asterisk users - Aug 2003 - pre-newbie - some basic questions...

Hello All,

Been completely obsessed for the last two days with VoIP and Asterisk - running
on 2 hours sleep and coffee - sorry if this is a little scattered...

Okay,  I've got a small start-up company that installs traditional PBX
(Nortel mainly) systems, data network infrastructure, commercial audio/video,
residential audio/video/voice/data and we do lighting control systems...

I've got two home offices about 30 miles apart - running some basic lan
services over a CIPE link between here and there...  this all started because
I'd like to find a way to integrate the phone lines/system better...

What really has me intriqued at the moment is the idea of using a VoIP service
provider to make and recieve calls with an (800) for customers to call in on... 
iconnecthere.com seems to be telling me that I can do this for only
$20-$25/month with no contract...  Is this true/possible or am I missing
something?  What about nufone.net - any one have experience woth their rates and
service?  I'm envisioning a system in which * could handle incoming/outgoing
calls to the service provider - and we could have an IP phone (maybe the
Grandstream 100's for $130 a pair?) in each office and be able to answer
incoming calls from either location - transfer calls between offices - access
voicemail - etc...  this sound familiar to anyone - any experience with this
type of scenerio?

inet here is a SDSL link @ 1.5megs - other office has Cable modem...  I think
with the encryption overhead I can only get about 14kb/sec when pulling a
webpage over the VPn from an APACHE server in the other office...  will I have
enough bandwidth to handle calls?

Thanks so much for any insights...  with a new business, a 3 year-old, a 1 year
old and a very pregnant wife - I don't have a lot of time to experiment with
new ideas :)  So I'm trying to really get a hadle on everything before I
decide to invest a lot of time trying to make this work...


thanks again...

dave redmore

At 5:18 PM +0000 8/17/03, d.redmore@att.net wrote:
>
>Hello All,
>
>Been completely obsessed for the last two days with VoIP and 
>Asterisk - running on 2 hours sleep and coffee - sorry if this is a 
>little scattered...
>
>Okay,  I've got a small start-up company that installs traditional 
>PBX (Nortel mainly) systems, data network infrastructure, commercial 
>audio/video, residential audio/video/voice/data and we do lighting 
>control systems...
>
>I've got two home offices about 30 miles apart - running some basic 
>lan services over a CIPE link between here and there...  this all 
>started because I'd like to find a way to integrate the phone 
>lines/system better... 
>
>What really has me intriqued at the moment is the idea of using a 
>VoIP service provider to make and recieve calls with an (800) for 
>customers to call in on...  iconnecthere.com seems to be telling me 
>that I can do this for only $20-$25/month with no contract...  Is 
>this true/possible or am I missing something?  What about nufone.net 
>- any one have experience woth their rates and service?  I'm 
>envisioning a system in which * could handle incoming/outgoing calls 
>to the service provider - and we could have an IP phone (maybe the 
>Grandstream 100's for $130 a pair?) in each office and be able to 
>answer incoming calls from either location - transfer calls between 
>offices - access voicemail - etc...  this sound familiar to anyone - 
>any experience with this type of scenerio?
>
>inet here is a SDSL link @ 1.5megs - other office has Cable modem... 
>I think with the encryption overhead I can only get about 14kb/sec 
>when pulling a webpage over the VPn from an APACHE server in the 
>other office...  will I have enough bandwidth to handle calls? 
>
>Thanks so much for any insights...  with a new business, a 3 
>year-old, a 1 year old and a very pregnant wife - I don't have a lot 
>of time to experiment with new ideas :)  So I'm trying to really get 
>a hadle on everything before I decide to invest a lot of time trying 
>to make this work...
>
>
>thanks again...
>
>dave redmore

Dave -
   Short answer: Yes, Asterisk can do all that, even at 14kBps (not 
14kbps, though.)  NuFone works well.  iconnect works well (my recent 
experiences with them, at least.)  The Grandstream phones are 
inexpensive, but do not (IMHO) have all their bugs worked out to to 
the level of the Cisco equipment (which have some bugs of their own.) 
You would probably want to get X100P single-line analog FXO cards for 
each computer, to hook into your existing house lines.  IP then 
bridges your systems together seamlessly, in the best of all possible 
worlds.

  For a really messy configuration example that doesn't do exactly 
what you want:
    http://www.loligo.com/asterisk/

JT