Hello, This request was initally sent to the -dev list, but I was advised to try rather here, thanks Steve. Here is the story: I was asked by a call center company to find a solution of an affordable multichannel system for recording their agents calls. Their basic demand is to handle recording of up to 60 simultaneous telephone calls. There are many sophisticated recording systems available on the market, obviously, but they are rather expensive solutions, for such a capacity. Based on the fact that the call center switch is connected to the PSTN with 2 E1s, and only external incoming/outgoing calls are subject of recording, I thought the Asterisk could be a solution, in the following way: - I set up an Asterisk-based switch with a TE405P, with its two ports connected to the call center telephone system and the other two to the telco company, - arrange the Asterisk to be a tandem switch, simply routing calls to/from the call center from/to PSTN, - and this way have all calls going through the Asterisk available for recording, through its recording/monitoring features. The above description is rather a general idea, not covering all remaining issues like recording control, voice files management and so on, which needs to be developed its own way, however, my general question is whether the whole idea is worth considering and starting more advanced work (means: investing time and money in the Digium hardware)? What PC hardaware should be considered? Again, the expected load for now is 60 simultaneous calls and should not rather grow, however it should be rather not excluded that the Asterisk module can be considered in the future to become an LCR routing box, in a case an alternative telecom operator becomes available, icluding even VoIP option. Thanks for any opinions and thougths, Irek.
-----Original Message----- <snip> Based on the fact that the call center switch is connected to the PSTN with 2 E1s, and only external incoming/outgoing calls are subject of recording, I thought the Asterisk could be a solution, in the following way: - I set up an Asterisk-based switch with a TE405P, with its two ports connected to the call center telephone system and the other two to the telco company, - arrange the Asterisk to be a tandem switch, simply routing calls to/from the call center from/to PSTN, - and this way have all calls going through the Asterisk available for recording, through its recording/monitoring features. -Easy. Done it for several clients. With the CDR_ODBC/MYSQL/... you can easily build an app that uses the CDR records as a backend for searching and retrieval. The magic isn't in the recording, but rather in finding the file you need. This setup is really good for a call logger where every call is being recorded with out intervention from a human. If you want to do something flashier it would require a more sophisticated app. <snip> my general question is whether the whole idea is worth considering and starting more advanced work (means: investing time and money in the Digium hardware)? What PC hardaware should be considered? -with call recorders that are approximately 1500-2000 USD per port available on the market, this application is one that I have used * extensively for my clients. Some advantages that you lose is the integration with the host PBX (a lot of the better call loggers integrate with the PBXs at some level to give recording of extension->extension calling as well as extension origination on the PBX). With * as a tandem, the setup is pretty simple. As with any * implementation, buy as much hardware as the budget allows. I wouldn't do this in production without a hefty machine (p4+, lots of RAM, obviously lots of HD space, and some kind of removable media i.e. DVD-Ram for external archiving).