----- "Kevin Hart" <[email protected]> wrote: > Is there any decent, not bank breaking, SIP ATA's out there that can > handle > more than one phone line over voip? > > Say we have a small office and want to just use basic phones. Have a > SIP > server already out there that we can connect to on the net that will > provide > dial tone to us. Rather not build an Asterisk box for the > issue...just need > some adapters to plug those phones into. Like say at least 4 phones, > to say > 2-8 phone lines. > > Is this just a pipe dream? Am I going to be forced to build out a > full > phone system for this office just for this issue?
Yes your idea is a bit of a pipe dream. Here is why. Without putting in asterisk or similar software, how do you handle the presentation of calls. Specifically, if a call comes in, which SIP adapter gets the call and which phone gets rung? Do you want more than one to be rung? You wouldn't be all that bad off using a asterisk box to be a funnel on both sides for your calls and presentation. Plus you have a few options for your hardware then. You could go and look ahead to being bigger and buy a channel bank and a T1 card to interface it in. This would let you use some cheap 2 line phones at your desktop and go from the 2-8 to 4-16 lines needed. This allows you to put some one on "hold" while you select the second line to confer with someone. Or you could turn off callwaiting and just see the blinking second line as an indicator instead of interupting calls. Of course you could do the same with some SIP UAs and reduce your wiring, but again, having asterisk or similar in your own control allows you to dictate behavior on your own terms instead of waiting for your provider set things up for you. -- Steven Critchfield [email protected] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
