Asterisk - what's your setup?

[mike2323]

How many people here are using Asterisk either at home or at work? What are your setups like? What hardware did you decide to go with? Soft client? Hard client? Anyone with a clustered/redundant server setup? I'm curious how most of you did this.

 

[Blitzrommel]

Client -- you mean phones?

I'm in the process of setting up an asterisk box for my place, cause I got a few Cisco 7940 phones for free.

Although I did set up an A@H setup for a friend, I know XOR's done stuff with Asterisk in his workplace. I'm sure he'll chime in

 

[XOR != OR]

So far I've implemented a call center for a medium-large dental office. 25 actual phone users, 8 copper lines in, 4 connect.voicepulse.com lines in. Calling queue with some custom exten work. I setup AMP on it, but I'm thinking it'd be easier without it. Flash operator panel, and a queue web statistic application.

I have used both the polycom 501s and the snom320s. I prefer the 320s. We've played with xlite, but for our users never could get comfortable with it ( which is a shame, those phones are 200 a pop ).

All this to support a dental practice with 20k+ patients. The call center is pretty busy, our agents are usually on the phone. Was quoted 40k+ for a system from avaya with a reduced feature set ( quoted mind, which is a make believe number. Think: Toothfairy ). This was built for 9k ( I think 8k actually, but high 8ks ).

Failover: I have two servers, each have one of these with a few fxs cards ( fxo? I never remember ). Both are connected up to the same 66 block from the phone company. If a server dies, I lose all current calls, but serverb kicks on and takes over, so downtime is all of a few seconds while the switchover in IP addresses happen. I'm using software from the Linux HA project.

*pauses for breath*

I love this stuff

 

[Nostradamus]

XOR != OR,

I'd like to here more about the setup for the call center. Were they custom made servers or branded(Dell/HP/etc) ones? How many POTS lines per server did you install? In terms of Linux HA did you write your own custom script to check not only if a machine is down but if that instance of Asterisk is routing SIP? I know that I've had some instances where the machine was fine but Asterisk hosed up and needed to be restarted. What about storage for voicemail, an NFS server or just local storage on a RAID? How often are you restarting the machine? What version of Asterisk did you install?

Sorry for all the questions but I REALLY like Asterisk but am not in a position to do installs (not in a software developers job description ). Its the geek in me coming out .


As for my setup I have an old P3 600Mhz with 512MB running CentOS 4.3 at my house that serves my wife uses for her residential Photography studio in the Dallas area (www.ebphotodesign.com). It has a toll free number coming in from teliax.com with a small custom after hours IVR. Nothing too fancy, but it works great and I think adds that extra layer of professionalism.

 

[jasonlitka]

If you're unfamiliar with Asterisk and Linux then I'd suggest a SwitchVox system. $1000 buys you a complete appliance (although higher-end features will require you to buy the SMB version for an additional $1500). If you buy phones with it then they'll configure those as well. We were using A@H before we ordered this kit and it blows A@H away.

We've got the SMB version running here in our office (with an upgrade to a P4 from a Celeron and to 512MB RAM from 256MB). I've got about 20 phones connected that answer calls (mostly through a queue) from 4 analog lines (Verizon) and 16 VOIP channels (Teliax).

 

[moetop]

Some good info in here. definatly making mental notes.

Not coming from a phone background FXS FXO always confused me, but I got it straight by only remembering the FXS acrynom (foriegn excahnge STATION) as in phone. FXO is forigen exchange office. It's probably a bit easyer for me as I have 3, 2 port FXS boxes. Linksys Pap2 and a sipura 2002, (same thing just diffrent branding), and a Patton box.

Right now I have my Vonage FXS port directly connecting to my Asterisk FXO port, and then IP to my Linksys PAP2 and I hook up the house wiring to the FXS on that box. So it's a bit odd. voip>pots>voip>pots . It works amazingly well though.

For those areas where you are considering X-lite why not buy a cheap FXS adapter and a regular phone (Under $100 for both.)

So far I've implemented a call center for a medium-large dental office. 25 actual phone users, 8 copper lines in, 4 connect.voicepulse.com lines in. Calling queue with some custom exten work. I setup AMP on it, but I'm thinking it'd be easier without it. Flash operator panel, and a queue web statistic application.

