUR + VAT). The ports of this card can go
either way and configured individually on a pr. port basis.
> Couple of questions:
>> 1) DID - I'm guessing this would be handled my MSNs on the ISDN lines
> which Asterix will then map to the appropriate IP phone.
Not a problem.
> 2) Least cost routing - I bet this is a feature of Asterix already.
You can solve that inside the dialing plan or by AGI's (cgi-scripts for
telephony).
> 3) Operator console - how is that handled?
Various solutions (Flash, Windows application, TAPI support etc.)
There's lots of different stuff out there.
> Clearly some or all of these questions will be answerable on Asterix
> related sites. However, I thought I'd just run that scenario past people
> here who seem to have some experience in the area.
Official asterisk site is http://www.asterisk.org and has the basic manual. Currently there is being worked on a better manual,
the Hitchhikers Guide to Asterisk, at http://www.asteriskdocs.org
Beyond that http://www.voipinfo.org has tons of stuff about asterisk setup and so on.
If that doesn't help, i can give tips or provide consulting on Asterisk and know the
German marked pretty well, since i've been working in Telco business in Denmark and Germany.
Kind regards,
Martin List-Petersen
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