[Asterisk-Users] newbie question regarding asterisk

[trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Mon, 2005-11-14 at 12:21 +0100, Markos Paraskevopulos wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I’m new to VoIP and despite a lot of reading, I’m kind of more
> confused than before.
> 
I had an asterisk system up and running then read some dox and becuase
what I read at that time wasnt well written it has that effect :)

asteriskdocs.org is pretty good, and the oreilly book asterisk and the
future of telephony (pdf is available at asteriskdocs.org) is a good
read, and only takes about 1 night to read everything except the
appendices.


> I have following question – we currently have hardware Alcatel PBX and
> approx. 50 phones in the company. I was wondering if we would need to
> change the phone service provider, because they don’t provide VoIP
> services if we were about to switch to Asterisk instead of the Alcatel
> PBX?
> 

Asterisk does more than VoIP.  It can speak analog (both fxs and fxo -
or act like a phone company (fxs) or act like a phone (fxo)), it can
also do digital trunks (t1/e1/j1 - ds3 soon alledgly).  While it can
replace a pbx it can also provide a T1 to a pbx.  It can talk to the
phone company via VoIP or whatever circuits you already have.

You dont *have* to switch phone companies if you dont want to, and it
doesnt always make sense to switch.  


> Or can Asterisk maintain current functionality plus adding VoIP by
> simply switching the alcatel pbx for Asterisk server?
> 
If you want to add VoIP you can do this more gradually if you dont have
the budget to totally replace 100%.  Asterisk can feed your current pbx
with phone service, where it interconnects to can be either VoIP or PSTN
or both.  Eventually you can migrate off what you already have.

If however you have the budget to replace every phone on the desktop (or
get appropriate interface equipment so the phones can speak to asterisk)
then asterisk should be able to maintain current functionality plus
adding anything that it does that you dont have (ie VoIP).  


> I hope I’m making at least a bit of sense.
> 
I hope my answer makes sense..  

> 
-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
UK +44 870 340 4605   Germany +49 801 777 555 3402
US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200
FreeWorldDialup: 635378
http://www.sacaug.org/  Sacramento Asterisk Users Group
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