[Tfug] Asterisk

[John Gruenenfelder]

On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 09:54:24PM -0700, Steven Bowers wrote:
>I have been tinkering with Asterisk a bit lately and have started to 
>develop an interest in deploying a dedicated box for the task. To that 
>end I have looked at Via EPIA boards with a harddrive or a Soekris and 
>CF running AstLinux. I like the later since it has no moving parts and 
>consumes a mere 5 watts! However, its lone PCI slot is a 3.3 volt which 
>would not accept a Digium X100p card.
>
>Has anyone run across s low voltage, embedded board that could run Asterisk?
>
>My goal would be something that fits in a 1U case, is reasonably quiet 
>(since it may sit in the same room as me) and does not cost $1000 when 
>fully assembled.

I have a solution for you, but it depends on how necessary a PCI slot is.
This solution is cheap and workable:

  *Linksys wrt54g router running something like OpenWrt.
  *Asterisk running on OpenWrt (it has a premade package).
  *An external phone adapter.  I use an IAXy device (ethernet on one side,
    phone on the other)

Asterisk needs a place to store files like logs and voicemail.  For a tiny
system you can just use the existing /tmp on ramfs.  If you want to keep those
files in a more permanent manner, you can have another box periodically grab a
copy, or you can set up your OpenWrt box to use NFS and store them remotely.

So, the total cost is just $40 for the router and about $70 for the IAXy
depending on where you buy it.


-- 
--John Gruenenfelder    Research Assistant, UMass Amherst student
                        Systems Manager, MKS Imaging Technology, LLC.
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