Asterisk, a quick guide. Part Two.

Stuff you need.

You need a computer! A half decent one will do, I figure you really do need 512 MB RAM, 1 GIG RAM is better.

Lot's of tutorials out there will tell you less, but it's not great with less than 512.

I'd say a 1.5 Mhz chip or better, again less will do but not ideal, an older spec box will do for a startup installation.

For the operating system (OS) you can run Asterisk on Windows, but you would be insane!

If you were ever thinking of learning about the Linux OS here is a good reason to start.

There are more versions (distributions, or distros ) of Linux out there than I could shake a stick at, but the most stable for running Asterisk is Fedora Core 1

It's the one distro that Asterisk seems happy to live on, it works on pretty much any Linux distro but in my exerience is not quite as stable.

I have tried many, including more recent versions of Fedora Core, but the most stable is FC1.

So you have your PC, you download your free copy of Fedora Core 1, load it up and and are good to go....

Now you just need to get the free Asterisk software, download and install it and you have a fully working PBX, that don't do much :-(

You could get a "softphone and load it, but a cheapo hardware VoIP phone is the proper way to go.

  Asterisk -  Part 1 |   Part 2  | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |

 

Fedora Core

Real geeks run Linux!