HOW TO SETUP ASTERISK@HOME

How to set-up a simple, IP-based PBX (private branch exchange)

Have you ever wanted one of those nifty office telephone systems? You know, with extensions, your very own receptionist, voicemail for every cubicle, an intercom system and all the other bells and whistles. Unfortunately, a typical office PBX (private branch exchange) that would provide those features costs thousands of dollars to get up and running - and that's one of the cheaper solutions. What if you could do almost as much for virtually nothing? Interested? It's called Asterisk, an open-source, fully-loaded and surprisingly scalable software PBX solution. In this article, we'll walk you through setting up a basic Asterisk installation, as well as show you a couple of tweaks that we found useful. If this sounds daunting, don't worry, we'll spoon-feed you ever step of the way.

The final result will be your very own IP-based PBX that will allow anyone on your LAN (if authorized) to be given a telephone extension and voicemail inbox, make and receive calls from within or without your LAN - with nothing but a VoIP line, a microphone and a pair of headphones. Of course, when you are done with the basic setup, feel free to add hardware VoIP phones, POTS (analog) phones, a digital receptionist and numerous other amenities to your SOHO telephone solution.

Ready to begin?

What you'll need

Basically, a crummy computer with Ethernet as your server, and a networked computer with a microphone and speakers or VoIP phone for every "extension" / "virtual phone outlet" you plan on having.

You'll also need at least one blank CD and a computer capable of burning CDs, as well as a functioning LAN with a router or an equivalent internet connection sharing solution.

Finally, you'll need any VoIP provider that supports SIP termination or IAX/IAX2 protocols (these can be extremely cheap). We used VOIPjet (http://www.voipjet.com/), but BroadVoice is also supposed to be excellent.

We used this as our server.

For testing (client / "extension") machines, we used a Compaq Evo n610c clocked at 2.0ghz with 768mb of RAM, and a typical P4 grey-box with nothing special.

Part 1: Acquiring the Asterisk@Home CD-ROM image.

First, you'll have to download the Asterisk@Home image, and burn it to disc. Asterisk at home is essentially the Asterisk software PBX packaged with Linux in an easy-to-install installaion CD-ROM.

You can get the version we used (1.4) here: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/asteriskathome/asteriskathome-1.4.iso?download.

Any of the newer versions should also be fine, most contain a few bug fixes. For the very latest version, visit: http://sourceforge.net/projects/asteriskathome/.

Select a mirror and download the 459.771 MB (approx.) file.

Once that's done, burn the image to a disc using your favorite CD Burning software. We used NERO (http://www.nero.com/).