asterisk users - Dec 2004 - Total newbie here looking to do a VoIP conference call?

I am looking to help out my company find a more budget conscious but
reliable way to hold conference calls between 5+ people.  4x a month we hold
several hour long conference calls during non-business hours.  All of the
employees have high speed internet.  Currently we dial up an AT&T conf using
regular analog phones.

I don't have a great grasp as to what Asterick is capable of, but my
thoughts were that perhaps with VoIP telephone lines (either hooked up to
the company's network or just using a 3rd party VoIP provider such as
Packet8, which is whatI have for personal use) and an Asterick server, that
we could setup a VoIP conference bridge.  

Can someone enlighten an unknowledged as to whether or not this is possible,
and if so, how might it be done?  Would the Asterick server need X number of
VoIP lines?  I.e. If there's 10 participants, it'd need 10 VoIP lines?  


Patrick Campbell 
OurVacationStore.com
Website Administrator
pcampbell@ourvacationstore.com

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004, Patrick Campbell wrote:
> I don't have a great grasp as to what Asterick is capable of, but my
> thoughts were that perhaps with VoIP telephone lines (either hooked up
> to the company's network or just using a 3rd party VoIP provider such
as
> Packet8, which is whatI have for personal use) and an Asterick server,
> that we could setup a VoIP conference bridge.
it's spelled asteriSk. :)
> Can someone enlighten an unknowledged as to whether or not this is
> possible, and if so, how might it be done?  Would the Asterick server
> need X number of VoIP lines?  I.e. If there's 10 participants, it'd
need
> 10 VoIP lines?
I've only played with the meetme conferences feature in Asterisk a tiny
amount, but it wasn't terribly difficult to set up. You can start playing
with it with a few softphone clients. The only cost would be your time to
tinker with it. (you'll need a timing source on the asterisk machine. This
can come from any (?) Digium card or it can be derived in software from
some onboard USB chipsets, and maybe other sources. I haven't kept up on
it for a while. Search the wiki for timing sources and read more.)

If all the participants have sufficient bandwidth to run a voip call, and
you can locate the asterisk server someplace which has enough bandwidth to
handle everybody together (it's not going to multicast; every participant
will receive a separate audio stream), and if you're pleased wth the
function of the asterisk conference room feature, then you should be able
to get it up fairly easily. You won't even need to buy any voip service
from anybody, because those are typically to bridge voip to the PSTN. If
everybody who needs to be in the conference already has IP bandwidth, then
just keep the whole conversation as voice over IP and leave the PSTN out
of the loop.

Greg

On Friday 17 December 2004 21:00, Patrick Campbell wrote:
> I am looking to help out my company find a more budget conscious but
> reliable way to hold conference calls between 5+ people.  4x a month we
> hold several hour long conference calls during non-business hours.  All of
> the employees have high speed internet.  Currently we dial up an AT&T
conf
> using regular analog phones.
>
> I don't have a great grasp as to what Asterisk is capable of, but my
> thoughts were that perhaps with VoIP telephone lines (either hooked up to
> the company's network or just using a 3rd party VoIP provider such as
> Packet8, which is whatI have for personal use) and an Asterisk server, that
> we could setup a VoIP conference bridge.
"meetme" is what you want.
> Can someone enlighten an unknowledged as to whether or not this is
> possible, and if so, how might it be done?  Would the Asterisk server need
> X number of VoIP lines?  I.e. If there's 10 participants, it'd need
10 VoIP
> lines?
There isn't really a concept of VoIP "lines" - each remote
participant just
comes in to the Asterisk server on your normal Internet connection - they 
each need their own SIP phone, of course, and they each need to have an 
Internet link, but as far as Asterisk is concerned, it just needs a 
connection with sufficient bandwidth to handle the total number of conference 
subscribers.

Antony.

-- 
There are two possible outcomes:

 If the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement.
 If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery.

 - Enrico Fermi

                                                     Please reply to the list;
                                                           please don't CC
me.

asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com wrote:
> I am looking to help out my company find a more budget
> conscious but reliable way to hold conference calls between
> 5+ people.  4x a month we hold several hour long conference
> calls during non-business hours.  All of the employees have
> high speed internet.  Currently we dial up an AT&T conf using regular
> analog phones. 
And pay handsomely for the privilege, no doubt.
> I don't have a great grasp as to what Asterick is capable of,
> but my thoughts were that perhaps with VoIP telephone lines
> (either hooked up to the company's network or just using a
> 3rd party VoIP provider such as Packet8, which is whatI have
> for personal use) and an Asterick server, that we could setup a VoIP
> conference bridge. 
Asterisk can certainly do this for you.
> Can someone enlighten an unknowledged as to whether or not
> this is possible, and if so, how might it be done?  Would the
> Asterick server need X number of VoIP lines?  I.e. If there's
> 10 participants, it'd need 10 VoIP lines?
Asterisk is a complicated animal, and to walk you through it could take
days/weeks/months. This is probably the route you need to take:

1) Make sure you are familiar with Linux administration. That knowledge,
while not exactly essential, will certainly save you a boatload of
confusion and misery.
2) Read about Asterisk. Look at:
-The Digium handbook 
--(http://www.digium.com/handbook-draft.pdf)
-The Documentation Project 
--(http://www.asteriskdocs.org)
-The Wiki 
--(http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk)
3) Set up a Linux server and play. Specifically, work towards getting a
conference going. Along the way you will learn what you need to know to
make a decision.
4) Evaluate what you've learned, and make a decision as to whether this
makes sense for you.

Asterisk can do what you want, but it has a steep learning curve - it's
more of a toolkit of telephony functions than anything. Picture walking
into Home Depot and asking "what can I build?". The answer is
"just
about anything", but in reality, it depends on budget, experience,
tools, resources, regulations, and so on.

Welcome to Asterisk! Be careful, or you'll get addicted!

Cheers,

Jim.

> My packet8 "dta310" adapter has the SIP server hardcoded into
> it. If I could change that, I could use that?
Search on broadbandreports.com VoIP forum - there are several postings
(including a few by me) with instructions on how to downgrade the
DTA-310 to v1111, put in the SIP settings and upgrade to (not higher
than) v1234. I haven't tried it with *, but I assume it should work.

-- 
Nabeel Jafferali
tel: 647.722.8457 x201
     718.606.4190 x201
fwd: 46990 x201
email/msn: nabeel<at>jafferali.net

Hello,
> I don't have a great grasp as to what Asterick is capable of, but my
> thoughts were that perhaps with VoIP telephone lines (either hooked up to
> the company's network or just using a 3rd party VoIP provider such as
> Packet8, which is whatI have for personal use) and an Asterick server, that
> we could setup a VoIP conference bridge.
> 
> Can someone enlighten an unknowledged as to whether or not this is
possible,
> and if so, how might it be done?  Would the Asterick server need X number
of
> VoIP lines?  I.e. If there's 10 participants, it'd need 10 VoIP
lines?
You do not need VoIP lines as you call them... You need an asterisk
server and ip phones or softphones to dial your server conference room
(the application is called meetme)

If you would like to accept regular pstn calls into your conference,
then you will also need some hardware to connect pstn lines to your
asterisk box. There are several kinds of cards.... you can purchase
them from digium at http://www.digium.com

If you do not have time to set this up, you can hire a consultant. You
can find a lot of usefull documentation, and a list of asterisk
consultants at http://www.voip-info.org

Good luck,

-- 
Nicol?s Gudi?o
Buenos Aires - Argentina