[PLUG] help on asterisk setup

[Sriram Narayanan]

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Pranav Peshwe <pranavpeshwe at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 1:55 PM, G Karunakar <indlinux at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>  Any one in Pune with experience on asterisk setup? I was trying to
>> figure out how to set it up to work say between 2-3 PCs and no
>> telephony hardware involved.
>> Say PC1 becomes server, PC2, PC3 as terminals/phones, then try calling
>> PC3 from PC2.
>> Just some playing around I was trying to do in home network.
>>
>
> Hi Karunakar,
>                    If you are planning to use a machine as a dedicated VoIP
> server then you can try out asteriskNow - http://www.asterisknow.org/. You
> can also take a look at TrixBox CE -
> http://www.trixbox.com/products/trixbox-ce. Both are asterisk centered linux
> distros. The advantage of using them is that, they come bundled with a nice
> UI for administration. Vanilla Asterisk (from asterisk.org) IIRC, has no
> such thing. Dial plans and users have to be added by hand by editing config
> files.

We use the rPath based Asterisk (Asterisk) at work, and are starting
to roll this out to all our offices worldwide. We have tried all
manner of Asterisk distros and these have just not worked well at all.
We even purchased a support plan from Digium, but there were
occassions when we had to fend for ourselves. The AsteriskNow distro
has run flawlessly.

> Another attractive contender is Druid -  http://www.voiceroute.org/. Druid
> is more than just VoIP.

I have heard good reports about Druid from people in Mumbai.

FreeSwitch is yet another contender to Asterisk, and is far
preferable. There are a lot of sound technical reasons why Freeswitch
is preferable to Asterisk. The only reason we've not switched to
Freeswitch is that the ISDN card drivers that we have are not
supported out of the box with freeswitch. Also, there's the absence of
a GUI that AsteriskNow has.

If you ever choose to buy ISDN cards, then I'd recommend Sangoma cards
as compared to Digium. Sangoma's cards have a good reputation as
compared to Digium's cards. I think Mitul Limbani in Mumbai sells both
Sangoma and Digium cards.

>
> My 2 cents...
>
> Thanks and regards,
> Pranav
> http://pranavsbrain.peshwe.com
> --
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