Making incoming calls also ring a phone line in remote office?

Asterisk can do this. You would configure a ring group and add the remote extension to it. There are VoIP companies that provide virtual PBX setups. I believe they then should offer this feature. You might search for business VoIP providers to find ones that offer PBX functionality.

I had tinkered with this when it was announced a few months ago...

Hope this helps

No problem, we're this side of the pond anyway :-)

So the solution to the problem is using a PBX, either on the premises of our main office (with a couple of IP phones at the new office), or subscribing to a virtual PBX so that we don't have to bother setting one up ourselves.

Thanks!

I'm on my way :-)

ALT 0163 ;-)

Thx.

I just did a Vonage installation today and we set up a 4 lines on the customer's high bandwidth DSL. Vonage has simultaneous ring and a UK website. Trh

Carl Navarro

If the "line" concerned is a VoIP one terminating on an ATA or SIP phone, then another device configured with the same account information will ring wherever it is plugged in. This is known as call forking For example, when I go on holiday and take an ATA configured with my number with me, both my phone at home and my additional one ring. Whichever one picks up first gets the call.

Ivor

Hmm. Alt-156 on my keyboard..!

Ivor

Mmm... Maybe we're not using the same codepage :-)

Thx for the info :-) Unfortunately, it's an analog line.

Looks like it, although I don't know what a zap trunk is, but I shall know soon enough ;-)

I have had good luck with Asterisk@Home. It does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. It uses CentOS for its OS.

Let us know if you run into trouble.

Yup, I burned the CD last night for a first encounter: It complained that no Ethernet cable was connected to the NIC, and once up and running... I didn't know where to start :-) startx wouldn't start the GUI. I'm going to give it a shot again today.

BTW, before I go further...

- am I right in saying that the only two open-source PBX projects with serious momentum are Asterisk and sipX, or are there others I should know about?

- which should I choose for what I'm trying to do?

- what hardware is trued and trud and certified to work out of the box? For instance, there are $10-20 FXO cards, and some $50 SIP phones on eBay, but before money changes hands, I'd like to make sure I don't buy equipment that is known to be flaky for such and such project.

Thank you!

Kids, look what drinking can do to you.

s/trued and trud/tried and true/

The GUI is in a WWWeb browser from another machine pointed at the one running Asterisk@Home

I found a good tutorial at

AFAICT the gold standard are the FXO cards from Digium (that's what I have on order). There are more phone options that you can shake a stick at, and I haven't seen theones I've ordered yet, so I can't advise you there.

The more I look at this, the more I realize that "working out of the box" just isn't in the cards, so it's really going to be a learning experience. OTOH, I might become passable enough in Linux to start distancing myself from WinDoze, which would really be A Good Thing.

There is also SER (Sip Express Router):

SER is used by sites that have user bases measured in the thousands to millions range. Since SER gets out of the media path it doesn't take a very fast or powerful computer to run a sip proxy for quite a large population.

On the other hand asterisk does allow you to interface with T1/E1 PRI lines. Sites that need both will often run SER for the heavy lifting and asterisk for the calls that need to be gatewayed into the legacy phone system.

I've had good luck with the Linksys SPA-841 phone and the Grandstream Bugetone 101. The latter is at the low end of the curve and it does take some careful research to find which version of the firmware is stable. There are quite a few more expensive > $100 phones which are well out of my budget. Poke around

-wolfgang

Stupid me. Should have figured they wouldn't polute the PBX with X :-)

I'll do the reading while I play with A@Home. Thx for the pointers.

I'm used to Linux, but even then, setting up those open-source PBX thingies looks like an interesting challenge ;-)

Thx for the link. I took a look on the site, but it looks like a big beast for just listening on a FXO card and talking to a few IP phones :-)

I'm on my way. Thx.

You don't want X on your Asterisk box. It will eat up too many resources. Oncee you've assigned an IP to the box, hit it from a web browser on the LAN. You should then see AMP, Asterisk Management Portal. It will let you define the options for your Asterisk.

I am only familiar with Asterisk but have heard of SipX and SER. It seems SER is popular.

I bought a X100P compatible card off ebay to hook up a POTS line. I bought it for about 10 USD and it has worked well. As far as phones, I just bought my first VoIP phone. I got a Soyo one from ebay for about 30.00. Quality is supposed to be okay. I'll have to let you know in a week. However, I have used a SPA-1000 for a year or so to connect a standard cordless phone. It works like a champ.

Jonathan