Yes it would work like that. They likely don't need much power but they will need to be able to output a "POTS" service if they are to be used in analogue homes. I've not looked into the digital requirments but that would make a great deal of sense to support. Companies like Dilogic can supply the telephony interface cards.
The OS could be Linux or likely a flavour of *BSD. I would prefer OpenBSD but that is only because I happen to use it on my servers and firewalls. Basically it needs an RJ45. Thus a little netbook would do the job if we can find USB telephone interface units and we can pick up the netbooks for like $169. With a wifi interface it could even support a smart phone! In fact a smart phone could do the job but IMHO they are pretty overpriced. If people want cheaper then any old PC from the PII days on will work. These machines have PCI bus interfaces which Dialogic makes cards for. THing is old computers like that actually are more expensive because they draw a lot more power than a netbook. With a netbook I would expect we would be throtling to the slowest cpu speed and I do not think we would need other than a solid state drive on it. Now if we get something like an ALIX which has multiple NICs then I suspect the box could provide firewall + telephone services. Software would probably be Asterisk. On Mon, Jul 04, 2011 at 09:47:20PM -0600, Joe S wrote: > These articles look interesting. I'm not that knowledgeable on > how the Internet works. Would the boxes contain servers that hook > up to each other like a private a private network? > > Thanks > > On Monday 04 July 2011 19:50:11 Mel Walters wrote: > > Sounds good. The more people (and ideas) involved the better. > > I have some lectures and talks related to all this that I hope > > will encourage us to even spearhead something good. > > > > Mel > > > > On Mon, 2011-07-04 at 01:05 -0600, [email protected] wrote: > > > I would like to work with you on this. > > > > > > On Mon, Jul 04, 2011 at 12:02:49AM -0600, Mel Walters wrote: > > > > Proposed solution to freedom on the net: > > > > > > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/nyregion/16about.html?_r > > > > =2&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1297865022-0JDUtCoG16GYaoGy9MDMyg > > > > > > > > http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/02/16/freedom-box-needs-a > > > > -good-user-interface/ > > > > > > > > I am attempting to put together some strong proposals that > > > > have been brought to light. Combined with wifi mesh this > > > > could wnd up lending to a more scalable and robust > > > > network too. > > > > > > > > Mel > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > **Please remove these lines when replying _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
