Virtual Office Setup

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Nickste

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Cape Town, South Africa
Hi there,

I am looking for a bit of advice as to how to go about achieve the following setup:
- A main office which receives calls from 2 - 3 incoming Telkom landlines.
- The above office needs to be able to route these calls over a VPN connection (already established using Windows 2003), to various other offices located in different physical locations (all connected together using ADSL lines.

I have had a brief look at Asterisk at Home and Trixbox - is this overkill, and if so, is there anything less sophisticated?

Also, whereabouts can I buy the hardware that will allow me to convert the analog lines to something that can be routed over the VPN (I'm in Cape Town)?

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,
Nick
 
Trixbox or Elastix is your simplest option to getting this up and running.

As for Hardware to interface your Telkom lines to your Asterisk server I suggest converting your Analog lines to ISDN and then just purchasing appropriate ISDN interface cards. ISDN has the the benefit of giving you a digital input into your Asterisk and each ISDN line can run 2 simultaneous voice channels.

Take a look at Miro www.miro.co.za or Scoop www.scoop.co.za for VOIP gear.
 
Thanks for the reply warwickw!

I had also looked into Freepbx? Great, I'll have a look at miro and scoop :). Is it possible to run Asterisk, etc. in a virtualized environment?

Cheers,
Nick
 
Nickste said:
Thanks for the reply warwickw!

I had also looked into Freepbx? Great, I'll have a look at miro and scoop :). Is it possible to run Asterisk, etc. in a virtualized environment?
Click to expand...

Only a pleasure.

Freepbx is great however can be little complex for a new Asterisk user to get it all up and running. Suggest first playing for Trixbox or Elastix they just make it easy.

As for virtualized yes you can I have a install running in a virtualized environment in a datacentre. Problem is going to be to get hardware interfaces working though.
 
The TDM400 is just the card without the modules.

FXO modules are for lines that provide voltage ie come from Telkom etc
FXS modules are for extentions ie it provides the voltage to the phone

So for connecting to Telkom lines you need FXO ports.

I however strongly discourage you from going the analog way with Telkom, especially if this is for anything production wise, ISDN lines ie digital is a much better quality and gives you a few more options, like MSN or DID numbers.

Also you can pick up single port ISDN cards for under R300 a card, and remember each ISDN line handles 2 simultaneous voice calls at a time, so you can add 1, 2 or 3 cards to the VOIP server giving you 2, 4 or 6 voice channels. or alternatively get a quad ISDN card.
 
aaaah, I understand :)

Yeah, you have a good point about ISDN - I will have to speak to Telkom about converting the current lines.

Thanks again for your help!
Nick
 
Also when ordering ISDN lines, you can get ISDN2A or ISDN2 units installed on your premises by Telkom. The difference is the ISDN2A have an additional 2 analog ports on them which is useful if you need to problem solve any issues, without the analog ports on the ISDN2 unit you would have to have ISDN phone to test or problem solve.

Telkom have been known to install ISDN2A units if you ask the tech very very nicely otherwise you have to order them specifically and pay a little more each month on your line rental for them.

Also when connecting the ISDN2 unit to your Asterisk server, please only connect 1 digital port and not both, both channels work over the single port, if you connect both your Asterisk will see the calls coming in on both ports and get a little confused.
 
Time to resurrect this thread - warwickw I hope you haven't disappeared!

After holiday breaks/waiting for adsl upgrades, etc. I'm about to get stuck into getting this setup going [:)]. I've opted to go for ISDN2a as you suggested, and am waiting for Telkom to install. I now have to look at which ISDN card to buy.

Miro has the DI-B410P http://www.miro.co.za/detail.aspx?p...(BRI & PRI) Adapter Cards&spp=ISDN (BRI & PRI) which seems to have quite a bit of support with Trixbox - however it is rather pricey.
Can you recommend anything else that is as compatible, but cheaper? Or should I just bite the bullet and go for it?

Regards,
Nick
 
Nickste said:
Time to resurrect this thread - warwickw I hope you haven't disappeared!

After holiday breaks/waiting for adsl upgrades, etc. I'm about to get stuck into getting this setup going [:)]. I've opted to go for ISDN2a as you suggested, and am waiting for Telkom to install. I now have to look at which ISDN card to buy.

Miro has the DI-B410P http://www.miro.co.za/detail.aspx?p...(BRI & PRI) Adapter Cards&spp=ISDN (BRI & PRI) which seems to have quite a bit of support with Trixbox - however it is rather pricey.
Can you recommend anything else that is as compatible, but cheaper? Or should I just bite the bullet and go for it?
Click to expand...

Apologies was on holiday, didn't see this post. Basically a standard HFC based ISDN card will work perfectly. I have used the Planet ones as well as the Duxbury cards both have HFC chipsets and are supported in Asterisk and Trixbox, using mISDN.

The cards I used cost around R200 a card, most probably more expensive now.

PM me your email address and I'll email you a document I created on howto configure HFC based ISDN cards in Trixbox
 
Alternatively, if you don't want to change to ISDN in near future.
You can make use of the analogue lines with FXO based gateways.

We stock the AudioCodes MP-11X bases gateways that allow for FXS and/or FXO lines.

MP-11X comes in 2, 4, and 8 ports. The MP-11X has advanced routing tables to route calls between branches, and has PBX "light" functions in it.

refer to: www.redlinx.co.za or www.audiocodes.com

If you move to ISDN later, we have the MP-40X or better Mediant1000 or Mediant600 with multiple 4BRI card/s and/or PRI and/or 4FXO/4FXS combinations. On the M1K with OSN (embedded PC) you can run an Asterisk/Trixbox/PBXnSIP or other...
 
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