[TriLUG] Some basic * questions

[Brian Henning]

Hi Gang (and especially Jon Carnes)!
   Of course, it's my intent to search our history for the myriad 
conversations that have been had on the Asterisk subject, but I figured 
I'd throw out some quick questions off the cuff.

My employer is looking to set up a VoIP-esque (or maybe it's 100% VoIP) 
solution to get calls from our building to remote employees.  Right now 
we're having trouble transferring incoming calls to outside lines; the 
overall attenuation ends up being out of spec and calls get dropped, or 
are unusably staticy, etc.  We figure eliminating the PSTN element 
between here and the employee would help rectify those problems.

I figure the easiest way is to set up an Asterisk server here, attach it 
to our existing PBX to show up as another extension, and push an 
asterisk session (is that good terminology?) through an SSH tunnel (or 
is that a bad idea?) to the remote employee's broadband-equipped 
machine, which will sport a cheap headset/boom mic arrangement.

So, my quick questions:
1 - Interface card.  What's a good tradeoff between cheap and 
reliable/quality/ease-of-use?  Theoretically we could achieve workage 
with a cheap sound card and some ugly wiring tricks, but of course that 
would not be a good solution.  Also, if there're cards that can plug 
right in to a Nortel digital PBX without needing a converter along the 
way, it would be good to know about those, too (assuming they don't cost 
more than the sum of the analog card and converter).

2 - Server.  I suspect that an Asterisk installation that only has to 
handle one call at a time shouldn't need a lot of horsepower.  What are 
some minimum specs I should be aware of?

3 - Client-side.  What's the best PC-based client-side software to use 
to interface with the IP side of Asterisk?  Must work in Windows and be 
VERY easy to configure.

4 - Bandwidth.  The remote employee is on some flavor of cable-based 
broadband, and we're currently on 1.5m/384k (or thereabouts) ADSL.  We 
don't currently shove a lot of data up that pipe (most of the time), but 
how much bandwidth does one call require?  8k is nibbling at the back of 
my mind..

Thanks a lot!

Cheers,
~Brian

-- 
----------------
Brian A. Henning
strutmasters.com
336.597.2397x238
----------------