I actually have been to the web site before and read a little about it and it sounds like something I might like to learn a little more about but from what little I have read it doesn't sound like something I could make use of at home (maybe I'm wrong?) and it's out of my area at work. Also, I added a question about the cable in my last post, you probably didn't see it.

Not as inexpensive, but I use this one: http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_ … ucts_id=70

It needs to have a connector cable built to go from 6 pins on the cable to tx/rx/0V.

I have 4 Asterisk boxes that I manage, all for pure hobby purposes One is for an Amateur Radio project, one runs as my home phone system, I have one sitting on a virtualized server instance in a datacenter for emergency calling if need be (I've got an inbound 800 number pointed to it), and another instance for test and development. Possibly just a bit overboard, but I am a telephony geek and work in telecommunications professionally so it's fun to me lol.

I'd be happy to help you get up and running with Asterisk if you need a hand, it can be as simple as complex as you want it to be. There's no words to describe the feeling you get when you get your phone to ring, or able to contact another person using a high quality codec (like g722) for example. It's a quite capable system, and I've only begun to scratch the surface, been playing with it for just over a year now. So much potential!!!

Wow, that's awesome. I'm not in telecom but have a server/networking background and am always looking for something new to learn. So if I wanted to get started at home with this for a learning project what would you suggest? I only have a single line. Maybe I could start by redirecting the calls of all telemarketers to the number of the local waste management company? I assume I might want to pick up a couple of IP phones as well. Any suggestions? I would also guess QoS would be very important here. Maybe we should start a new thread for this.

When I had a debian v3 Linux computer, it works just fine. With a debian v5 (on the same computer, Pentium Celeron 2.4GHz), it now spits garbages even with 115200,8,N,1 configuration. So, I have to go to a WinXP using a DKU-5 driver to use this cable these days. I didn't buy this cable; however, someone here was nice enough to send this one for me to use.

Read (click to download) this Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, 2nd Edition e-book. I had some sort of mental block in learning asterisk until I read that e-book.

Single or multiple VoIP lines don't really matter. You can always add more lines as you progress without needing to invest on ATA hardware. For me, my configuration is based on a WhiteList. In order words, incoming calls whose CIDs don't match with the ones on the WhiteList will get dropped or a re-order tone. So, when one of my extensions ring, it must be someone whom I already know.

QoS is as well important with and/or without an Asterisk PBX system for a VoIP call.

I'll echo what mazilo said, that is in invaluable book to have and it will walk you through installing Asterisk and dialplan creation as well as a TON of other stuff. It focuses on Asterisk version 1.4, but the info is mainly the same for the 1.6 branches as well.

There are also pre-compiled Asterisk ISO's that are ready to go as well, one of the most popular is pbxinaflash, http://www.pbxinaflash.org. I roll my own because I'm a Debian addict, and compiling from source is painless if you want to take that route.

Like mazilo said, doesn't matter how many (PSTN?) lines you said you had, it is almost infinitely expandable. I talk to a few friends regularly using the SIP protocol, totally bypassing PSTN and it sounds 100 times better than any PSTN call I've ever made, plus it's 100% free in the fact that I am just simply routing packets across the internet. I also have accounts with a few ITSP's (Internet Telephony Service Provider) and it costs less than 1 cent a minute for a domestic call here in the U.S. Sure, I have a cell phone with unlimited and free long distance, but what fun is that!!?? This is a network I designed, built, and maintain myself so there's some self gratification to go along with it hehe.

Stay away from Cisco phones unless you want the headache to accompany it. I have two that are working, one on it's native SCCP protocol, the other is SIP, but I consider myself lucky in the fact that I had a knowledgeable friend to assist me. Polycom phones are probably the best supported phone as they run native SIP and you won't have to do much hoop jumping to get them peered to your box. You can also use an ATA, or even to start with, a soft phone like X-Lite for example or anything that speaks SIP or IAX. The aforementioned Asterisk book covers all that. I just picked up a cheap Linksys ATA for use with this project at my office, got it off Ebay for $35. I will probably be replacing one of my Cisco phones in the near future with a Polycom.

Now you tell me. I ordered one last night. Oh well, I figured for 8 bucks (including shipping) it was a chance I could take. I saw some chatter that it should work on a google search. I don't have any Microsoft products in my house so if it don't work I'll just file it away.

Excellent. Thanks for the advice guys! I downloaded that book and it looks really good. I'll start digging into it tonight. Thanks!

Awesome! If you want to make some test calls via SIP just let me know, send me a PM or email and I'll give you my SIP URI. Just a warning, Asterisk can be incredibly addictive! (well at least it is for me lol)

Turns out I must not have actually clicked the "buy" button on Amazon for that DKU-5 cable. I ordered a CA-42 for $1.74 (plus shipping for a total of < $5):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000M8 … ss_product

Cut the end off an it only had 3 wires, just the 3 I needed (Rx,Tx,Gnd). Plugged it in and Linux connected it to my ttyUSB0 with no problem (detected as pl2303). I soldered it to my Frankenstein Serial connector (two 9 pin serial ports, an RJ-45 and now the CA-42 on the A port). Works like a champ!

I wouldn't bother with the kernel_menuconfig myself unless you're wanting some specific (probably extra) feature.
Most of the devices have set kernel /root partitions that unless you're prepared to do some serious tinkering to change partition sizes, entry points etc, mean that any savings in kernel space go "wasted"
What would be of more use is if it was easier to build some of the compat wireless stuff (where needed) into a monolithic kernel rather than as modules which take up space in the root partition.