[asterisk-biz] Asterisk Conferencing

[Jim Houser]

  We have Asterisk in place today networked with our Avaya S8300.  

  We have a need to improve our conferencing capabilities.  Currently we are
outsourcing any conference with over 6 parties as the conference bridge in
the 8300 stops at 6 without additional purchasing from Avaya.

  I would prefer to purchase another server with Asterisk installed and
dedicated to conferencing use than to spend more money on the Avaya
platform.

  I have more than enough H.323 licenses available in our Avaya but I'm
hoping to get some feedback for others on the list before I do this.

  Should I use Trixbox or FreePBX to make managing the conference easy and
is there any limits to how many users Trixbox or FreePBX will do?

  Can H.323 be added to Trixbox or FreePBX successfully?

  I have Asterisk running today using PoundKey so I did not have to decide
what flavor of Linux to use.  If everyone comes back with "don't use a
canned Asterisk GUI" then what flavor of Linux is everyone happiest with?
We have used Fedora 5 and Red Hat 4 ES in the company for email, web and
some other things but have not dealt with compiling Asterisk on a raw Linux
install.

  Thanks, in advance, for any suggestions and help offered.