Hello new to this Asterisk system

[pgg]

I'm very new to this Asterisk system and was curious what equipment would we need to setup a test environment? Basically, what card should we get for our pc? We also have a boatload of shoretel 230 phones we can use to test this environment We would like to do a setup where we use VOIP without having to resort to old rj-11 phone cables or maybe a combination of both. Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[numan82]

Hello,
The best thing would be to take Asterisk Fast Start training to get a quick idea how thing works. You can also do the self study but that will take more time so in a training which is 3 days you can save a lot of your time and efforts. After it you can take Asterisk Advance course which is 4.5 days.

[drt669]

Shoretel phones are MGCP rather than SIP.
Asterisk does have a configuration file for MGCP.
It is advised to learn the core concepts prior to trying that though.
It is also best to start with SIP.

Also if you don't have the budget for a course and the timescale does not matter.
You could get to grips with the book "Asterisk, The definitive guide" by Russell Bryant, Leif Madsen, Jim Van Meggelen.
That would introduce you to much of the terminology.

[Lexus45]

Never tried, but what about:

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Aste ... +mgcp.conf
http://doxygen.asterisk.org/trunk/Config_mgcp.html

?

[malcolmd]

Note that there aren't a host of people using chan_mgcp these days. So ymmv.