We are currently working in our Directory portal. We will come back very soon with many new & Informative features for VOIP providers. If anyone have any suggestion please email us at support@sabavoipdirectory.com . We will consider your advice and implement same .

IP PBX Guides

Home

IP PBX Guides

A hosted PBX system is a phone system that can be leased or rented on a monthly or annual basis, eliminating the need to buy expensive equipment. Instead, most of the equipment is hosted by the service provider, and all communication is routed through that provider to and from your company's site or sites. Typically, this setup has the advantage of being very easy to predict in terms of cost of operation, and it is also easier to install and get up and running than all competing systems. A hosted PBX solution can also be cheaper to operate, but as usage and number of users increases, the cost advantages of hosted PBX systems typically disappear.

Set Up Your Own IP-PBX
The state of open source software has progressed to the point where you can set up your own IP PBX at home in a single evening, with a minimum of investment needed. All you need is explicit instructions, which is what I provide here.

In past times, it would have been quite costly to have a “personal” PBX. Using spare hardware, open source software, and low-cost service providers, it can now be done for almost nothing. The key advance is the open source Asterisk IP PBX and the Asterisk@Home package that includes Asterisk and a web-based GUI configuration tool.

The Components
Your will have to set up three main components: the IP PBX itself, the phones (or softphones) to be used with it, and the gateway service that lets you call other people on the PSTN. I will describe how to set up each of these. I assume you already have a home network and broadband access. If you are behind a NAT firewall, it does not matter – you don’t have to do anything special like running the IP PBX outside the NAT. All that matters is that you have enough bandwidth (upstream and downstream) to carry voice traffic.

The IP PBX
You will need a computer to run the IP PBX. While you may already have a Linux server at home, I do not recommend using it to also run your phones. If you want to do that, you will have to figure out how to load and configure the PBX software on your own, although the rest of the instructions here will be helpful.

If you have an old PIII class machine lying around, then use that. If not, you can buy one on EBay for about $40. I used a Dell OptiPlex GX1, a PIII 450MHz system with 128M RAM. It has a built-in sound and Ethernet, so no additional hardware is required.
You will load Asterisk@Home on this computer. It will take it over – it starts by formatting the hard disk, so make sure there is nothing on the machine that you want to keep. Detailed instructions are given below.

Phones
You can buy SIP phones from Grandstream, SNOM, Cisco, even Avaya. Or you can buy an adapter from SNOM or Cisco and use an analog phone. To get started, though, it is easiest to get a softphone and run it on another computer. We will describe how to obtain and install the XLite softphone on a Windows machine to use for a phone. You will also use this Windows machine to administer the IP PBX, through a browser. If you want to use a Linux machine instead, you will need to get an appropriate softphone for it, but you can still use its browser to administer the IP PBX.

SIP Gateway
I presume you want to communicate with others on the PSTN network, so you need to obtain gateway service. Since part of the call is being carried on the circuit switched network, it costs real money. This means you will have to pay for this part of the system.
I will describe how to set up access to two services, one for outgoing calls and another for incoming calls.

VoipJet is used for outgoing calls. It is priced at 1.3 cents per minute (USA), with no monthly minimum or service charges.
BroadVoice is used for incoming calls. You get a phone number (you can choose the area code and exchange). They have various plans, but I signed up for one that is $5.95 per month, with unlimited incoming minutes. You can also make outgoing calls using this account (it includes 100 minutes per month, and 3.9 cents per minute additional). There is a $9.95 one time activation fee to sign up for BroadVoice.

So if you have the hardware, you can set up your IP PBX for a total of $9.95 and run it for $5.95 per month.

Home Network
I assume you have a home network, and that you are setting up behind a Gateway Router (otherwise known as a NAT firewall). You will need to pick a static IP address for your IP PBX that is on your home network.

How Much Will This Cost?
I assume you have broadband service, a router, and a Windows machine to run the softphone. If you already have a spare computer that you can dedicate to this project, there is no cost at all for equipment, unless you need to buy an audio headset for the softphone. If you do not have a spare computer, then you can buy one on EBay for about $60, including shipping. This does not include a monitor, but you don’t need a monitor except briefly when you first set it up. I assume you can borrow a monitor (or that you have a KVM switch).

Your only other initial cost will be the $9.95 activation fee to BroadVoice. Your monthly cost will be $5.95 for incoming service from BroadVoice, and 1.3 cents per minute for outgoing calls to VoipJet. If you only make a few outgoing calls, you could drop VoipJet, and stay within the 100 outgoing minutes that you get from BroadVoice. If, say, you use 100 minutes of VoipJet outgoing calls, it would cost an additional $1.30.

So you can build and experiment with your own IP PBX for an investment of less than $100, and for an ongoing cost of less than $100 per year. This is a lot less than I am now paying for my phone service from AT&T. In fact, a whole year’s service would be less than my monthly phone bill.