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37 Comments
- klawz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4You'd be VERY surprised how many of them do it today, ever heard of backup networks? Yes, they have on-demand backup private networks to route the calls at a more expensive rate, if the normal route(s) take a *****. Believe it or not, corporations can route over the Internet just fine, and route via T3s or whatever, when necessary, it's called paying very little for the most time you're up, and paying a lot for the time that your "very little" plan take a *****. 360daysX$15.99a day, and 5 daysX84.99 a day sure looks better than 365X$84.99 a day when it's not needed.
- Lazybones, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Free only as far as the software on the PBX. To tie into the normal phone network you still need to subscribe to a line. You then also have support all of the hardware and software.
Even Astrix systems are normally purchased from a service provider to provide support. - dmurray14, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4and if you DO know what you're doing, trixbox/asterisk is one hell of a feature-packed alternative
damnit, wrong comment replied to - leobaby, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Those ***** at asterisk@home are responsible for more data loss than any distribution out there. Not sure about recent versions but listen to this...
You burn the iso and boot; without any prompt whatsoever it partitions and formats your first hard drive AND proceeds to install data to it. You complain at the forums and you get 'You should read the ***** manual.' I kid you not.
You don't get to choose partitions or customize the setup or answer yes to any prompts.
I didn't lose any data but I was disgusted enough to never look back. Maybe now that they changed their name thay also changed their practice. - compy386, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I use an * box everyday here at my office. I have started a tutorial on how to set one up at http://www.technicalnoise.com If you check out my blog you will find the beginnings of a Trixbox setup. From there you can email me if you have any questions.
Overall, * will save you quite a bit of money and it can do many cool things. If I'm not in the office it can send my calls to my cell phone (which is something my landline provider used to charge me for) You can also have voice menus, weather, news and more! Asterisk is a great program, I would encourage anyone with an interest in PBX solutions to check it out!
SIP phones can be had for around $125/each. These aren't toy phones either. They are full featured desktop office phones. - compy386, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3They are pretty much the same thing, only Trixbox gives you a GUI.
- lpmusix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@cmdrNacho
Exactly, that's why you use FreeBSD in an enterprise environment - schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Asterisk seems like the popular choice these days. The world's largest contact centre has just chosen it: http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/8049/127/
- robdavy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4According to a Google ad on this page, a SIP phone can be bought for $339. That adds up pretty quick...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5let's see, free fully featured VOIP or costly vendor driven *****....
wonder which I would choose... - RonaldLewis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Digium, the developer of Asterisk, has released their own GUI:
http://www.asterisknow.org - jerbaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2We have Cisco Unity in our building. We have approximately 5,000 users. The voicemail system crashes dead AT LEAST once per day. Most weekends it dies within hours of everyone going home so we can't check our voicemail over the weekend at all. It's crap and anyone who uses it in a corporate environment knows it.
- rauz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5We are in your legacy phone systems, replacing it with Trixbox.
- klawz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That version doesn't have a 1/5th of the features as Trixbox with freePBX. But from what I hear, it's pretty stable beta code of version 1.4 (Trixbox is not there yet).
- klawz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2quote
"...you still need to subscribe to a line."
/quote
No you don't. There are plenty of free VOIP subscritpions out there. For one, try looking at freeworlddialup FWD - they are free. There are a few others that offer free DIDs too. You do not have to have a landline either. And the support for the box is a piece of cake, set it and forget it. Why not try out the virtual machine version, you'll soon see it's not half as bad as you'd think. - leighj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Did you read the article? This is about using VOIP and Trixbox NOT POTS. In other words if you can read this you have the hardware. And if you read a bit more carefully granted he didn't say where the VOIP account that uses the SIP protocol the documentation at Trixbox talks about several . (what you don't read the documentation?) This was meant more of a Hey Look it's gotten easier than a technical guide.
- Nighthawke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2http://www.asteriskguru.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_Initiation_Protocol
http://www.voip-info.org/
What I would like to see is the core for TrixBox being released so that it can be installed onto a Ubuntu system. - klawz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You can get the cards (if you're talking about hooking yoru home line to it for 911 dialing) for about $15.00 new on ebay. As for the rest of it, the hw requirements are pretty much anthing out there built within the last 10 years (for a home line with 1-4 lines). Cost is nill if you already have an old clunker lying around. If you don't there is always that one that pops up on the front page here for 30.00 (used Dell). As for SIP phones, you can use a softphone+headset, or any of those USB phones, or you can get an ATA adaptor (for about 50.00) and use ANY POTS phone. Or buy a SIP phone, which will be a bit more expensive, but I've seen them from $30 to $800 dollars.
- robdavy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not quite...
"'World's largest contact centre company' chooses open source IP PBX for its own contact centre"
It's their contact centre, not the world's largest contact centre... - Barleyman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Any recommendations on which company to get a SIP account to connect PBX to?
- PerryG, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1 Although I found the story interesting, it seems to have generated some confusion and has a few errors of omission. For example, the story gives the impression that asterisk@home needs some sort of high-end hardware when in fact it will handle most small-office situations just fine with a Pentium II class machine acting as a dedicated VoIP server. The real key issue for voice quality tends to be available bandwidth (roughly 80K per call depending on the codec) and choice of the phone handset which can vary in cost and voice quality. Forget using dial-up and a satellite link is painful because of the latency. Last I checked, the sweet spot for good quality feature-rich handsets seemed to be around $200.
