KWLUG Meeting Monday 08 January 2007

Introduction to VoIP for SOHO

This meeting will be held at The Working Centre in Kitchener, Ontario. Our meetings are free and open to those with an interest in Linux.Doors open at 6pm for casual conversation and a video about getting "Dad" to switch to Linux.John Van Ostrand 

We have another interesting Open Source project presentation this month.

Are you interested in a $2.50 phone line at home? How about I throw in enhanced features like "follow me", voice menus, multiple extensions and voice mail for your staff or teens? Finally how about being able to use off the shelf hardware, open source software, and your choice of provider?

Sound too good to be true! It's not, but there is work involved.

Veteran KWLUG'er, John Van Ostrand will demononstrate the components of VoIP and how they fit together to make solutions suitable for home or small office. You'll see how analog phones, analog telephone adapters, telephony cards, Asterisk, SIP phones, and VoIP providers can be used to save money and provide enhanced features.

John will be demoing a working system with all the components needed for a simple VoIP home solution.

Make sure you arrive early to get a seat.

John Van Ostrand is CTO and co-CEO of Net Direct Inc, a premier Linux and Open Source solution provider, Southwestern Ontario's largest IBM xSeries vendor and Canada's largest IBM BladeCenter server vendor. Net Direct has used Asterisk internally for two years and have been providing Asterisk solutions for over a year.
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This introduction to VoIP is aimed at small office / home office users. John will cover hardware, software and configuration issues at the introductory level. The interested attendee will learn what options they have, and what steps to take to implement their own VoIP system. Expect to hear about VoIP phones, analog telephone adapters, telephony cards, Asterisk, TrixBox, and VoIP providers. Place the presentation here, perhaps after the meeting.

You might want to include the date of the original presentation in this area for future reference.