drewX2

i decided to go with all IP phones, does this mean I need no digium cards?

rixride

The Digium Analog Cards provide analog trunks for your IP Phones or your analog phones. Digium does have PRI cards you could connect a fractional or full T1 for voice using one of them.

If you have a Voice Service such as Broadvoice, you can use that as IP Trunks to the PSTN. Seems like your best bet. I didn't realize Broadvoice would allow you to set up virtual trunks like that.

Are all your IP Phones softphones or did you acutally purchase hardware IP Phones?

All you really need to set up an IP Phone environment with Asterisk is a Asterisk server and IP Phones. There are a couple tutorials on how to do that and if you follow the links there are probably a few more.

If you are going with Softphones, I would recommend high quality USB with DSP Headsets. They work the best for Softphones.

Also what is your router and switch situation. Do you have layer 3 switches? Can you set priority on your router?

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drewX2

Thanks for the reply. I did decide to go with all ArtDio IPF-2000 Phones since I got a great deal on them. I am getting a T1 setup in the office, do I need a T1 card for the asterisk server or can i just use a standard ethernet connection? I was told by the provider that I should use their NAT which has QoS for prioritizing voice data, but it is quite expensive, is there a cheaper solution?

So let me see if I got this. I can have a switch/hub connected to my T1 router. The switch will have all the IP phones connected to it as well as the Asterisk Server, and thats all I need?

EDIT: And I will be using Broadvoice, they support asterisk PBX it says on their website and I have talked to them they said its ok. $29.99/month, cant beat it

rixride

If you are using the T1 for data it will have to go into your CSU/DSU, that is normally in the router or an external CSU/DSU may be needed.
You then connect your router to your switch. You will also need something that will provide the IP Addresses to your computers and IP PHones, a DHCP Server. Some routers already have this built in, if not you will need a server that provides the IP Addresses. Then all users on your network can use your T1 for internet and telephone service.


If you have a Layer 3 Data Switch you can prioritize voice traffic within your network pretty much up to the router. When you send a call over the internet, there is not much you can do to control the prioritization. Just make sure you have a low latency circuit. You can really only control prioritization on a private network i.e. Frame Relay, ATM, etc...and that is from point to point. You are going point to many, so your callers or the end points may not have QOS enabled on thier ends so you can't control that part of the network.



Yes, pretty much, just make sure you have a DHCP server, so you don't have to manually do IP Addresses and your good to go.

No you can't beat that but how do they control multiple connections? Does it matter to them if you have 3 calls going out or 15?

Here is an updated screenshot of your proposed network. Both voice and data will traverse it. With a good switch you can prioritize the traffic to the router helping out the voice quality.

But to answer your question, yes, that is pretty much all you need to have a Software PBX with Voicemail and IP Phones.

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drewX2

Wow, thanks for the all the help! I've been playing around with Asterisk and having some difficulties configuring my ArtDio IPF-2000 phones (bad choice of phones to buy), so hopefully I get it up and going else I will go with a virtual pbx system for a month or two before getting a nice pbx setup.

Thanks again for all the help.

rixride

I had similiar problems getting the sip softphones working properly. Let us know how you do.

Good Luck

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