Think of it this way. VoIP phones allow you to place a phone anywhere that a network connection exists. Your Asterisk box will be on the network and will be easily accessible.
FXO and analog phones require point to point termination. Phone to FXO. Period. What a pain! VoIP phones are relatively cheap and look/work really nice. Just buy a 4 port FXO card from Digium and connect your 4 analog lines to the * box. Or you can even contact me off list if you want to buy my old one. I just moved to PRI. Get a analog to SIP gateway (Sipura SPA-1001 for example) and connect your fax into the system. Just the ease of use alone is worth using VoIP phones. A single computer can handle a HUGE amount of VoIP phones. The phone connects to your network and "talks" to the asterisk server over the network. I have 20 phones on my network with no issue at all. Others have many many more. Contact me off list if you want some newbie help. I have done this a couple of times and am more than willing to help out a first timer. Cheers, Wiley -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Freeze Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 2:28 PM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] FXS or VOIP On 1/11/06, William Boehlke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > You can save a little money with analog phones however if that saving > is not an issue business class VoIP phones from providers like Polycom > and Cisco have more features and much of the time better call quality. Thanks William for the response. That is good news about the phone quality. >From what I have read, I think the overall cost would still be cheaper with a voip solution, even if the phones are more. A 4 line FXS card is about $3-400 (I think). If I understand this correctly, even if I have only 4 lines incoming, I need an FXS homerun to each phone. So for 5 phones, I would need 2 cards. And, the O'Reilly book says that I should not put 2 cards in the same box, so I would need another computer. I was hoping a single computer could handle up to 10 voip phones. Am I deluding myself? Jim > Hi > > I am setting up a phone system for a small office. > The office will have 5-8 phones and a fax line. > There are 4 hunt lines coming into the office. > We have made no hardware purchase yet. > > Being an asterisk newbie, before I suscribed to this list I just > assumed that I would buy voip phones and connect all the phones to a > private ethernet network. > > However, I see many people inquiring about FXS cards. > > Is there any reason why I would need to consider using analog phones > and FXS cards? Seems to me the cheapest way is with voip phones and > voice quality should be good since the phones are on a private network > that only has voice traffic. -- Jim Freeze _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users