I have used both the polycom 501s and the snom320s. I prefer the 320s. We've played with xlite, but for our users never could get comfortable with it ( which is a shame, those phones are 200 a pop ).

All this to support a dental practice with 20k+ patients. The call center is pretty busy, our agents are usually on the phone. Was quoted 40k+ for a system from avaya with a reduced feature set ( quoted mind, which is a make believe number. Think: Toothfairy ). This was built for 9k ( I think 8k actually, but high 8ks ).

Failover: I have two servers, each have one of these with a few fxs cards ( fxo? I never remember ). Both are connected up to the same 66 block from the phone company. If a server dies, I lose all current calls, but serverb kicks on and takes over, so downtime is all of a few seconds while the switchover in IP addresses happen. I'm using software from the Linux HA project.

*pauses for breath*

I love this stuff

 

[XOR != OR]

For those areas where you are considering X-lite why not buy a cheap FXS adapter and a regular phone (Under $100 for both.)

Thought about it, but the owners of the business were already weary of the setup ( how can this only be 9k when avaya is offering 40k? ), the worst thing I could have done was to make any part of the system look unprofessional.

Of course, now that we have it, I can do anything I want and they'd be all for it.

Nostradamus; The servers were custom built from a guy who has experience working with digium hardware. My concern was using parts that might be flaky with the digium hardware, so I left taht part up to someone else. The drives operate in raid1 ( excepting the /boot volume ). I have it on ip failover, I'm not worrying about sip just yet ( although that is a good idea ).

Local storage on the raid volumes. My goal was reliability and simplicity. If the server dies, I can always recover voicemail files from the mirror as needed.

I installed asterisk SVN-branch-1.2-r8632M.

So far we haven't had any issues with asterisk locking up ( 7 months for this implementation, 2+ years overall with asterisk ).

 

[Nostradamus]

Thanks for the info. Yeah, I've never had a big problem with Asterisk locking up (it happened once or twice when I first started using it, but not since I got it running correctly), but there are people on the Asterisk-Users list that say it happens in their environment. I would love to start doing small installs of Asterisk, its just awesome to work with.

Thanks again,
Ryan

 

[kleptophobiac]

Who would have something like this in a home? What's the purpose? It seems like such overkill. Everyone that responded had a business application, but the OP asked about home impelementations as well.

 

[(V)andopr77]

Who would have something like this in a home? What's the purpose? It seems like such overkill. Everyone that responded had a business application, but the OP asked about home impelementations as well.

Why would people have this at home? Well for different reasons. Some people run their business' out of their home. Alot of members here opperate from home. Some people set it up at home for experience. You have to learn somehow. I set one up at home temporarily, just to know how to do it.

So, to answer your question, Yes... It is overkill unless the above apply.

 

[XOR != OR]

Who would have something like this in a home? What's the purpose? It seems like such overkill. Everyone that responded had a business application, but the OP asked about home impelementations as well.

Cost is a factor. I can get a voip line for 10 bucks a month, and calls are cheap. It gets cheaper if all I need a house phone for is outgoing calls, no 10 bucks a month number charge.

Figure what you pay in a month for a line from att/sbc/verizon. I pay ~13 bucks/month ( 10 minimum, 3 for call charges ). 911 is still routed through the POTS system, as the local telcos aren't allowed to block that service.

Add to that the managability of my lines. I go on vacation, I can have my line follow me. I have relatives living all over the country, I setup a SIP server for them to access, and I send them phones in the mail. They can call anybody on the voip network for free.

There are plenty of uses. The only problem is someone has to be knowledgable enough to set this up and maintain it. Given that most geeks do tech support for their family anway, it isn't that big of a deal.

 

[moetop]

Why for home use...

If you have more than 1 person in your home you can set up seperate voice mail boxes for each person.

If you want your phone to go with you, you can setup a ring group so your home phone rings as well as your sip device (laptop/pocketpc/wireless sip phone). Imagine sitting at your hotel or library with internet access and receiving a call on your home phone through the internet for basicaly free.

