Apr 14 2007

Asterisk & Trixbox – The Verdict

This is a follow up to my post about my experiences with Asterisk, the other day.

So there we were armed with a freshly pressed TrixBox 2.0 CD and a carafe full of coffee, the latter just in case. After reading through docs on the TrixBox website we were skeptical at best of their promises of having everything installed and configured within an hour. Just to prove to ourselves and to justify the hype, we decided to time ourselves. The CD went in the tray and we booted the server up, a few keystrokes and about 30 minutes later I was configuring FreePBX with extensions and whatnot. About 20 minutes later, we had setup 5 extensions, with their requisite Linksys IP phones, configured our IVR (Interactive Voice Response) menu complete with custom recordings, added & configured all the incoming and outgoing routes and barely made it through one cup of coffee. We then got around to testing the lines and having people call us to test out our various configs. 25 minutes later we were out the door, our job there being done.

Yup, the hype is REAL! and it’s well justified to boot. We now have a fully functioning PBX complete with IVR, DISA, Callback, Voicemail etc. configured to give us the lowest possible cost for routing a call. Incredible, that it took us just over an hour to get all this accomplished. To the Trixbox folks, thank you. You have made it infinitely easier to install, configure and use a wonderful product along with a whole bunch of other useful related products.