[asterisk-users] Asterisk with Dialplan or TrixBox for this case?

[Yuan LIU]

>From: "Brian McEntire" <brian.mcentire at gmail.com>
>Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 13:57:38 -0400
>
>Hi all -
>Been using Asterisk installed on Debian and love it. But it's time to
>rearrange some lines and looking for a few features I didn't enable or
>have in the dial plan the first time around and wondering if you would
>recommend doing it through configs again or if one of the prepackaged
>solutions would more easily support these needs. One that caught my
>eye was TrixBox but I'd be open to other suggestions.
>
>I have a Wildcat TDM400 (IIRC) with 2 FXS and 2 FXO ports. Currently
>I'm terminating a POTS line and a VoicePulse VOIP line (via the
>supplied adapter) into the FXS ports  (forgive me if I confused the
>FXO/FXS it gets me every time.)
>
>I have the dialplan set up to ring all extensions when either incoming
>line rings. Ring available extensions if one is in use. For dial out,
>it only dials out the VOIP line unless I override by dialing 9 first
>(because we pay per call on the POTS line so I want to know I'm doing
>it rather than have asterisk do it for me if the VOIP line is already
>in use.)
>
>- - -
>
>What I'm looking to do is keep the functionality above but drop the
>POTS line and add a SunRocket line also terminated with a VOIP adapter
>just like the VoicePulse line. Although the net connection will be a
>single point of failure, at least I'll have two different VOIP
>providers for some redundancy.
>
>I'd like to:
>  - ring all extensions when a call comes in either VOIP line.
>  - distinctive ring for calls coming in the SunRocket line (which
>Asterisk will know by the port that the line comes in on.)
>  - do not disturb functionality to disable all extensions from
>ringing by dialing a *XX number from any phone in the house. Ability
>to toggle ringing back on easily.
>  - dial out any available line (now that both are VOIP)
>
>Easy to do with TrixBox or better off installing the latest Asterisk
>and doing it through the command line and configuration file
>interface?

If your box has the power to run extra stuff that come with TrixBox and you 
are sure that doing what you need is easier in TrixBox, there's not much 
difference. (From your description, the requirements are easily 
implementable with plain config files.)

>Thanks!
>
>PS - Oddly, the SunRocket VOIP adapter doesn't seem to give a dialtone
>but a regular old phone works fine when connected to it. Will this
>cause problems for Asterisk?

Asterisk does not have to check dial tone. (But it's a really oddball 
adapter.)  However, if you are going all VoIP, why bother providers that 
require adapters (thus TDM card)?  You can get better result by using 
providers that transmits voice over IP into your Asterisk and get rid of the 
TDM card.

Yuan Liu