On Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 01:04:06AM +0200, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote: > On Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 11:31:51PM +0300, Maxim Vexler wrote: > > Hello, > > I wish to use asterisk in my home, the poor man's way. > > Can asterisk be used in a home environment with plain analog modem ?I wish > > use the modem to listen the line, basically simulating theregular phone > > device.In the old days you could receive caller id on the signal that > > wassent by bezeq on the first ring tone... can I do the same withasterisk? > > Plus I'm a bit confused with all this FXO / FXS telephone hardware andwould > > thank any one willing to clarify this for me in a line or 2. Whydo I even > > need this FXO / FXS telephone equipment if I can simply plugthe VoIP phone > > into the LAN socket and have it receive the voltagefrom the switch ? > > I did goolgled, and alos done my reading on voip-info.org, but > > stillcouldn't find a concise answer to my questions. > > Thank you for reading. > > There are basicly 4 ways that asterisk can talk to a telephone or telephone > line. > > 1. FXO (stands for foreign exchange OFFICE), this is a line from a > telephone switch (BEZEQ) to your computer. The best ones are > standard FXO line cards. > > An Intel "smartmodem" can be used as an FXO card. It's advantage > is it's cheap (under 100 NIS), it's disadvantage is that it > hits your ssystem with 8,000 interupts a second. Theoreticaly > you could put one in each of your PCI slots, in practice, no > system could handle that many. > > 2. FXS (foreign exchange SUBSCRIBER), These cards go to analog > (aka POTS) phones. > > 3. Ethernet. This is for "smart" phones (phones with ethernet ports > that use a supported protocol, usually SIP) or a "soft" phone, > a program running on a computer. > > It can also connect to the internet for VoIP (voice over IP > services) for both incoming and outgoing calls. > > 4. Hi speed serial ports. These can be slow such as ISDN (2 64kbps > channels and a 16kbps control channel) or fast such as a T1 voice > or ISDN PRI (known in Israel as a PRA). which combines many lines. > > There are many pitfalls you should be aware of. Asterisk can be memory > and CPU expensive and need frequent reboots.
PU: yes. Memory: not really. Regarding the CPU: A PII computer can be used for a very basic system (1-2 calls even with compressed codecs) > For a single line using a > real FXO card, a single 4 extension FXS card for your old phones and > a smart/soft phone or two a relatively small system (1gHz CPU, 512m RAM, > 40 gig disk will do nicely and probably need to be rebooted once a week > or so. > > A smaller system such as a 500mHz CPU, 256m RAM and 10 gig disk will do > ok, but it may need more frequent reboots. If you spend some time tailoring > your Linux system it runs on and recompile from source with the small > system option, a 300mHz cpu, 128m RAM and 6g HD will do. Not our system. Along the cycle of 1.0x I saw many driver bugs get ironed out. Basically TDM telephony is notvery CPU-intensive. Compressed VoIP calls, conference roms and such require more more of the CPU. > > Using the Intel chipset smart modems adds a lot of overhead, so what you > save in not bying FXO/FXS cards can be eaten up quickly if you have to > buy a computer, even a used one. an X100P clone (at least the ones withthe md3200 chipset we have) works resonablywell. No horrible load problems for our poor Celleron 500. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849755 | | friend ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
