[asterisk-users] Phone Newbie Questions

[Brian Becker]

First let me just say that I am a total newbie when it comes to phones
but I have several years of Linux and it experience.  I have been
tasked with offering a competing solution to our current phone
providers based on asterisk...

To show my complete ignorance I am going to try and describe out
setup, or as much as I know about it.  We have a PRI line with a
single number that rolls over to several lines.  We also have a
handful of analogue fax lines (are these part of the PRI...I dunno?).
There are also a few 800 numbers...(not sure if that fact really
matters to our phone system or not).  From my bit of research I am
pretty sure asterisk does support PRI but please correct me if I am
wrong 'cause none of this matters if it doesn't...

First is asterisk really capable of supporting a 100+ user base of phones?

I understand (or at least think I do) that I need one of the Digium
Digital TDM Cards and that is where the PRI connection gets pluged
into...how then do I connect the asterisk system to the phone network
that exists in the office? (Told you I was clueless)

Any guidance would be appreciated or even links to an introduction on
phone systems would be great (pictures would help too ;) ).

Brian