[Asterisk-Users] Total newbie here looking to do a VoIP conference call?

[Greg Hill]

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004, Patrick Campbell wrote:

> I don't have a great grasp as to what Asterick is capable of, but my
> thoughts were that perhaps with VoIP telephone lines (either hooked up
> to the company's network or just using a 3rd party VoIP provider such as
> Packet8, which is whatI have for personal use) and an Asterick server,
> that we could setup a VoIP conference bridge.

it's spelled asteriSk. :)

> Can someone enlighten an unknowledged as to whether or not this is
> possible, and if so, how might it be done?  Would the Asterick server
> need X number of VoIP lines?  I.e. If there's 10 participants, it'd need
> 10 VoIP lines?

I've only played with the meetme conferences feature in Asterisk a tiny
amount, but it wasn't terribly difficult to set up. You can start playing
with it with a few softphone clients. The only cost would be your time to
tinker with it. (you'll need a timing source on the asterisk machine. This
can come from any (?) Digium card or it can be derived in software from
some onboard USB chipsets, and maybe other sources. I haven't kept up on
it for a while. Search the wiki for timing sources and read more.)

If all the participants have sufficient bandwidth to run a voip call, and
you can locate the asterisk server someplace which has enough bandwidth to
handle everybody together (it's not going to multicast; every participant
will receive a separate audio stream), and if you're pleased wth the
function of the asterisk conference room feature, then you should be able
to get it up fairly easily. You won't even need to buy any voip service
from anybody, because those are typically to bridge voip to the PSTN. If
everybody who needs to be in the conference already has IP bandwidth, then
just keep the whole conversation as voice over IP and leave the PSTN out
of the loop.

Greg