atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Best system for a teaching environment?

I guess she figured as much time as I spend typing here it MUST be more fun than nick.com

Guess thats what I get for using her laptop to check the board when I was i'm the living room :rofl:

Alright Mac, how do we know this is really you, whats the seceret Inter-Tel handshake.

The secret is what finger do you use!

Good point Rhett. I'll have to PM it though :rofl:

I trust ya Trace. Your good to go. . Lol

One of the best platforms to teach telephony today will be the Open Systems PBX's. "Some assembly is required", but the students and the instructor benefit by showing industry standard configurations based on SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) with the source code available for those who want to look under the hood.

You can also connect FXS/FXO and T1/PRI circuits for traditional POTS and TDM equipment in addition to the VoIP Power over Ethernet IP phones.

As a telephony instructor and designer I carry a complete Open Source PBX in FedEx-proof suitcases for configuration testing and interoperability tests just to verify specific setups as well as VoIP training around the world.

The Open Source also keeps the costs down for those building training and testing labs.

Here are some reference links to get you started ...

https://www.asterisk.org/
https://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Open+Source+VOIP+Software
https://developer.berlios.de/projects/ser/

But this only teaches VOIP and NOT all around telephony...and I might add only Asterisk.

I appreciate the input Peter, but our students already learn VoIP in later courses. My intent here is to teach the basic theory of operation/installation/programming of a basic key system. Asterisk is a great project, but it doesn't really fit the bill here.

Coral Tech you need to update your information on the Open Source market place -- it is changing and it is not just VoIP. You can build a complete Asterisk system with narrowband POTS phone sets, or KTS phone sets, or digital sets using TDM/PRI circuits using NFAS or just FXS and FXO lines using groundstart, loopstart, kewlstart signaling, wired or wireless -- all without any VoIP -- but that would be a disservice to the students to not show any VoIP in today's market.

See the following link for some market data ...
https://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/voip/ippbx-market-numbers-continue-to-shine.asp

https://www.infoworld.com/ShoreTel_...curNodeId=152&prId=SFTH02301122005-1

For the shrinking PBX/KTS sector the system vendors in 3Q05 by total lines shipped were Nortel, Avaya, Siemens, Alcatel, and NEC.

It is a fun time to be in the telephone business with a changing world of 2.5 billion mobile phones, 900 million POTS phones and 25 million VoIP phones -- and the mix is changing each day.

Clinton. You could take a look on eBay for some key sets. I usually have better luck looking for "key telephone" rather than KTS or key systems.

It sounds like you will have a fun class.