The drivers for PCI telephony cards are not available on BSD (and OSX) yet, only on Linux. Therefore, when using Asterisk on OSX, you will need external devices to connect phone lines to your Asterisk server.
Those are generally called media gateways. Media gateways have at least one ethernet port on one side and one or more telephone ports on the other side. There are media gateways with analog ports and those with digital ports (ISDN). In order to connect an analog phone line (as in phone line provided by a telephone company) you need a so called FXO port. To connect an analog telephone you need a so called FXS port.
The cheapest media gateway with 1 FXO and 1 FXS port is probably the Grandstream HandyTone 486 which is about 85 USD. It is good to connect one analog phone line and one analog phone. Check Grandstream's website at http://www.grandstream.com
A media gateway with a single FXS port is also called ATA, short for analog telephone adapter. A good ATA for use with Asterisk is Digium's IAXy. Check Digium's website at http://www.digium.com. The IAXy is about 100 USD and it has the benefit that it uses the IAX VoIP protocol. IAX is more robust than other protocols (ie SIP) and most importantly for a home or small office setup, IAX is NAT friendly (SIP has lots of issues with NAT).
However, our recommendation would be to use real IP telephones. Grandstream, again have the cheapest IP telephones. The BudgeTone 100 IP telephone is about 65-75 USD and it is good enough for use at home. For business use you may want to get an IP telephone with business features, for example the Sayson i480. Check http://www.sayson.com. It is about 200-250 USD.
You can also use a softphone, an IP telephone software that turns your Mac into an IP phone. Softphones are not anywhere near as good as real IP phones, but you can download them for free.
For more info on media gateways check out the Wiki at
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Which inxpensive hardware ? - yaboot
The drivers for PCI telephony cards are not available on BSD (and OSX) yet, only on Linux. Therefore, when using Asterisk on OSX, you will need external devices to connect phone lines to your Asterisk server.Those are generally called media gateways. Media gateways have at least one ethernet port on one side and one or more telephone ports on the other side. There are media gateways with analog ports and those with digital ports (ISDN). In order to connect an analog phone line (as in phone line provided by a telephone company) you need a so called FXO port. To connect an analog telephone you need a so called FXS port.
The cheapest media gateway with 1 FXO and 1 FXS port is probably the Grandstream HandyTone 486 which is about 85 USD. It is good to connect one analog phone line and one analog phone. Check Grandstream's website at http://www.grandstream.com
A media gateway with a single FXS port is also called ATA, short for analog telephone adapter. A good ATA for use with Asterisk is Digium's IAXy. Check Digium's website at http://www.digium.com. The IAXy is about 100 USD and it has the benefit that it uses the IAX VoIP protocol. IAX is more robust than other protocols (ie SIP) and most importantly for a home or small office setup, IAX is NAT friendly (SIP has lots of issues with NAT).
However, our recommendation would be to use real IP telephones. Grandstream, again have the cheapest IP telephones. The BudgeTone 100 IP telephone is about 65-75 USD and it is good enough for use at home. For business use you may want to get an IP telephone with business features, for example the Sayson i480. Check http://www.sayson.com. It is about 200-250 USD.
You can also use a softphone, an IP telephone software that turns your Mac into an IP phone. Softphones are not anywhere near as good as real IP phones, but you can download them for free.
For more info on media gateways check out the Wiki at
http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=VoIP%20Gateways
For more info on IP telephones check out the Wiki at
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-VOIP+Phones
For more info on Softphones for MacOS X check out the Wiki at
http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk%20MacOSX%20Support
if you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us at enquiries (at) sunrise-tel.com
regards
Sunrise Telephone Systems Ltd
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Friday, July 23 2004 @ 06:31 AM PDT