Re:Small business VoIP phone system setup tutorial
by amingilani on Friday August 30, 2019 @04:02PM
(#20842103)
Thank you! One more question: What kind of hardware would I require to connect my server to the plain old telephone system? In my country, we don't have VOIP gateways for consumer use.
Re:Small business VoIP phone system setup tutorial
by secabeen on Friday August 30, 2019 @05:21PM
(#20842837)
So, assuming your phone network is compatible with the US POTS (Plain old telephone service) system, here's what you need. Analog interfaces for phones run in two modes: FXO or FXS. An FSX adapter, is a device that you connect a phone device to. It generates dial tone. That's not what you need.
What you need is an FXO device (sometimes called a channel bank). That is a device that emulates a phone device, and which consumes dial tone. Many devices sold as FXO gateways are expensive. If you have a real server, you can get an FXO PCI card from Digium for some hundreds of dollars, but that's expensive too.
Some cheap FXS devices can also operate in FXO mode. The cheapest one appears to be the Grandtream HT813 for $89: https://www.voipsupply.com/grandtream-ht813-gateway-ata
Re:Small business VoIP phone system setup tutorial
by amingilani on Friday August 30, 2019 @08:22PM
(#20843903)
Thank you so much! I've already gotten started installing Asterisk and playing around. This has been most helpful!
On the uplink side, I push all my calls through voip.ms. I pay per minute inbound and outbound (I think it's about $0.01/min, which seems expensive, but then there's no crazy $30/mo crap). DIDs (aka inbound phone numbers) cost $2-4 month, depending if you need e911. Calls are handed off via Asterisk's IAX2 protocol, although SIP works too.
We use Polycom phone hardware, which has been really solid for over 10 years, and which has great call quality, given Polycom's experience in conference room phones.
If you want to get hardcore with digital lines from your telco, you can use a used cisco device as a media gateway for under $2k.
My PBX is just a VM on our infrastructure like any other.