[CALUG] Fwd: Asterisk PBX VOIP Telephone Software

[Eric V. Smith]

>Unfortunately no.  Anyone out here on the CALUG list know about the
>Asterisk PBX or played with similar systems?

I have installed Asterisk at home.  This was all a year or so ago, so I 
might do it differently if I was doing it today.  I haven't followed 
Asterisk to know how it's changed since then.  I know it's under very 
active development.

The software was easy enough to set up.  There weren't any serious 
issues.  This was on an FC2 box.

I originally bought a Digium card to support a POTS line, but the echo 
was so severe I gave up on it.  I tried getting better echo cancellation 
in the software, but I never had much luck.  Instead I signed up for 
VoicePulse Connect! http://connect.voicepulse.com/, which charges 2.4 
cents/min for outgoing calls.  I never set it up for incoming. 
VoicePulse worked great for me.

I never had any luck with soft phones.  They either didn't work, didn't 
work well, or sounded bad.  I bought the cheapest IP phone I could find, 
the BudgeTone 101.  I think it cost me about $100.  It's a true piece of 
junk.  The buttons on it are aweful.  They're very difficult to press 
and make sure you actually dialed a number.  It made dialing a chore. 
But other than that, it worked well enough.

I eventually gave up on the whole thing because of low WAF (wife 
acceptance factor) and I just don't need a PBX at home.  Plus I don't 
think I could recommend it to clients, because they usually require 5 
9's uptime on the phones, and I couldn't support that.

My main issue with Asterisk is the insane configuration syntax.  It 
really needs to be much simpler to use.  If I was really going to use 
it, I'd write something that took a higher level configuration syntax 
and converts it to Asterisk format.

I notice that the Asterisk book is one of bookpool.com's top sellers, 
and it's 47% off this month, along with all other O'Reilly books.

Hope that helps.

Eric.