Voice Over IP or VoIP is the latest buzz word on everyone’s lips. VoIP literally takes your calls and places them over the internet instead of the traditional analogue phone network. As a Linux consultant it is my job to stay up to date on the latest open-source technology, as a VoIP consultant its my job to also stay up to date on the latest commercial and open-source applications available for my customers. Enter the world of Asterisk the open-source PBX by Digium, the fastest growing VoIP PBX available for EVERYONE.
The power of Asterisk is that it can run on common hardware for a fraction of the cost of a proprietary system. The one drawback link most Linux open-source applications is that if you aren’t a command line guru and if you don’t want to spend hours learning the complicated configuration files an Asterisk configuration can be tricky to say the least, this is where Trixbox comes to the rescue.
Trixbox, formerly known as the Asterisk@home project makes it possible for anyone to setup and configure their very own Asterisk pbx system even if they have never installed Linux before. A single CD can boot you hardware and install virtually everything you need to get started with this great application including the main feature a web configuration GUI. Not only are all the tools available to get the system up and running but a full update engine is included which will allow you to keep your system updated with the click of a button.
So what exactly do you need to get a Trixbox system installed? For the sake of this document we will assume that you need a system that can support up to 10 users. First as a general rule, it is recommended that you secure a ratio of 1:2 lines to users so for a 10 user office you need to secure five phone lines which means your system will need to be able to support ten concurrent phone lines or VoIP channels.
For a simple 10 user system, with voicemail, an IVR (automated attendant), call conferencing, call forwarding, music-on-hold, ring groups, and call queues it is recommended that you use atleast the following hardware configuration:
-AMD 64bit 3800%2B
-512MB Ram
-250g Drive
As you can see a simple Asterisk system running Trixbox which will support 10 users requires very low-end hardware. Now you need what is called a SIP provider, this is a company that will provide you with a DID (phone number), and with virtual lines for your incoming and outgoing phone calls. There are two types of VoIP providers on the market today “wholesale” and “commercial”. A wholesale provider will generally give you a lot of lines 10-100 lines and ONLY charge you per minute for the calls you make.
This can be a good solution if your 10 users are on the phone all the time making outbound sales calls, the second type of provider a commercial provider, will generally charge you a monthly rate for a specific number of virtual phone lines. The decision of which type of provider to use really depends on your monthly usage, if you make a lot of long distance calls and have employees on the phone all day then a wholesale provider might offer the best overall rate for you, if your employees are only on the phone for a few hours per day then a commercial provider is perfect for you.
For more information on Trixbox visit their website at http://www.trixbox.org
Brian Carpio is a senior Solaris/Linux system architect and has worked for some of the largest companies in the world. Currently he is a freelance Linux/Solaris consultant for his own company, The Tek, LLC. IT Consulting and can be reached at info@thetek.net
Digium Asterisk
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Asterisk $16.54 Asterisk |
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Inter-asterisk Exchange $102.59 Inter-asterisk Exchange |
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Asterisk Cookbook $29.78 Asterisk Cookbook contains recipes for getting more out of Asterisk–an open source PBX telephony system than runs on Linux. This Cookbook covers installing, configuring, and integrating Asterisk with existing phone systems, without the need for additional hardware. |
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Asterisk for Dummies $18.25 Bridge data and voice with Asterisk! Create and maintain an economical Asterisk phone system from scratch Asterisk is the open-source PBX software that offers you the chance to save real money on your voice communications. Invest in this book and save a lot of headaches, too! Here’s how to choose the right hardware, install the software, handle all the necessary programming to set up the system, and keep it running smoothly. Discover how to Tie together standard voice and VoIP Use AsteriskNOW’s GUI interface Install cards and telephony devices Build dialplans for incoming and outgoing calls Manage call flow |
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Asterisk Telephony Solutions $40.75 Thousands of companies have already implemented Asterisk, but it has been supported by poor documentation. This is the first and only book to offer the detailed, real-world information that working professionals need to install, configure, and manage Asterisk successfully. |
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Free Software Companies: Sun Microsystems, Cygnus Solutions, Red Hat, Qt Development Frameworks, Canonical Ltd, Black Duck Software, Digium $19.99 Free Software Companies: Sun Microsystems, Cygnus Solutions, Red Hat, Qt Development Frameworks, Canonical Ltd, Black Duck Software, Digium |
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Asterisk Wakeboard DVD $19.95 What happens when you take 9 of wakeskating's most talented riders and stick them all in an undisclosed environment packed tight with rails, jet skis and calm water? You get one of the most progressive weeks in wakeskating ever documented on film. |
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Companies Based in Huntsville, Alabama: Digium, Intergraph, Redstone Federal Credit Union, Savage Innovations, Deltacom, Adtran, Avocent $19.99 Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher’’s book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Digium, Intergraph, Redstone Federal Credit Union, Savage Innovations, Deltacom, Adtran, Avocent, Pumplinx, Olde Towne Brewing Company, Dallas Mill, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Alabama, Decibel Research Inc., Conversant Healthcare Systems, Camber Corporation, Teledyne Brown Engineering, Sci Systems. Excerpt: Type: Public (NASDAQ: ADTN) ADTRAN, Inc. is a provider of networking and communications equipment for use in the last mile of telecommunications networks. Its headquarters are in Huntsville, Alabama . The company is ISO 9001 and TL9000 certified. ADTRAN was a NASDAQ-100 Index stock from 1996 to 1998. It was #85 on BusinessWeek ‘’s 100 Hot Growth Companies list in 2006. Corporate History ADTRAN was founded by Mark C. Smith and Lonnie McMillian, and began operations in 1986. The AT |
