SPA-3000 Review/Guide: Affordable Home PBX 160
Kerbo writes "Seems every few days there is another news item about Asterisk PBX or Asterisk@Home, the open-source PBX system and associated installer package. You may have even been wondering what equipment you need to get started. The Geek Gazette has posted a review of the Sipura SPA-3000 ATA/Gateway with a complete setup guide on configuring it to work with Asterisk. This makes a very cost-effective way to get started by using your existing phone line as a trunk into the PBX."
I remember my first affordable PBX (Score:4, Funny)
ignorant question (Score:2)
Re:ignorant question (Score:4, Funny)
Hand over your geek card. We do things not because we have to, but because we can.
Re:ignorant question (Score:2)
Re:ignorant question (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a POTS line and I have a VOIP account, both of which terminate on my Asterisk box.
In addition to my normal house phone I have a GrandStream SIP phone. Either phone can make or answer calls and each phone can call each other. (Handy for calling downstairs from the office to order another beer!)
I get voicemail, call hold, call parking, music on hold.
Although I haven't set it up yet, I can have it answer my fax calls, convert the fax to a PDF and email it to me.
I get the ability to route my calls depending on where I'm calling. For example, calls to cell-phones, 1800 numbers and emergency calls go out my POTS line. All other calls go out on my VOIP account. As most of my family live in the US (I live in Ireland) I make a huge saving on the cost of those calls.
By way of a proof-of-concept for my employer (in the financial services industry) I even wrote a Telephone Banking application in Perl for Asterisk.
Although I make savings on my calls and get added functionality, the main reason I use Asterisk is for control over my telecoms. Apart from that, it's cool!
Re:ignorant question (Score:2)
Re:ignorant question (Score:2)
The way the nice ones work[1], you use # to flip between a telco dialtone and a Skype "dialtone".
[1] Disclaimer - I know one person in real life who has done this and he was vaguely connected to a Skype phone manufacturer. While I plan to do something similar, I have n
Re:ignorant question (Score:2)
Re:ignorant question (Score:2)
Re:ignorant question (Score:2)
A PBX @ home makes a lot of sense in conjunction with a DSL/cable link. Install maybe one or two analog phones on the PBX, but then deploy as many VoIP phones as you want - and not necessarily only in your house!
Re:ignorant question (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:ignorant question (Score:5, Informative)
1) Voicemail. Someone leaves a message, the pbx emails it to you.
2) VoIP usability. Once the line makes it into my pbx, regardless of how, it's mine. I go on vacation? Cool, I just pack up my phone and take it with me.
Those are just two off the top of my head, I'm sure I could think of more were I to really focus on it.
Re:ignorant question (Score:3, Interesting)
Another interesting use is integrating it with X10 or other home automation to
Re:ignorant question (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:ignorant question (Score:1, Interesting)
Plus, telemarketers would never ring a phone.
Re:ignorant question (Score:2, Informative)
Re:ignorant question (Score:2)
Re:ignorant question (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ignorant question (Score:2)
Re:ignorant question (Score:2)
What I'm interested in doing with Asterisk isn't necessarily having 2852085092209384 phone lines coming into my house, but doing extension-to-extension calling at home. It's a pain to have to walk downstairs to talk to someone.
Re:ignorant question (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed my fellow obese American!
Re:ignorant question (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:ignorant question (Score:2)
--
Evan "Of course, there's a single pair intercom already wired..."
Re:ignorant question (Score:2, Funny)
But why? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But why? (Score:2)
because we can?
Re:But why? (Score:5, Funny)
To impress chicks, of course.
Re:But why? (Score:2)
I knew a guy who had an old WANG mainframe. And he realy did try to use the line "want to come back to my place and check out my big WANG" a few times.
Re:But why? (Score:2)
An answering machine allows me to ignore people I don't absolutely have to talk to.
A PBX system allows me avoid interaction altogether by setting up an interactive system (i.e., "press one now").
Combine this with internet groceries and shopping, an income based solely on doing well in everquest, and many of us will never have to leave our mother's basements. Ever. BUWAHAHAHAAAAA
Overkill (Score:2)
Re:But why? (Score:2)
How about to get FEWER calls?
My Asterisk system is set up so that incoming calls if coming from my cell phone go directly to voicemail main menu so I can pick up my messages on the road more easily. Incoming calls from friends whom I am able to identify by Caller ID ring the house phone as usual. Incoming calls that are not from a known Caller ID go to a menu (you know... press 1 for
Tax Deduction (Score:2, Funny)
Asterisk. (Score:2, Informative)
i wonder.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:i wonder.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:i wonder.... (Score:2)
Re:i wonder.... (Score:2)
Re:i wonder.... (Score:3, Informative)
Sorta like microsoft buying out companies just to eliminate competition.
