Endless Possibilities

This winter, I'm looking at the Asterisk Open Source PBX and the related hardware offered by Digium. This is just a collection of thoughts to this point (I'm finally beginning to understand how it can all work together).

In my apartment at school, we have a single incoming phone line and high-speed Internet connections. To set up a PBX would entail setting up Rohan as a gateway, as it was last year. This time, with a more server-oriented distro (probably Debian). Install in Rohan one X100P and one S100U. X100P gets connected to wall outlet via standard phone cable, S100U gets connected to standard analog phone. Naturally, Rohan also has connections via Ethernet to Internet and Gondor.

Asterisk is installed on Rohan. Incoming calls (either IP or over PSTN) may be routed to analog phone or client on Gondor (IP calls using IAX are not routable to Gondor, as Windows port of Gnophone does not yet exist). Asterisk also functions as voicemail system, making answering machine in apartment unnecessary, although system may only be accessible via analog phone connected to S100U(?).

Outgoing calls via phone connected to S100U may be routed according to destination and current status of phone line:

• If phone line is open and call is local (local prefixes as defined by Verizon), use PSTN.
• If phone line is open and call is long-distance (no long-distance service on phone), use Internet to place call. This will wreak havoc with caller ID (as will any use of VoIP).
• If phone line is in use, use Internet regardless of call destination.

Back to the research...

December 23, 2002 - 10:14 AM

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