[KLUG Driftwood] KLUG DRIFTWOOD PROJECT MEETING NOTES - JUNE 27, 2003

[magoo]

KLUG DRIFTWOOD PROJECT MEETING NOTES  - JUNE 27, 2003 

The members of the KLUG Driftwood Project held a work 
meeting at the Chamber of Commerce at 9am on Saturday 
June 21, 2003.  In attendance for this meeting were 
Todd, Adam, Bruce, John, Bob, Bill, William, Joe and 
Ralph!  The donuts and the coffee were delicious! 

What is Driftwood? 
An Open Source telecommunications project.  Digium is the primary 
sponsor of the Asterisk Open Source PBX software and offers a 
variety of specially designed low and high density telephony 
hardware and professional services related to Asterisk.  The KLUG
Driftwood project welcomes any interested KLUG member!  Linux PC 
based voicemail, tele/video conferencing, VOIP for internal calls, 
local and long-distance!   

REFERENCE WEB SITES! 
http://www.asterisk.org       http://www.digium.com

http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=Asterisk&section=projects&x=9&y=10
http://freshmeat.net/projects/asterisk/?topic_id=40%2C247%2C141%2C146%2C150

The Driftwood server is set up behind the firewall while we 
get the call management system(CMS) configuration tweaked 
and all the necessary data entered.  Once it is all dialed in 
it will be accessible on the other side of the IPCop firewall. 
The standard analog telephone handset plugs into a interface 
with an RJ11 jack on one end and a USB connector on the other. 
FXS port connector cable like this available from Digium for 
$12.95.  The PCI card from Digium has an FXO port and provides 
switching and 1 Hz stable clock circuit to provide timing. 
A analog cable plugs into the FXO port and is available from 
Zaptel.  The analog handset gets the dialtone from the PCI card 
as commanded by the Asterisk software. 

Asterisk's voice mail system allows .wav or .mp3 delivery 
directly to your e-mail.  The system also features music on 
hold.  The three named conferencing protocols are: 
H323 - Net Meeting connection 
IAX - Digium's protocol 
SIP - Cisco protocol (session set up and tear down) 
The Asterisk call management system reports incoming 
and outgoing calls with details of the interaction. 

The group started by configuring the Asterisk software. 
The various modules were configured in asterisk.conf 
and displayed to the group with the SVGA projector. 

Minimum hardware requirements are a 300 Mhz CPU and at 
least 128 Mb of RAM.  Someone mentioned that you should 
allow 200 MHz of CPU power per connection.  The maximum 
number of simultaneous connections would be 4 X 48 or 
192 available channels.  In theory, you can have an 
unlimited number of IP phones in operation. 

With the purchase of a digium interface card you get a 
year of technical support. 

The various IP phone protocols include Gnome Meeting, 
GNU Phone, IP Phone, and Net Meeting.  It should work 
with any IP phone standard. 

The telephony module is called Zapata.  This controls 
the internal system settings including music on hold. 
We accepted the default configuration in our install. 

Alsa sound drivers were installed.  We got an error 
message on opted to disable the on-board sound and 
install a Sound Blaster PCI v5.1 card and reconfigured 
the asterisk.con in /etc/asterisk/. 

Configuration help files can be found at: 
http://www.wwworks-inc.com/asterisk

The KLUG Driftwood team successfully configured Asterisk! 
We tested the configuration and found that there are 
additional tweaks still needed before the system is put 
into use by the participants.  While the basic system is 
responding as desired, various modules and features will 
be tested and fine tuned. 

The next Driftwood work session will include review of some 
of these specific functions.  Once everything is working 
the way we want it, more information and reactions will be 
shared with the members of KLUG.