Price (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing in the article fully explains. (Score:2)
Froogle search: SPA-3000 [google.com].
Nothing in the article, and nothing in the comments above, fully explains the benefits of Asterisk for a small business or home. Transferring calls to a second line? Voicemail to email? What else?
Froogle search for the Digium [digium.com] card: Wildcard TE110P [google.com]
T1 hardware: 24-Port FXS Analog Gateway (SIP) [voipsupply.com].
Re:Nothing in the article fully explains. (Score:2)
I'm planning on sorting calls between the phones for the three members of my household based on caller ID. (No caller ID or calling from a number that doesn't match a list of known patterns? You go straight to the menu system, and unless you have a passcode [given to friends and family], you go to voicemail).
There are also scripts available for wasting telephone salestypes' time, and quite a bit of other miscellany.
I'm tempted to get a T
The Cost Savings Here Could be Major (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Cost Savings Here Could be Major (Score:2)
There's probably some good money for the first compa
Re:The Cost Savings Here Could be Major (Score:4, Insightful)
Digium (the company behind Asterisk) is obviously targeting the "larger than SOHO" business market - 18 ports and up. They sell a 4-port T1 card that gives you 92+ voice channels (depending on your circuit type.) Sangoma also is getting into the Asterisk / voice market with their own T1 cards.
Telco is it's own little world. You can be a really good networking / server person and be a fish out of water when it comes to deploying a PBX. Some people really don't understand that, then get all frustrated when they try to deploy an asterisk system all by themselves, have problems, then start bad mouthing it. But you don't have to go it alone. There are lots of consultants that can help. You wouldn't buy a $750K Nortel phone system and install it all by yourself would you?
For SoHo people, google for "asterisk at home." It can be fairly easy.
This will be very useefull for small businesses (Score:4, Interesting)
You insensitive clod (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You insensitive clod (Score:1)
Re:You insensitive clod (Score:1)
lgxlcj = pubpic
Asterix@home (Score:2, Funny)
And, coming soon, Obelix@home, which will attempt to genetically alter recipients to be permanently endowed with these abilities.
Warning, may cause lowered intelligence, anti-authoritarianism and increased risk of obesity.
Missing a crucial piece of hardware (Score:5, Informative)
I can not seem to find a piece of hardware that will generate a dial tone on 16 or 24 different ports. I'm looking for one switch-type looking device, preferably rack mountable, that will take however many phones lines, and connect them via whatever to an Asterisk PBX.
As of right now we put a bunch of the Sipura SPA-1001M [geekgazette.com] in our back room plugged into our router and punched down to the 66 block going to all of the phone sockets in the offices.
Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.
--
Fairfax Underground: Where Fairfax County, VA comes out to play [fairfaxunderground.com]
Re:Missing a crucial piece of hardware (Score:3, Funny)
How about a tape loop and an audio splitter?
Re:Missing a crucial piece of hardware (Score:5, Informative)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
Re:Missing a crucial piece of hardware (Score:2)
The channel bank is one option for handling many ports on asterisk. However, channel banks are old technology and the last I checked fairly expensive and are not scalable in a fine grain. Great if you want hundreds of ports but if you need about 24 lines now, what happens when you need 25? You need to shell out another $2400 for another channel bank plus more for another T1 card.
It looks like the SPA-3000 could be adapted to support a PBX using a fairly large number of lines using ethernet rather
Your prices are off (Score:2)
Re:Missing a crucial piece of hardware (Score:1)
Re: (Not) Missing a crucial piece of hardware (Score:2)
Connect the channel bank to the T1 card via a crossover cable and you have a 24 (or 23 ISDN) port FXS interface.
Re:Missing a crucial piece of hardware (Score:2)
Re:Missing a crucial piece of hardware (Score:2)
Since you're using SPA-1001M's right now, I'm guessing you want FXS-to-IP, not channel banks as other repliers have suggested. I googled for "24-port FXS" and the third link was this [voipsupply.com] 24-port FXS-to-SIP adapter. VoipSupply even has a section header for "High Density Analog Adapters" [voipsupply.com]
or were you expecting something dirt-cheap?
