Staple Design – Gwilym GJ …think, design, build, enjoy, think, evolve…..

Asterisk / Trixbox digital PABX in real world use

What this looks like is a old Toshiba laptop sitting on a shelf. Which is correct except right now it is handling up to a few hundred phone calls a day as a digital PABX  running a Trixbox build of Asterisk+Linux software .

What does this mean? Well…Wanaka Wastebusters, where it is installed (please do not steal it :-), has one phone number people can ring in the normal phone like way. That phone number has been parked at a service provider and there enters the internet. Over the interweb thingy this laptop talks to the provider and can conduct up to five simultaneous calls. At Wanaka Wastebusters there are ten extensions that each have voice mail and are available through the IVR (a recorded message you get when you ring the number) – all of these features are running off the laptop. People can dial within each others extensions and transfer calls etc and generally be productive hopefully.

Nice – but why? Well it saves a few hundred dollars a month on line charges for extra phone lines with Telecom and means we can add users and features as we need them. We can also make use of cheaper calling rates and eventually peer directly hopefully with other businesses using SIP which is the glue like protocol making all the VOIP stuff happening. It is an acronym world.

Pretty cool use for an old computer huh. I’m not sure how long a laptop will last always on but it has been working for 5 weeks no problem and because it has a battery even has its own UPS built in. We might have a sweepstake on what gives up first – the power pack I’d say.

In case of failure or hacking I am building another one on a old IBM Pentium 4 which could be plugged in as a replacement. What I would really like though is a few Sheevaplugs, amazing 5w super computers. That is ‘super’ as in awesome not as in a Cray – although they are probably faster than most Crays ever built… maybe one day …