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Asterisk on DSL

I asked a question the other day about asterisk and this is probably a S.O.S. question but I want to set up the asterisk box with a dedicated DSL connection and the internet with its own connection. I know this is a matter of routing and having the phones on one subnet and the pcs on another. My question is there any documentation which would scretch this out for a very small network. I really don't want to try and think to hard about this we are taking about 10 computers and 10 phones plus a fax. Thanks

grblades

You can do it quite simply. Have two network interfaces on the Asterisk box. One connects to the internet direct (no NAT router) while the other connects to your internal network on the same subnet as all your pc's. There isnt any real need to have the phones and the pc's on a different subnet.

This way the pc's use your other DSL connection while all phone calls go through the asterisk box which will use its own dedicated DSL.

arahming

ASKER

Is there any documentation on this. I can see how it works in my head but would like to have a foundation..

Thanks

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grblades

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arahming

ASKER

one more question are you using layer three switches or is asterisk taking care of the routing

grblades

There is no routing involved as such. Asterisk has two interfaces. One on the internal network and one connected directly to the internet. Asterisk will sit inbetween any calls between the internet and the internal phones. So Asterisk itself is receiving and forwarding on the voice packets instead of them being routed directly between the internal phones and the internet. This avoids the potential problems associated with using NAT.

arahming

ASKER

I am just a little confuse on how the IP phones know to get there address from asterisk or is there two network cards and the DHCP address are reserved sorry I have configure asterisk before just not with a dedicated DSL line

grblades

The phones are just on the internal network so they get their IP address from the same DHCP server that the desktop computers so.
One of the asterisk interface cards is on the same internal network so its the IP address of that interface (which will be a fixed static IP) that you configure on the phones where you enter the IP address of the server they should connect to.
So the phones just get an IP address from a standard DHCP server. Its their own individual configuration which tells them the server which they should register with.