[Asterisk-Users] Multiple Calls with Asterisk?

[Callum McGillivray]

Good suggestion Paul  - The wiki should give you a good idea of how this 
works.

Here are some basics if it helps;

1 land line (a POTS line =  Plain Old Telephony Service) will only carry 
1 call.  If you want to be able to carry more than 1 call, you will need 
to either get several POTS lines or an ISDN line (T1, E1 etc).

When you have a "VOIP" line, I gather that you are referring to having 
an IP handset that a user can use to make and receive calls.  Asterisk 
will allow you to connect hundreds of IP handsets via your network, 
however if you only have 1 POTS line, only one of those IP handsets will 
be able to make or receive a calls to regular telephone numbers at any 
given time.

Calls between handsets are connected via asterisk, and will not cost 
anything (and you can make as many of those as you want). However if you 
want to call someone on their regular telephone number, you will need a 
connection to the PSTN (Public Switch Telephone Network).

A POTS line will give you 1 "connection" to the PSTN, an ISDN line can 
give you between 2 and 30 "connections" to the PSTN.

There are several different cards available that will allow you to 
connect several POTS lines or ISDN lines to your asterisk machine.

If you had 10 IP handsets and you wanted everyone to be able to call 
their home number at the same time, you would need 10 "connections" to 
the PSTN, so an ISDN line would seem most suitable.

If you have 10 IP handsets and you wanted 3 people to be talking to 3 
other people on IP handsets (which are also connected to your asterisk 
machine), and 4 people calling their home telephone numbers, you would 
need 4 "connections" to the PSTN, which could be achieved by using 
either POTS lines or ISDN lines.

Now, the terminology that I have used here is not exactly correct... but 
if you follow Pauls suggestion and read up on the WIKI, you will get a 
much better understanding of what you can and can't do.

So, to answer your questions;

1. If your 1 "land line" was an ISDN line, then yes, you would have 10 
people talking to their appropriate parties, if you had 1 POTS line, 
then no, the other 9 users would get an engaged signal.
2. A connection is both ways, so if you had an ISDN line with 10 
"connections" (actually called "channels"), then you could have 5 people 
calling in and 5 people calling out, but not 10 people calling in and 10 
people calling out.
3. The analogue line moves to the VOIP line at the asterisk server, in 
particular, one of those "cards" that I mentioned, that you use to plug 
an analogue (or digital) telephone line into your server.
4. Asterisk maintains the connection for you, it will "hang up" the line 
when the appropriate response is sent from one party or another.

If you want to learn how to talk on this list, then reading the wiki, 
digium's site and the asterisk.org site are your best bets.

Cheers,

Callum

Paul Hales wrote:

>This is a huge pile of questions - have you had a good read of the wiki?
>The Asteriskdocs book? 
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Jim Lists
>Sent: Tuesday, 10 May 2005 2:01 PM
>To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
>Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Multiple Calls with Asterisk?
>
>Hi All,
>Please excuse my newbie questions, but figured this would be the best place to ask. I have been reading up on VOIP and implementing Asterisk as a PBX. I'm still left wondering if Asterisk supports multiple lines at once? If I had one land line, voip line, and asterisk setup and 10 people called my number, would all 10 people be able to speak to their appropriate party at the same time, or would the other 9 get a busy signal? Also, could this work with outgoing calls? If this DOES work, can anyone explain how it works? More importantly, at what point does the analog line move to the VOIP line, and how is the connection maintained? I'm sure I'm "nuking" this out, but I'm still trying to figure out most of the acronyms related to all this stuff.
>
>Thanks. :)
>Jim
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