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Life, Letters, and Posthumous Works of Fredrika Bremer (1868) $33.8 Poetry Marked With An Asterisk Translated By Emily Nonnen. |
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Switching to Voip $26.36 More and more businesses today have their receive phone service through Internet instead of local phone company lines. Many businesses are also using their internal local and wide-area network infrastructure to replace legacy enterprise telephone networks. This migration to a single network carrying voice and data is called convergence, and it’s revolutionizing the world of telecommunications by slashing costs and empowering users. The technology of families driving this convergence is called VoIP, or Voice over IP. VoIP has advanced Internet-based telephony to a viable solution, piquing the interest of companies small and large. The primary reason for migrating to VoIP is cost, as it equalizes the costs of long distance calls, local calls, and e-mails to fractions of a penny per use. But the real enterprise turn-on is how VoIP empowers businesses to mold and customize telecom and datacom solutions using a single, cohesive networking platform. These business drivers are so compelling that legacy telephony is going the way of the dinosaur, yielding to Voice over IP as the dominant enterprise communications paradigm. Developed from real-world experience by a senior developer, O’Reilly’s Switching to VoIP provides solutions for the most common VoIP migration challenges. So if you’re a network professional who is migrating from a traditional telephony system to a modern, feature-rich network, this book is a must-have. You’ll discover the strengths and weaknesses of circuit-switched and packet-switched networks, how VoIP systems impact network infrastructure, as well as solutions for common challenges involved with IP voice migrations. Among the challenges discussed andprojects presented: building a softPBX configuring IP phones ensuring quality of service scalability standards-compliance topological considerations coordinating a complete system ?switchover? migrating applications like voicemail and directory services retro-interfacing to traditional telephony supporting mobile users security and survivability dealing with the challenges of NAT To help you grasp the core principles at work, Switching to VoIP uses a combination of strategy and hands-on how-to that introduce VoIP routers and media gateways, various makes of IP telephone equipment, legacy analog phones, IPTables and Linux firewalls, and the Asterisk open source PBX software by Digium. You’ll learn how to build an IP-based or legacy-compatible phone system and voicemail system complete with e-mail integration while becoming familiar with VoIP protocols and devices. Switching to VoIP remains vendor-neutral and advocates standards, not brands. Some of the standards explored include: SIP H.323, SCCP, and IAX Voice codecs 802.3af Type of Service, IP precedence, DiffServ, and RSVP 802.1a/b/g WLAN If VoIP has your attention, like so many others, then Switching to VoIP will help you build your own system, instal |
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Murder Every Monday $9.91 Memers of the Asterisk Club, a group of wrongfully acquitted murderers, decide to become homicide consultants to potential killers wanting to follow in their footsteps. |
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Belchamber $29.5 Howard Overing Sturgis (the brother of Julius Sturgis) also is the author of Tim which received an asterisk in Young. This title was much admired by E. M. Forster who praised it as a classic in Abinger Harvest in 1936. |
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Alfie the Apostrophe $10.32 Alfie the Apostrophe is nervous. Can he make it into the punctuation-mark talent show? There’s plenty of competition, but it looks as if the director, Bud Asterisk, has mistaken Alfie for a comma. Will all of Alfie’s practice pay off? Full color. |
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Local Political Office-Holders in Canada: Mayors of Places in Canada List of Mayors in Canada $14.14 Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher’’s book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: This is a list of mayors of Canadian municipalities. Mayors in this case includes reeves (marked with a single asterisk) and wardens (marked with double asterisks). One mayor, that of Niagara-on-the-Lake, is a Lord Mayor. First Nations communities are headed by Chiefs, and are indicated as such. … More: http://booksllc.net/?id=1188160 |
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Saint Thomas Aquinas V1: The Person and His Work $34.95 Highly acclaimed as the most reliable, thorough, and accessible introduction to Thomas Aquinas, this first volume in Jean-Pierre Torrell’s set of books on the great Dominican theologian has been revised to include a new appendix. The appendix consists of additions to the text, the catalog of Aquinas’s works, and the chronology. Each item in the appendix is called out in the original part of the book with an asterisk in the margin. This is the introduction to Thomas: presenting all the known facts of his life and work |
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Cisco SPA8800 VoIP Gateway – 1 x 10/100Base-TX WAN, 4 x FXS , 4 x FXO $438.99 Developed for small businesses, the Cisco SPA8800 IP Telephony Gateway adapts to the needs of businesses that maintain their own on-premise IP private branch exchange (PBX) or that want to add voice over IP (VoIP) to their legacy time-division multiplexing (TDM) PBX or key system. The SPA8800 can be configured to be a FXO gateway for an Asterisk open source PBX, providing a versatile solution when conditions favor an external device. |
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Motorcycle Racers: List of Deaths by Motorcycle Accidents, List of 2007 Motorcycling Champions, Eric Chitty $14.14 Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher’’s book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: This is a list of people with Wikipedia articles who died in a motorcycle accident; and motorcycle racers who died while racing. For list of fatalities in Isle of Man TT, Dakar Rally, MotoGP, AMA Motorcycle Races see following sections. An asterisk denotes a sidecar rider. 1986 Allan Ogden Listed are fatalities of riders in Grand Prix motorcycle racing championship races since its foundation in 1949. … More: http://booksllc.net/?id=466614 |