I'm preparing for my first asterisk install, and would like to ask a hardware question & confirm my understanding of some basics:<br><ul><li>The Q: I'm looking for 2 FXO ports to have asterisk answer 2 incoming lines. There are single FXO port cards for about $30... but dual cards, or the Digium "400" cards, are all several hundred dollars. Why is this? Are the chipsets so different, or am I missing something?
</li></ul>And here's my plan to teach myself using increasing complexity:<br><ul><li>Starting point is standard PC, standard phone line</li><li>do trixbox install on PC & connect to LAN (no special hardware yet) <br></li>
<li>then I should be able to setup IVR and voice mail boxes, and access them using a "soft phone" from any PC on the network, but only"locally", using extension numbers, right?</li><li>I could also plug IP phones directly into the network and access the asterisk box "locally", using extension numbers, right?
<br></li><li>add FXO card(s), and connect incoming lines. Now I can also:</li><ul><li>dialup the voice mailboxes from any standard phone worldwide<br></li><li>Use any of the IP and/or softphones to send and receive calls via PSTN, right?
</li></ul><li>add FXS card(s) and I can plug standard phones into the asterisk box and I can use them as extensions, to either access voicemail locally, or send/receive calls via PSTN ... right ???</li><li>Now for VoIP I just have to order the service from a vendor like vonage, and I can use any of the soft phones, IP phones or standard handsets for VoIP... right ??
</li></ul>Do I have any major misconceptions about the above?<br><br>Thanks a lot for your patience !!!<br>