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=p275... 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