I’m a community college instructor training new IT techs. I’d like to give my students experience setting up a basic VOIP system.
My question is simply this: If I have freePBX installed on a server, and the server and two compatible VOIP phones are connected to a properly configured switch (all on the same VOIP VLAN), can one extension call the other extension without the system being connected to an external trunking system like SIPstation?
I’m not asking for instructions on how to do it. I just want to confirm that it can do done.
If you want to do something very basic, you should consider using bare Asterisk. For a simple demonstration you can get away with a single step dialplan (just one for Dial(PJSIP/${EXTEN})).
However, as long as you can resolve domain names, you can certainly use Asterisk isolated, except for the actual installation, where it will load sound files and hardware firmware from the internet (although it is possible to modify it to get those from a local machine.
I was concerned that FreePBX might call home, for licensing reasons, but the other answer suggests that is not a problem.
I would suggest going completely off the internet, so you don’t have to worry about securing it, although, without credentials for a service provider there is going to be no financial harm