[Asterisk-Users] Re: Hardware Support

[Steven Critchfield]

On Thu, 2004-11-04 at 13:15 -0500, Mike Shultz wrote:
> Thanks to everyone who answered my stupid question.  I did not see the
> wiki nor an answer to my question on their main site.  My main
> experience is with a 3Com NBX 25 which is small and really simple so I
> never had to learn much except the dial plan, which is why most of
> this is still foreign to me.
> 
> I have one more question.  Are there special interface cards for IP
> Phone/Network connectivity or is this a job for a basic NIC?  I've
> been reading through the wiki on most of the protocols but it doesn't
> state what media they run on.  I would prefer to run this over the
> current data network I already have as I would not need to run new
> cables.  I'd rather not use analog phones at all either so I'm not
> looking for one of those S100I media converters.  Any suggestions
> would be appreciated.

At least based on your stated background this one isn't stupid. You are
correct in your assumption though that the VoIP part is just packets for
the NIC to handle. There is no special hardware for it. Although when
you get to some of the conference portions of asterisk, you will need a
timing source that is provided either by the PSTN hardware Digium sells
or via psuedo devices such as the ZapRTC or ztdummy interface.

-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>