# Asterisk or other PBX hardware



## wblock@ (Jul 28, 2012)

What is the minimum needed phone line interface to set up Asterisk or other PBX software as a glorified answering machine in the US?  POTS/land line.  PCIe card preferred, PCI card okay, external box if necessary.

Software wise, I just want to set up something like email: some numbers ring through, some are silently rejected, some are allowed to prove they are not telemarketers and then ring, some go into an endless maze of menus.  The terminology is not familiar, but I think this means it would need one FXO to connect to the line and one FXS to connect the house phone.


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## Beeblebrox (Jul 28, 2012)

Slightly off-topic: I would like to see a separate sub-forum for voip and related hardware.

Probably not too much demand for this right now, but I find that information sources for the hardware side of voip on the internets leaves much to be desired. Also, I predict that this will be a growth area as hardware is better understood by users/admins.


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## adam2104 (Jul 28, 2012)

You are correct, FXO ports connect to the land lines. FXS ports connect to your only internal wiring (be sure to disconnect from the landline first!).

FXO ports do not provide any kind of line or ring voltage.
FXS ports DO provide line and ring voltage.

I use a Linksys SPA2102 here at the house. It has two FXS ports on board. I've disconnected from AT&Ts incoming line and I have one port connected to my house wiring. It drives all the ports and phones connected to it. It is essentially indistinguishable from a regular telephone line. I believe there's a SPA3102 that has two FXS ports and a single FXO port. You might want to check that out.


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## Uniballer (Jul 29, 2012)

I bought a couple of these cards on eBay, put them in a PC and installed Elastix.  Oh, and 18 Aastra 9133i SIP phones, and a Panasonic KX-TGP500B04 DECT SIP phone.

Making it all work on FreeBSD seemed like a lot more work.


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## wblock@ (Jul 29, 2012)

adam2104: The Linksys SPA3102 has one FXO and one FXS port.  I'm a little skeptical of it, because it seems like all the Linksys stuff in those enclosures runs really, really hot.  Also, it's a complete little router, and that seems like overkill.  And there was that Cisco fiasco (Ciasco?) lately.

Uniballer: the reason I'm considering this is to consolidate several functions in an idle server.  The setup might be a hassle, but would be a chance to work with Asterisk.  And also get some call filtering.


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## Uniballer (Jul 29, 2012)

OK.  The standard DAHDI modules built into Elastix (pre-built CentOS/Asterisk/FreePBX, etc) worked on the cards I linked earlier.  I used the OSLEC echo cancellation software already installed in Elastix.  The PC I used is an AMD Athlon II x2 250 with 1GB of ECC RAM, gigabit ethernet, and a 250 GB laptop hard disk, and the 2 TDM410P v2 PCI cards connecting 7 FXO ports and one FXS device.  The weakest link performance-wise is probably the hard disk, e.g. voice prompts, music on hold, or voicemail playback may sound rather fecal if the hard disk is too busy.  That doesn't seem to happen in normal operation but has been observed during after-hours backups, etc.


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