pbxer

Apologies for the elitism, but building a PBX is not a project for everyone. I’ve outlined a few basic requirements below.

Are you OK with the command line?

The command line is how you control remote machines. it’s how you talk to you PBX and know what is going on. Yes, some people will say you can use a graphical front-end to your PBX, but at some point, if you need to fix a problem you have to be able to ssh into your server and type a few commands. If the following looks familiar (or at least doesn’t scare you), then you’ll be fine.

11:40:14 up 123 days, 16:28,  2 users,  load average: 0.05, 0.02, 0.00

Are you a problem solver?

There are many different types of phones, hardware, software, routers and internet connections. So, if something isn’t working how you want it to, you need to be able to logically think through problems in order to isolate what exactly is wrong. Once you know what the problem is, you can get help from others or fix it yourself. If you’ve ever needed technical help and written a post to a discussion forum like, “help! my computer doesn’t work!!”, building a PBX is probably not for you.

A broadband internet connection?

You can’t do VOIP over a slow dialup. You need at least 100kbits/second up and down to be able to have a good quality phone call. DSL Reports has some excellent tools for testing your connection:

Voip test - shows how many simultaneous calls you can make with your connection.

Speed test - shows how many kbps (kilo-bits-per-second) your connection can handle. Usually the upload bandwidth is the problem. You need at least 100 kbps up.

A VOIP phone

It takes a bit of hunting to find a VOIP phone, but it’s worth it. You are able to access all the great features of your PBX (call display, name display, call transfer, do not disturb, etc.) (The old-school way was to buy an ATA adaptor, and then plug an analog phone into the adaptor. That still works if you have an old fax machine you want to use.)

You could use a “soft” phone, which is VOIP phone software that runs on your computer. That is OK for testing your PBX, but it’s so much easier to use a real, “hard” phone that is always on and working.

A linux box

Obviously you need a machine to run your PBX software (which currently will be asterisk). I recommend that instead of installing Linux on some old PC you have kicking around, you get a VPS (virtual private server) that sits on a real internet connection. Virtualization technology has brought down the price of having your own server to the point where it’s almost as cheap as shared web hosting. For example, at slicehost you can get a 256MB server for $20USD/month. Performance is phenomenal and I haven’t had any downtime or network issues. I love my slice.

The stability and reliability of having a machine on a proper internet connection (instead of cable or DSL) means that even if your internet connection drops, callers can still reach your PBX and leave voicemail or contact you via other means. The other great feature of having your asterisk on the public internet is that it isn’t behind a router or firewall which greatly simplifies your setup and reduces potential problems.

Have you got all that? If so, then you’re ready to get started.