Adding VoIP To Home Lab Server

Creekwater X · March 31, 2018

*First of all pardon my ignorance on the topic*

Looking to add functionality to my home lab and create a phone system to mess with VoIP and maybe QoS on my switch. Found a good deal from what I can see on a lot of 10 CP-7940G Cisco phones for $100 not sure if that's a good deal as I said I don't have a lot of experience on phone systems.

Thinking about how they're going to receive power, my current switch does not have PoE functionality so we could either get some sort of injector to provide power or get a PoE switch.

As far as systems I heard SipX and FreePBX are more or less the same thing, not sure how true that is. Would I need to get a line from the telephone company to communicate outside the network?

I appreciate any help at least for getting through this little book and any feedback as well!

BloodKnight7 · April 2, 2018

Hy!

I have not done PBX stuff since the old 3com and Asterisk days...im not sure if Asterisk is still around but back in my days it was the OpenSource king, out of the box it had all the solution a small business would need.

Now if you want to use it for internal communications you dont need to pay anyone anything extra, if you want to use it for actual calling to regular landlines/long distances, etc.. you will need SIP trunk lines from your telecom provider. Im really not sure how this works in Canada or the US as I am originally from Mexico, but a quick google search for providers gave me quite a few links with competitive pricing. https://www.freepbx.org/voip-services/

Best of luck in your project, if you have any more specific needs let me know I might be able to give a hand.

jordanlcn · April 3, 2018

I have been dealing with Open Source Voip PBX for years now.

Asterisk is basically the back bone of FreePBX, Issabel and others.

First off always be careful with Cisco IP Phones there are some models that cant handle SIP. Those phone only uses Cisco's Proprietary protocol called SCCP. Now I took the liberty of looking at the datasheet for those phones here is the link. Apparently these phones can be converted to SIP but the firmware needs to be downloaded from Cisco. Here are documents you might need to read if your push with this phone Link1 Link2 .

As for system freepbx is easy and they use their own Linux Distribution. If your on a windows system 3CX might be an option I know they give out free licences for testing.