[Sussex] Linux VoIP software

[Iain Stevenson]

--On Saturday, February 26, 2005 2:38 am +0000 Steve Dobson 
<steve at dobson.org> wrote:

Apologies for not being Mark ......

>
> I assume that you have asterisk interfaced with your phone lines.

Well, 1 phone line ...

> If so:
>
>   1). What type of phone lines do you have?
>         Analogue, ISDN, ...
>

ISDN with an old BT TA - I use a Digium T100P card which was, at the time, 
part of the Asterisk Developer's kit.  I had to develop a patch for the 
driver to get the card to talk nicely to the TA.

>   2). What hardware are you using to connect your phone lines to the
>       computer?
>

See above ...

>   3). What IP phones are you using?  I've heard some say that the cheaper
>       phones don't give the quality.
>

IMHO Cisco phones are the best but God help you if you need support as a 
consumer.  I'm not sure of the status of SIP support on the phones - the 
plan was to support it across the product range.  I believe Asterisk 
supports some of Cisco's "Skinny" protocol.  I have a Cisco 7960 (probably 
£200+) running SIP and it's been great fun to program and gives very good 
sound quality.  You could always go to Allders in Horsham and see if they'd 
flog you one of their 7940's (there's one on every sales desk) at 70% 
discount ;-)

I also have a Grandstream Budgetone (£50).  It's cheap, the plastic's tacky 
but it works.  It's perfectly OK for home and I would think many business 
applications where the appearance of the phone isn't an issue.

All IP phones vary in the extent to which they work with Asterisk.  Things 
like call transfer are not universally supported eg attended transfer may 
not work on some phones.  This is generally down to the lack of rigour in 
the SIP protocol and proprietary variations.  Mark probably has more up to 
date knowledge than I - it's about 6 months since I updated my Asterisk 
setup.

HTH

  Iain



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