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On Sat, 1 Aug 2009, Edwin Rhodes wrote: > Hello I am not sure if you are the right person, I am interested in making > my own asterix server please advise, thanks ed. Edwin, I'm guessing this is aimed at me, so I've started a new thread for this to separate it from the existing ones. Always a good thing to do with a new subject - i.e. start a new email rather than reply. (Although there are others there who use asterisk too - Dave Walker's also a guru ;-) Disclaimer: I build and sell asterisk boxes and provide ITSP services. You need something to run it on - and remember that you might need/want to run it 24/7 to pickup voicemail, etc. when you're not about. You also need some phones, although you can use soft-phones on a PC (Asterisk itself has a soft-phone built in, but I don't recommend using it) And something to connect to to make/take calls - A PSTN card to use your BT connections, or a SIP (or IAX) connection to an ITSP of some sorts. Then there's the asterisk itself - many Linux distributions come with a bundled version, but personally I favour compiling it from scratch myself. Asterisk itself comes in 3 basic versions - the 1.2 version, 1.4 and 1.6, and to further complicate matters, the 1.6 is currently split into 2 branches. 1.2 is considered obsolete, but there are literally thousands upon thousands of 1.2 installations out there. My own systems are based on 1.2, but I'm working on 1.4. I consider 1.6 too buggy for production use, and even 1.4 has bugs that 1.2 doesn't have, but right now it has features I want that 1.2 doesn't have, so I'm migrating to it. I'd suggest going for 1.4 if compiling from scratch. Another way might be to dedicate an old PC and use one of the pre-canned packages. pbxinaflash, trixbox or astlinux - there are others. These are basically whole Linux distributions (centOs I think) which come with a pre built asterisk, web front-end, etc. I looked at these, then started from scratch. If you want to play on your workstation, then get the sources for the latest version of 1.4 and compile it up yourself. Use the default settings and off you go. You won't need anything else at this stage. The tricky part isn't compiling and installing, it's editing the dozens of config files and the magical thing that controls it all; The Dialplan. (Also known as extensions.conf) The dialplan is actually a programming language. You write programs in it which are executed by various triggers - usually by a phone dialling a number which matches something in the dialplan. What I suggest you do now though is go and get a book - it's free and in PDF format. It's Asterisk: The Future of Telephony. Google around for it, but try: http://www.asterisk-voip.nl/wiki/images/7/7b/AsteriskTFOT.zip The book is quite old now and will talk about Zap or Zaptel devices. These are 1.2 specific stuff - for a pure SIP/VoIP system you don't need any of it, and Zap has been renamed DAHDI in the latest version of asterisk too. Enjoy! Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html