Why does anybody need it? For the geeks among us, asterisk is an interesting blend of cutting edge IT and some really arcane old phone company stuff. Home users might find it useful as a means of adding lines if they are maxed at an existing two-pair copper for phones but have a big cable pipe, for example. For a small business, particularly a start-up, asterisk can be a very cost-effective alternative to installing a more traditional PBX. The drill is to do the bandwidth math and order a dedicated synchronous DSL pipe just for the phones in busy office.
One of the things the story tends to ignore is the fact that asterisk has a mind-warping range of capabilities, and the real trick to getting it to run right, or any PBX for that matter, is in dealing with how you want to use it. Conditional call forwarding? Say for example that you are normally at a certain place at a certain time during a workday except on Wednesday between 3 PM and 5 PM when you are always someplace else. Another thing the story ignores is the factor of the integration of asterisk@home/trixbox with SugarCRM as a groupware solution using PHP and a MySQL back-end. Want to call someone? Go to Sugar contacts and click the link on the phone number to dial. Personally, I'm not a big fan of Sugar because it tends to be sales-centric. Still, the developers have done a good job of implementing a telephony API. This general trend could translate into a big hit for MS Exchange.
Just my two cents... - compy386, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is the company I use: http://www.axvoice.com/index.php
- RonaldLewis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Forgot to mention that TrixBox is indeed a nifty, all-inclusive VoIP appliance. It has done a lot for the Asterisk brand and community.
- klawz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1want a unlimited 800/888/866/877 inbound number + unlimited LD (USA48) for about $40 a month try quantumvoice.com can have two calls at once.
want pay per min, about 1.9c for toll free, or 1.3c for regular, 8xx or normal DID, pay per min LD, but no monthly charge? Try vitelity.net So you can have unlimited calls at the same time. - williamdyer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@robdavy
Do you know anything about phone systems? With VoIP service, you need ZERO additional hardware. With softphones, you don't even need VoIP phones. Also, I have no idea where you can spend $300+ for a VoIP phone. Most top quality VoIP phones are around $150. You can get them for much less if you are on a tight budget. - Nighthawke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The Zaptel cards are a PITA to get running. You nearly have to shut down ALL the features, including automatic PNP in the BIOS, for the cards to install and function. Only then, you you can go into * and set then up via the *cfg files or A@H, most likely both if you are setting up a hybrid system that includes hardline phones.
- w0rd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@robdavy:
You should look for some proprietary phone system phones sometime. They can cost much more than that. Much more. Even Vodavi's 30 buttons come in at 300ish new. You can find them used online for 200 bucks. - ED209, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Disregard, I misread.
- klawz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What MOBO HW are you using? I've setup over 2 dozen boxes, with different HW and have never ran into this problem. Especially if you use the newb Trixbox method, it sets it all up for you, even the generic cards for $15, and the OEM Wildcards for $30.00
- compy386, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I use an SPA-3102, that solves that problem!
- diverge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1SunRocket is offering $200 for 2 years of service plus a phone. I just switched to them from Packet8, so far so good. Here is the offer I used. http://downloadfirefox.ws/voip.php
- cmdrNacho, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6your the same kind of person that will say linux is not an enterprise solution either
- jerbaker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I don't understand why VOIP will save me money. I have no land line and I pay $39 a month for my cellphone. I never have overages. How is paying more for a crappy land line substitute going to help any person? Businesses maybe, but people ... no. Unless you talk more than 15 hours a month to people with a different cell carrier than yourself, it's going to be cheaper just to pay for the cellphone minutes.
- seuaniu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@klawz
Thats an interesting point, but scary. I'd hate to be their network admin when things are running *****. Not to mention, the overhead of running a separate failover network just in case the crappy (internet) one goes to hell would seem to negate lots of the cost savings, although I have to admit that I haven't done any of the math on it. - seuaniu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2"Forwarding your calls over the internet instead of the phone lines can save you big money. As a communications consultant I have received many enquiries about VOIP as of late."
And as a consultant, I dearly hope that you aren't suggesting to your corporate customers that they should drop their landlines and go VOIP over the internet. The next blaster/sasser/etc worm can and will ***** your telephone service up due to increased latency on routers that you have no control over.
Corporate VOIP systems generally run on a T1 or fractional straight to the telco hotel, never going anywhere near the internet. For those that don't know anything about it, a T1 can handle somewhere around 70 concurrent telephone connections. In my area, a T1 costs about $350/month. That's where the cost saving come in, whether you are using * or another solution. - Jack9, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Inaccurate title and non-informative article.
The answer is still Asterix, not Trixbox. - robdavy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3As an article aimed at the average computer literate person hoping to find the answers to setting up their own VOIP system, this fails badly.
There's no mention of the hardware needed to turn his computer into a PBX, or where to get this hardware from. No mention of the cost (last time I checked, the cards were a little pricey). Same goes for the phones themselves.
No mention of what this "SIP Account" is (SIP is a protocol - how do you have an account with a protocol?). Where does one get this 'account' from? How much do things cost?
Generally, pretty useless. Sorry
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