Hi, I have to decide on hardware to buy real fast (being rocketed into the situation). We have 1 computer, we'll install hardware from digium in there to connect with the ISDN phone lines (2) It's a normal computer, I have no idea what type of card to take and about the 3.3v vs 5v PCI. The idea is the following. We'll have about 10 internal phones. One of the phones should be like a central station, where all other calls can be monitored (if possible) and from that phone the user should be able to press a button to take over a call which is rining on another phone. Then we need less advanced phones for the rest of us, but we should still be able to pick up calls that are rining on a phone in the same room. (if possible) I live in Belgium and we are using ISDN lines. If I had to select phones from this page: http://www.voipsolutions.be/index.php/cPath/54_24 What whould you sugest and why ? Also from this page: http://www.asterisk.org/hardware What would you sugest and why ? Stuff we need - Call forwarding (to another internal phone, to a classic phone number) - Call take over (picking up a phone that is rining somewhere else) - Menu system (got this working) - Voicemail (got this working) - Allowing a employee who's in a hotel somewhere to phone the internal numbers using his softphone over the internet - Allowing that same employee to use his sotphone in order to make phonecalls to normal landlines through our server - Call monitoring/recording (got this working) I know it's a lot to ask and a lot of it is probably documented somewhere (although I couldn't find it in the asterisk manual draft) but like I said I have very little time to decide.... Thank you for any information you might be able to provide. Tim.
On Sun, Sep 17, 2006 at 01:25:10PM +0200, Timothy Parez wrote:> We'll have about 10 internal phones. > One of the phones should be like a central station, where all other > calls can be monitored (if possible) > and from that phone the user should be able to press a button to take > over a call which is rining on another phone. > > Then we need less advanced phones for the rest of us, but we should > still be able to pick up calls that are rining > on a phone in the same room. (if possible) > > I live in Belgium and we are using ISDN lines. > If I had to select phones from this page: > http://www.voipsolutions.be/index.php/cPath/54_24 > What whould you sugest and why ?I have used the Aastra 9112i and it seems to be an a very solid, reliable (not to mention inexpensive) phone. It also has instructions on how to configure it with Asterisk right out of the box, which is nice. I would recommend it without reservation. You might also want to look at the Aastra480i for your central station. One of the neat things that the phone offers is a whole XML based markup language that allows you to design custom menus which call HTTP pages and stuff (much like HTML). This might be just the thing for being able to take over any current calls from the central phone. --Brian
On 17 Sep 2006, at 12:25, Timothy Parez wrote:> Hi, > > I have to decide on hardware to buy real fast (being rocketed into > the situation). > > We have 1 computer, we'll install hardware from digium in there to > connect with the ISDN phone lines (2) > It's a normal computer, I have no idea what type of card to take > and about the 3.3v vs 5v PCI. > > The idea is the following. > We'll have about 10 internal phones. > One of the phones should be like a central station, where all > other calls can be monitored (if possible) > and from that phone the user should be able to press a button to > take over a call which is rining on another phone. > > Then we need less advanced phones for the rest of us, but we should > still be able to pick up calls that are rining > on a phone in the same room. (if possible) > > I live in Belgium and we are using ISDN lines. > If I had to select phones from this page: http:// > www.voipsolutions.be/index.php/cPath/54_24 > What whould you sugest and why ? > > Also from this page: http://www.asterisk.org/hardware > What would you sugest and why ? > > Stuff we need > - Call forwarding (to another internal phone, to a classic phone > number) > - Call take over (picking up a phone that is rining somewhere else) > - Menu system (got this working) > - Voicemail (got this working) > - Allowing a employee who's in a hotel somewhere to phone the > internal numbers using his softphone over the internet > - Allowing that same employee to use his sotphone in order to make > phonecalls to normal landlines through our server > - Call monitoring/recording (got this working) > > I know it's a lot to ask and a lot of it is probably documented > somewhere (although I couldn't find it in the asterisk manual draft) > but like I said I have very little time to decide.... > > Thank you for any information you might be able to provide. > > Tim.All the things you want are not too hard to do in asterisk, we have a similar sort of set-up, except that we happen (for historical reasons) to use a PRI isdn line. The only thing on the list I see any problem with is forwarding - it works fine, but if you mean forwarding an incoming PSTN call to a second PSTN number, you will find that you end up using 2 channels unless you pick an ISDN card and driver that can send the magic message to the providers switch to get it to do the work. - Mine doesn't (Hairpinning I think it is called). With only 4 lines for 10 people consuming 2 for a call might be inconvenient. My other bit of advice is _don't_ hurry the choice of phone. Phones are a trade off - size/price/features etc. There is no single 'best' phone. My current favorite for an office SIP phone is the elmeg 290, but others will tell you different. You _can't_ tell what a phone is like until you live with it for a day or 2. So set up your asterisk, make a shortlist of 3 phones and buy one of each. Try them out, pick the one you like, then buy 9 more of them. Tim Panton www.mexuar.com