Record your phone calls.

Automaticlay detect incoming FAX and then send it to an E-mail address as a PDF.

 

[Nybbles]

Who would have something like this in a home? What's the purpose? It seems like such overkill. Everyone that responded had a business application, but the OP asked about home impelementations as well.

I run Asterisk at home. It runs as just another service on my home server.

I have a VoIP number through Broadvoice. The server registers to them and all incoming calls go to the server. Currently there's only a single VoIP phone, but it's at my fiancee's house and registers with the server at my house. Now where ever the phone goes, my number goes with me.

Also, I have a few free DID (incoming numbers) that are spread throughout the US. All my tollfree traffic gets routed out through TrxTel.com, though I could just as easily route it out through Broadvoice.

Mainly though, this setup is mostly just for fun and learning. Though, I dont have a landline, only a cell and a VoIP line.

EDIT: Oh yeah, phone is a Grandstream GXP-2000.

 

[niccoli]

There are various reasons why as shown above. Why do I have asterisk running in my house? Various reasons, the biggest for me however is because I work for a phone company, we have IP based soft-switches. When we were deploying our first softswitch we wanted to play with SIP Trunks. I had a spare machine at home and the fiber NID was already installed at my house so we figured it would be a great real-world test. I setup the Asterisk box, pulled some IP phones out of storage and put my own system in (free phone lines and all the numbers I could ever want). We hooked up 2 bulk call generators to the 2 lines I had coming out of my asterisk box into my house and beat the hell out of the box for a few weeks straight (something like a million+ calls in a week period). It made it through with flying colors (this was on a small 1.5 Ghz/1GB Ram machine I had sitting doing nothing in my test lab).

I would have taken it out long ago and gone back to just POTS since it wouldn't cost anything different but everytime I think I don't need it we decide to try something new and it's nice to not have to go to the office and work on it (I always get weird ideas at like 10:30 at night). Plus my wife likes the IP phones and web-based utilities that run on the phones (I have Cisco 7960's/7940's around the house). The 7960/40's run well, the 7912/06's have quirky issues (1 way audio at random times, lockups, forget's it's line state). I have been VERY happy with the Snom 360/320 and now 300 IP phones, price points are MUCH lower than cisco and you can program the buttons to do almost anything you can think of.

Who would have something like this in a home? What's the purpose? It seems like such overkill. Everyone that responded had a business application, but the OP asked about home impelementations as well.

 

[moetop]

I gave this a little more thought, and it seems that one of the big hangups with this whole voip/softphone thing is the handset. People want a handset. So aside from getting a 2 fxs port ATA and standard phones to plug into it, you might want to look at a USB phone that works with x-ten, this could be a very inexpensive alternative even to an FXS device.

I totally agree companies are really leery of voip and a professional solution is the only way to go. Another consideration is a Analog gateway/ata/multiport fxs device in the closet and then put a regular phone at the desk. A little ATA with it's powerpack rolling around on or under someone’s desk being kicked or coffee spilled on to it certainly doesn’t look professional. About $50 a port for the larger (24 port) units. It's a bit crazy because for about $70 you can get 2 ports (linksys pap2). Someone needs to make a chassis that takes a bunch of the linksys pap2's (2 port fxs box) and puts then in one chassis, just so it looks professional.

Thought about it, but the owners of the business were already weary of the setup ( how can this only be 9k when avaya is offering 40k? ), the worst thing I could have done was to make any part of the system look unprofessional.

Of course, now that we have it, I can do anything I want and they'd be all for it.

Nostradamus; The servers were custom built from a guy who has experience working with digium hardware. My concern was using parts that might be flaky with the digium hardware, so I left taht part up to someone else. The drives operate in raid1 ( excepting the /boot volume ). I have it on ip failover, I'm not worrying about sip just yet ( although that is a good idea ).

Local storage on the raid volumes. My goal was reliability and simplicity. If the server dies, I can always recover voicemail files from the mirror as needed.

I installed asterisk SVN-branch-1.2-r8632M.

So far we haven't had any issues with asterisk locking up ( 7 months for this implementation, 2+ years overall with asterisk ).