How to setup a VOIP phone for family usage

General Help
1

Dear FreePBX gurus:
I am a newbie in the VOIP telephony. Wanted to learn and setup a VOIP telephony system using open sources. Please help me in this learning process by giving me idea of acquiring and collecting required software and hardware:

A: What I’ll need ? (please suggest and update in the following list)

  1. Asterisk installed on the openSuSE

…

B: What I have ?

  1. x-86 desktop PC running openSuSE 10.3 (1 GHz. CPU, 1 GByte RAM, 120 GB HDD etc.)
  2. Analog phone line for home usage
  3. High-speed (6 Mbps) cable modem internet connection

C: What document do I need to use for reference during the setup and learning ?

Thanks in advance.

@omodachi

2

I was planning to setup my own VoIP phone for my family. Glad FreePBX members has the solution for this. Thanks a lot. At least I know where to start with your ideas here.

3

Everything you need is here - http://www.cadvision.com/blanchas/Asterisk/

Go for it !

4

Thanks for the link.
I went through the key documents and now my understanding is as below.

To setup a basic VOIP phone service for my home (outgoing only from my analog home phone to any phone in the world) I need:

  1. An ATA device which will connect my home analog phone at one port (RJ11) and other port (RJ45) to my broadband router
  2. Piaf is installed on OpenSuse 10.3 (a dedicated standalone x-86 PC)
  3. VoIP to route calls and provide interconnection to the PSTN (???)

Questions:
(For item #3, I am still not very clear)

  1. Is it mandatory to subscribe the VOIP provider ? I think it is expensive for a home VOIP venture.
  2. Is there any “open source” available to have this service free without paying to any VOIP provider ?
  3. Does an ISP (in my case it is Rogers in Ontario, Canada) provide this kind of service ?
5

First PIAF uses CentOS not OpenSuse. It’s an ISO install.

I use Voip at home and it is a big savings over 2 POTS lines. I have 9 IP phones in all the rooms of the house and integration with home automation.

You do have to subscribe to a Voip provider.

Voip at home is a fun project.

6

Thanks for your kind reply and correcting me about PIAF’s platform.
I am looking forward to have my home VOIP project completed as soon as possible.

Please recommend:

  1. a reliable SIP trunk provider in Ontario/Canada (am in Ottawa)
  2. an ATA vendor for hooking up my POTS

Cheers.