Asking the wrong question (Score:2)
You are having problems because you are asking the wrong question. Throw your old phones away. Get new VOIP phones. (Cheap ones are about what the cheapest converter would cost, expensive ones can do a lot more than a converter ever could) You get more flexability, as you can choose how many buttons you get, and what is displayed on the screen of the phone. You can mix and match for features, or give everyone the same phone for a better bulk rate, depending on what management wants)
There is a plac
A SOHO solution? (Score:2, Interesting)
I hope this is pitched as a SOHO solution. I also hope it fails. Trying to bolt a phone menu system on to POTS is like trying to bolt a security system on to Windows. Sure you can do it, but you shouldn't - it just makes the user experience dismal and worries consumers. It's bad enough that they charge you to keep you on hold, never mind charge you to put you through to the right dept. Our tech team uses an Asterix system to put you through to the right dept. There are 4 of them in the there and they all an
Re:A SOHO solution? (Score:4, Interesting)
Asterisk is one of several different VoIP open-source / freeware software PBX solutions. One of the things you can do is program a phone menu system into it. It is I admit somewhat of a black art still to actually configure Asterisk but if you can get the hang of it, it is very powerful. If you don't like it, try one of the others. It runs on many platforms, some with hardware limitations and of course the underlying security as a whole. Once a call is in your PBX you can then of course program it to do anything that you can devise.
I personally think the hardware adaptors are expensive for any number/combination of ports (FXO - foreign exchange office and FXS - foreign exchange station - see http://www.voip-info.org/ [voip-info.org] for a wiki), especially here in the UK if you source locally. I do like the Sipura/Vegastream adaptors for their hardware simplicity though. It may be much better to consider IP phones such as GrandStream or SnomPhone if you are starting from scratch. A mixture of the two is of course what most people will do if they have relatively expensive analogue DTMF telephone handsets.
YMMV especially if you have to deal with a non-US type telephone system as you will need some kind of adaptor at least a one point in your network.
Obviously your IT guys just don't want to be bothered all the time. If you get past the menus then you must have a good (read important) reason to require their time. Time is money especially to four guys supporting many more poeple than perhaps they should. Not many have escaped IT cutbacks.
--
This is just being lazy
Better Link (Score:5, Informative)
http://geekgazette.com/index2.php?option=com_conte nt&task=view&id=28&Itemid=26&pop=1&page=0 [geekgazette.com]
Re:Better Link (Score:2)
Wow. Geek nirvana.
But for my home PBX... the bandwidth? (Score:2)
I mean, I can't have someone on the phone making a call, all the sudden to go into low rez choppy digital speech because someone else decided to download the latest Linux distro.
Re:But for my home PBX... the bandwidth? (Score:2)
You are correct. (Score:5, Informative)
Vonage (Packet5 may be now as well, I can't recall) also offers an all-in-one solution that's a router and an ATA in one box. You can also pick up the combos yourself (Linksys makes 'em), but they tend to be tied to one specific service -- so do your homework before you sink the cash on a combination ATA and router.
Re:You are correct. (Score:2)
YMMV.
Re:But for my home PBX... the bandwidth? (Score:1)
Re:But for my home PBX... the bandwidth? (Score:2)
As for big downloads killing your VoIP channels - the size of the file you're downloading does not matter. What matters is how many simultaneous downloads are happening at the same time. I.e., loading a large web page with lots of graphics is a lot worse than a single multi-GB DVD ISO.
In any case, you can play a little bit with ban
Use bandwidth shaping (Score:3, Informative)
2) Purchase and Install OpenBSD
3) Purchase Building Firewalls with OpenBSD and PF, 2nd ed by Jacek Artymiak (ISBN: 83-916651-1-9)
4) Use bandwidth shaping as described in chapter 10.
5)Enjoy your new router.
This should give you high priority bandwith for the VoIP. It cannot control how your ISP allocates bandwith (of course), but I think that this would help the average user happier with both voice and data share the same bandwith.
Re:Use bandwidth shaping (Score:2)
What needs to happen now. (Score:5, Interesting)
Very easy sale.
Cheaper/better FXO/FXS from Grandstream (Score:3, Interesting)
Sipura units seem to have much more provisioning support but Grandstream supports the same provisioning protocols. This can help with large deployments where you want to automatically assign extension numbers from a central server.
Again, this a new product that just went into production and might save you a few bucks over the Sipura in quantity. See http://voipsupply.com/ [voipsupply.com] and http://www.grandstream.com/ [grandstream.com] for some more detail.
Kris
Re:Cheaper/better FXO/FXS from Grandstream (Score:2)
So they may be cheaper, but I kind of doubt that they are really "better" IMHO.
Re:Cheaper/better FXO/FXS from Grandstream (Score:2)
Re:Cheaper/better FXO/FXS from Grandstream (Score:2)
Affordable PBX? Nortel...... (Score:2, Informative)
Nortel Cics or Mics are the most common, they work great, have zero noise/fans. Autoattendant (on most models - or with the Star Talk Flash), voice mail, Fax reroute etc. Great little systems, why go Asterisk?
