Digiital
10-15-2005, 09:20 PM
I'll post my little adventure of setting up my own PBX/VOIP Phone system.
(What is a PBX? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBX)
I started off deciding to use the open source project called Asterisk, and going with the self install CD found at asteriskathome (http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net/). But a warning. DO NOT, and I repeat, DO NOT run this CD on your desktop or any other machine that you don't carefore, because it WILL format and DELETE everything without warning.
After the install and reading the simple docs, I had a PBX up and running in a matter of a few minutes. I now had every PC setup with a extension like you would have in a office. Each one with Voice Mail, Call display. Of course all internal(for now). Current I'm just using softphone(software based, http://www.xten.com/index.php?menu=download) but if you happen to have IP based telephones those would work as well. I could open the SIP port open to the internet and provide everyone here on TCM with a extension and all the toys you would get with a normal PBX, and more. Like being able to setup a conference call.
Some of the cool things I have been able to do so far. I have extensions setup,, that I can Dial and they announce things like the current time, weather reports. You can have others to do things like give you the latest sports reports.
That's about it for now. I'm currently playing around with some of the other things you can do and will report as I go along and learn alittle more about how it all works before I fireup the VOIP card I also have installed on the machine which will allow me to make REAL phone calls. So for example, I could make a phone call from my laptop from anyplace I would happen to have a internet connection,
(What is a PBX? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBX)
I started off deciding to use the open source project called Asterisk, and going with the self install CD found at asteriskathome (http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net/). But a warning. DO NOT, and I repeat, DO NOT run this CD on your desktop or any other machine that you don't carefore, because it WILL format and DELETE everything without warning.
After the install and reading the simple docs, I had a PBX up and running in a matter of a few minutes. I now had every PC setup with a extension like you would have in a office. Each one with Voice Mail, Call display. Of course all internal(for now). Current I'm just using softphone(software based, http://www.xten.com/index.php?menu=download) but if you happen to have IP based telephones those would work as well. I could open the SIP port open to the internet and provide everyone here on TCM with a extension and all the toys you would get with a normal PBX, and more. Like being able to setup a conference call.
Some of the cool things I have been able to do so far. I have extensions setup,, that I can Dial and they announce things like the current time, weather reports. You can have others to do things like give you the latest sports reports.
That's about it for now. I'm currently playing around with some of the other things you can do and will report as I go along and learn alittle more about how it all works before I fireup the VOIP card I also have installed on the machine which will allow me to make REAL phone calls. So for example, I could make a phone call from my laptop from anyplace I would happen to have a internet connection,