[Asterisk-Users] Basical question to asterisk

[Bruno Hertz]

On Wed, 2005-03-16 at 13:13 +0100, Christian Schoepplein wrote:

> Hello!
> 
> I'm new to asterisk and because I try to configure the package for my 
> needs the last days without success, I'd like to ask a basical qestion.
> 
> I need asterisk to work together with the German VoIP provider sipgate 
> (http://www.sipgate.de). Asterisk should act as a softphone, I want to 
> recive and make calls only with the software under linux, no softphone 
> should be used. Is this possible with asterisk in principle or do I have 
> to use a real softphone together with asterisk?
> 
> Manny thanks!
> 

You can use asterisk as a softphone with either chan_oss or chan_alsa.
Googling for 'asterisk' and 'softphone' gives this link at 7th position
http://www.junghanns.net/asterisk/page13.html
It's slightly outdated, you won't need the diff any more (as far as I
can tell), but it still gives you the general idea.

*'s softphone capabilities are somehow limited though. E.g. you can't
put calls on hold, and what bothers me even more is that the
soundcard isn't released between calls. I.e. * grabs it on startup and
releases it only when quitting, unlike (most) other softphones.

On the other hand, latency wise * is the best softphone I came across
on Linux.

Regards, Bruno.