Proposed Asterisk Setup

C

Crashsector

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 10, 2001
Messages
1,125
Hey guys. I'm gonna post this here to work out some of the early bugs before I move on to the Asterisk@Home forum.

I'm looking to set up a small PBX at my work based on Asterisk@Home. I'm really only after the auto-attendent, mailboxes, and extension features (which is why I'm not going with straight Asterisk). This is the setup I think I'm going for:

asterisk.png


I don't want to go with external VoIP (yet) so that's why I'm just using the FXO cards to interface with the PSTN lines. The majority of work will be done through the intercoms (internally). Also, there's no need for the fax line to go through the PBX. The server handles all incoming and outgoing faxes (quite well actually).

Does anyone see any gross errors that I've made with this setup? TIA.

--Andy
 
By the way... I'm going to be using all SIP digital phones, no analog, hence the lack of an FXS interface on the PBX.

Thanks!
 
That sounds like a pretty straight forward setup. What phones (model/make) will you be using?

I just finished setting up one of our new offices with CBeyond's SIP connect service. We use a Cisco Call Manager Express (CCME) and SIP between that office and the ISP for external calling. Communication between our corporate office and the branches is done via H.323 (corporate office runs a Call Manager (CCM) with a PRI for external calling) . We use Cisco 7960 phones and ATA-186's running SCCP for analog phones and faxing.

I have not had a chance to play around with Asterisk, but do know my way around CCM and CCME. It's all the same thing, just different vendors... If you run into any problems let me know...
 
Just a quick question - what is the WRT54G doing? - I am assuming that since you have SBS2003 you are using this for your DHCP rather than relying on the WRT54G. the 54G is a big security threat - if you are using it for wireless access then you should use a proper firewall between it and the rest of the network, since the wireless subnet is on the trusted side.
You would be better off with the SBS2003 having a secondary nic handling the routing from the DSL modem (n.b. with this you could also build a decent cache and also have a fuller set of rules) and then using the WRT54G effectively as an untrust network which you could then vpn pass through so that your wireless clients could authenticate on the trusted network.
Do not rely on MAC filtering for wireless since it is effectively useless against a sniffer, and if you have sufficent traffic then WEP can be cracked in under 5 mins!
 
The WRT54G is only running NAT for the other clients on the network (not pictured). The wireless is disabled. The SBS2003 box is running DHCP and AD services.

I was routing through the SBS2003 box but I ended up having to work on it a few times requiring me to take it off line, and the rest of the store yells when they don't have net access. Plus I'm not confident enough in some of my administration skills yet (firewalling, security) to have a Windows server completely exposed.

I'm not sure what phones we would be using, probably Polycom or something, most likely from eBay. We would only need about 4 or 5.

Thanks for the info, feel free to continue commenting!
 
The only thing I can see that you should be aware of in the future is passing SIP through a firewall (if and when you use an external VOIP provider and if they are using SIP). You must have a SIP compliant firewall. I'm not sure if the Linksys is SIP compliant (probably not), but it's just something to keep in the back of your mind...
 
The only thing I can see that you should be aware of in the future is passing SIP through a firewall (if and when you use an external VOIP provider and if they are using SIP). You must have a SIP compliant firewall. I'm not sure if the Linksys is SIP compliant (probably not), but it's just something to keep in the back of your mind...

Edit: cyberjt mentioned using the SBS2003 machine to do the routing etc. (I assume he means using ISA for this). ISA is not SIP compliant at this time so it would not work for outbound calling down the road...
 
Anyone know if Asterisk@Home is going to like the fact that it has two NICs and one is used for the phones? I want to keep the phones on their own switched network to prevent bandwidth issues (we commonly max out several local 100Mbps links) and I didn't know if this was common with A@H or what.

Thanks!
 
Having the phones on a different physical network (VLAN) is a good way to go. The Asterisk box should not have a problem with this as long as your routing is set up correctly. We do the same thing for larger implementations, this allows us to use CoS on the LAN in order to retain call quality for internal calls...
 
Now for my next question. Say I have this setup and I have a home office. I want to have a phone in the home office that acts like it is an extension of the PBX at work. What would be required to do this? I think I'd have to have a small Asterisk server at the home office and connect them with IAX, but I wasn't sure if I'd need any more hardware.

Thanks for any info!
 
what you're talking about is closest to call forwarding essentially, your pbx at work would need to have an extension that would forward the call to your house
 
Ah that would work, but I meant to forward to an SIP phone over the Internet, not PSTN.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top