[Freeswitch-users] FreeSWITCH on FreeBSD

[Mikhail T.]

Hello!

I'm researching a phone system for an organization with 8-12 members.
The place has an Internet connection via Verizon FIOS. My first choice
of the operating system is FreeBSD (preferably -- on amd64 platform).
FreeBSD's port (net/freeswitch) seems nice and currently installs
version 1.0.4.3. Although fairly proficient with Unix and FreeBSD in
particular, I'm very new to the field of computer telephony, so my
questions are most likely to be rather naive. I apologize...

    * What hardware is known to work well on FreeBSD?
    * What else -- other than a computer with a phone card -- will I need?
    * Do end-user phones have to be regular analog phones (all
      plugged-in to the computer), or IP-phones, such as made by Avaya
      (connecting via an Ethernet switch)?
    * How is the computer connecting to the world? Do I plug-in the
      incoming analog phone line(s) somewhere, or is it going to go
      through the Internet?
    * If the connection to the world is over the Internet, don't we need
      an account with someone else, or is Verizon known to work with
      FreeSWITCH-based PBX-systems directly?
    * Should I not simply buy a used Avaya-system like this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110450339950&_trksid=p2759.l1259
      What will I gain and what will I lose (other than personal
      satisfaction, of course) by going that route instead of building
      my own box?

Thanks a lot! Yours,

    -mi