I love all tech - just cause it's old/experienced don't abandon it.
Re:Affordable PBX? Nortel...... (Score:2)
Seriously, how many PBXes you can find lying around that have VoIP capabilities?
Re:Affordable PBX? Nortel...... (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one... (Score:2)
Thanks, leave your geek card on the receptionists desk on your way out.
absolutely. (Score:2)
Re:absolutely. (Score:2)
<stamp>
Actual affordable PBX (Score:1)
Now all are VoIP upgradeable. Plus they can expand to suit your growing business' needs.
phone line as a trunk (Score:2, Funny)
Jeeze.
someone humor a question from a noob... (Score:2)
"no, *you* couldn't configure Asterisk" is probably the right answer, but pretend for a second that I could. Is this possible?
Re:someone humor a question from a noob... (Score:2)
But it can do a lot more than just that.
Stop trying to see a *big picture* (Score:4, Informative)
I have 1 POTS line, 3 IP phones, and a plain old cordless plugged into an FXS port on my asterisk server. Keep in mind this is a collection of parts that have grown from testing. All that would be needed for this is either 2 analog phones with FXS, or 1 analog and 1 IP phone etc etc you get the idea.
I get a regular phone call, my home phones all ring, there's no answer, it goes to voicemail, people can pick who they want to leave voicemail for. I get a copy of the
2 of the IP phones are at home, 1 is Overseas where I have family. My wife returns back for a visit every year. Most of the year it is the line she uses to keep in touch with family (once she plugs in the second box over there for me, she can use it to dial out to her friends over there as a local call as well)
While she is back visiting, she can try to call me via IP. Failing that, dial 9 and the number and dial out from our landline to my mobile phone, for example (which, coincidentally, is not always great when you're "killing time at the pub") . When she is away, she uses this to keep in touch with others here, and to continue and other local business calls she needs to make.
I can also dial home, hit a key to dial out before voicemail rolls in, and reach my overseas IP phone.
This isn't an overly complicated setup, cost little money to setup, and created an extremely useful way to keep in contact. Don't turn on all the bells and whistles and you don't scare callers (Do they *really* need dial by name?) The situation I use it in is nothing off the wall, and it's simple to use. This doesn't even *start* to cover the practical applications it has WITHOUT being an overbearing system.
For a small consulting business, or mobile worker, there's a huge benefit. Even for a family, there's a major convenience. And according to my call detail records, in under a year I've already paid off anything spent in savings from overseas calling (and more). The rest of the ongoing savings can go to my beer fund. You can call it pointless if you want. My pint glass and I would disagree with you though.
VoIP, QoS and OnDo SIP Server (Score:4, Informative)
Granted, your ISP probably doesn't care if your traffic is marked EF, but would prevent PCs on your local network from clobbering your bandwidth during a call.
Also, check out OnDo SIP Server from Brekeke. I play with it in my VoIP lab, and find that it's a find piece of software for quick n' dirty SIP setups. It's free for non-commercial users.
The slightly more adventurous can try Asterisk@Home which has a streamlined setup.
Yes - every few days... (Score:2)
... and on Slashdot, they're often the same ones!
* is still way over my head... (Score:2)
Do most people need a PBX at home? Hell, I'd be happy if I could get something that did Fax to PDF and voicemail while sitting between the incoming analog telephone line and my (inside the house) telephone network. Do I need a computer and all this crap for that?
Re:* is still way over my head... (Score:2)
Re:* is still way over my head... (Score:2)
Can someone help? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Can someone help? (Score:2)
Costs Might Not Scale Like You Think (Score:3, Insightful)
The real cost of the phone systems are in the desksets which vary in features and cost but in a medium small office the PBX is a small percentage of the cost.
Consider a 30 station setup with 8 lines. The 30 phones would be somewhere between 6000 - 12000 depending on model. (you probably would not do elcheapo $75 ebay phones).
The {insert brand name here} PBX would be more but the asterisk would be probably $2000 (including cards). And then, no matter what system you choose, comes the programing, which should be about the same no matter what.
The thing that asterisk provides is the ability for everyone to use it. It is also exteremly accessable.
Convenient. My mom just called, asked me... (Score:2)
Re:Expensive (Score:2)
Re:P.O.S (Score:2)
Also, I don't have expansion slots, and my always-on home box is running Windows w/ coLinux (so the Linux side doesn't have direct access to the PCI bus -- but the fiancee gets to play The Sims).