Here I am
No, I haven’t died or anything. Just haven’t gotten around to blogging much lately.
I’m currently working on integrating Asterisk into our current phone system. I’ve outlined this plan in the past, and unfortunately it didn’t line out the way I wanted it to, but we are going to be using Asterisk, and the plan is designed in such a way as to allow expansion in the future. So maybe sometime in the next 5-50 years we can get rid of the old PBX and run everything off Asterisk. The current plan is basically an ugly hack that we have to go with for two reasons. One is cost. To replace our entire phone system would cost a significant amount more because it would mean replacing all 70 or so phones. At ~$150/phone you can see how that can be a factor.
We are getting ready to move some offices to a house across the street we own. So I’ve been asked to get phones and data working as cheaply as possible. So here’s the plan in all its hacked glory:
I’m buying a new Dell server with an FXO card in it with enough ports to handle the users across the street (8). This card will be plugged into analog ports coming out of our current PBX. Those ports on the PBX will be given the extension of a user across the street, and Asterisk will be configured to ring that users phone when the port corresponding with their extension is dialed. Meanwhile, we setup a wireless bridge to the “remote” location. So the Asterisk box basically becomes a SIP gateway to our current system so we can get our phones at the new location over the wireless bridge.
Now I’m not just getting an 8 port FXO card, instead I got a 24 port FXO card. The extra 16 ports will also be connecting the Asterisk box to the PBX, and these will be used for voicemail. Our current voicemail server is a 486 SX25MHz with a 40MB HDD running DOS connected to the PBX via 8 analog ports. So all I have to do is disconnect those 8 analog ports from the 486 and plug them into Asterisk. Then configure those ports within Asterisk to automatically go to voicemail. That leave 8 ports left over on the 24 port FXO card to use either for future SIP phones, or more voicemail ports.
Now this won’t happen all at once. First I setup the phones across the street and once Asterisk has had enough time to prove itself, then we’ll see if I’m allowed to use it for voicemail. Then after that’s gone on for awhile and the powers that be feel more comfortable we can start adding more phones and eventually replace the whole thing. Yes I know there’s problems with this setup. Yes, I will be using a PRI to connect to the telco so yes, the expensive 24port FXO card will be useless to us when we transition.