Question

Asterisk PBX Setup With 4 Analog Lines For Small Business Infrastructure

Asked by: jjk16

I have a project that I am trying to acomplish.

Three Main Goals

1. Enable a small business to have a full featured Asterisk PBX for 4-6 lines (analog from verizon, sbc, etc)
   many extensions

2. Cheap as Possible


3. Enable Advanced IP features and Learn more about Vo/IP and PBX's


Customer has an old comdial PBX. 4 phones and 8 comdial phones. Its Old. Customer Balks at high price of pbx.

I was thinking that i could get a 4 port fxo card from digium or something Equivalent. I could then Plug in the 4 analog lines from CO into the 4 ports in the back of the asterisk PBX. Some problems I forsee are:

How do I connect the asterisk PBX to a 66 punch down Block?
Do I need to buy new Phones?
Do I need FXS modules to send the digitial signal to these phones?
What other Hardware do I need?
Any other suggestions?
If I went with a t1 (pri?) would that be better?
Any sound quality issues?

Thanks for reading and I look forward to the responses.


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Asked On
2005-07-25 at 23:56:38ID21504183
Tags

asterisk

,

analog

,

lines

,

pbx

Topic

Voice Over IP

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
8

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Answers

 

by: KerryGPosted on 2005-07-27 at 10:12:40ID: 14538981

Easy enough and you ar correct about the 4 port cards.  Now to answer you other questions:

Q. How do I connect the asterisk PBX to a 66 punch down Block?
A. You dont, you would connect to the phones over the existing Cat5 cable in your office

Q. Do I need to buy new Phones?
A. Yes, you need SIP compatible phones

Q. Do I need FXS modules to send the digitial signal to these phones?
A. No, it goes over IP over the network to the phones.

Q. What other Hardware do I need?
A. A server and phones, thats about it

Q. Any other suggestions?
A. Look at existing solutions such as the products from Zultys

Q. If I went with a t1 (pri?) would that be better?
A. Depends on how many concurrent calls you need to support

Q. Any sound quality issues?
A. If you use a cheap server, yes

 

by: jjk16Posted on 2005-07-27 at 13:11:21ID: 14540655

Q. Any sound quality issues?
A. If you use a cheap server, yes


explain?

Q. If I went with a t1 (pri?) would that be better?
A. Depends on how many concurrent calls you need to support

Why is a pri better for voice over IP. Can I use a fractional t1? Only 4-6 lines are in use. So please reference that for any answers please.



Q. Do I need FXS modules to send the digitial signal to these phones?
A. No, it goes over IP over the network to the phones.

What is the purpose of an FXS module then? Interact with an old fashioned PBX?

 

by: KerryGPosted on 2005-07-27 at 13:37:04ID: 14540836

Q. Any sound quality issues?
A. If you use a cheap server, yes
explain?
- Low end servers such as the Dell SC420 ($299) do not handle interupts properly and you will get stuttering, pops, clicks, and drop-offs.


Q. If I went with a t1 (pri?) would that be better?
A. Depends on how many concurrent calls you need to support
Why is a pri better for voice over IP. Can I use a fractional t1? Only 4-6 lines are in use. So please reference that for any answers please.
- If you are only using 4-6 lines, then the cost of the PRI is probably not worth it. You could use a dedicated DSL circuit for only that many concurrent calls or a fractional T1. The advantage of using a PRI is more about reliability right now. PRI's rarely go down.

Q. Do I need FXS modules to send the digitial signal to these phones?
A. No, it goes over IP over the network to the phones.
What is the purpose of an FXS module then? Interact with an old fashioned PBX?
- The FXS is typically used to connect to legacy systems, yes.

 

by: jjk16Posted on 2005-07-27 at 14:22:27ID: 14541174

OKay so far so good. Please do not spare the keyboard when explaining answers. The keyboard likes it.

ok so fractional t1, would 256kb suffice? or do i need more.

And finally,

How does the FXS work with a pbx.  So say I get an incoming call on the asterisk, i want to send it through the old PBX to the extention on the comdial. Does the FXS package the call and send to the comdial pbx and the comdial routes it to the proper extention?  I want to intergrate the asterisk with the old comdial.  Can you explain how the FXS works with the the old??


Any motherboards that you recommend?

Thanks

 

 

by: KerryGPosted on 2005-07-27 at 14:40:54ID: 14541333

Depending on the codec you are using, you may need up to 50-60k per concucrrent line. The available codec is based upon the ITSP you choose to handle your termination.

I will be honest and say I have never connected to an older PBX before so I am not entirely sure how you would go about it. I guess the final answer depeds on exactly how you want the two to interact and what exact function each box will provide.

 

by: NetoMeterPosted on 2005-08-01 at 02:46:43ID: 14568458

Hi!
I would like to share a couple of thoughts about your project.
May be it is a good idea instead of switching at once from the old PBX to the new Asterisk server to perform this process gradually. As far as I understood your customer currently has 4-6 PSTN  lines which most probably are configured as a hunting group – if the first line is busy the next answers the call etc…
Find out which are the last 1 or 2 lines in the hunting group and connect them to your Asterisk server. Give your customer a chance to use the server and two IP phones with it for while until they fell the difference. Of course make sure that you show them how easy is to configure their voice mail features, create voice menus, queues, call simultaneously phones or transfer calls to a cell phone  etc…
Once they like it, it is going to be easy to convince them to buy a better server or more expensive IP phones.
As to the bandwidth – I would say that you need at least 50k per voice call. It is important to check what is the actual Upload and Download speed which you get from your provider by using for example www.dslreports.com and perform the measurements of the speed at random intervals and times of the day.

Netometer

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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