Thoughts on a home PBX

My adventures with the IP04 have temporarily stalled as I start to think of how I want to use it in my home. I started off playing with the extensions, and quickly bogged down as I looked at all the various options I had. So, I'm taking a break and looking at this from a different angle.

My home is currently wired with daisy-chains for most of the telephones. In the basement, I have two telephone lines wired as "home runs", but the rest of the house is one big mess. From the "demarcation point", a single line runs up, through the first-storey wall to a bedroom on the second storey. From the wall jack there, the line splits with one leg running up the wall, into the attic, and down into a second second-storey bedroom. From that wall jack, the line ascends again into the attic, and back down through both a second-storey wall and a first-storey wall, to terminate at a jack in the kitchen. The other leg of the line travels between the beams of the second-storey floor, into a wall in the third bedroom. From that jack, it ascends into the attic, and descends into the fourth bedroom on the second-storey.

So, if I count all the jacks, I wind up with

• 2 jacks in the basement,
• 1 jack in the kitchen on the first floor, and
• 4 jacks on the second floor, one in each of four bedrooms.

That's 7 telephone jacks. And the IP04 only handles (at most) 4 FXS ports. And my IP04 only has 3 FXS ports.

So, I want to make some decisions as to which jacks the IP04 will ultimately service. I can change up the one FXO port for an FXS port, and manage four runs, or leave things as they are and manage 3 runs and one PSTN trunk. Given that I'd have to order the FXO port, I think that three runs should be enough for me.

If I subdivide the house into floors, I can manage one run for each floor. This means that I'll have to rewire the kitchen jack, as it is part of the 2nd-floor run at the moment, but that seems to be a minor problem.

None of this has anything to do with Linux. But, it has to do with my linux setup, including my network and my server. I've been thinking of moving my (Embedded-Linux based) DSL modem, my (Embedded-Linuxbased) Wifi Router, and (now) my (Embedded-Linux based) PBX to a single spot near the telephone demarcation point. Because of my network configuration, I'll probably also have to move my (Linux based) router/firewall/DMZ system there as well. And, since the room is limited, and the power supply is spikey, I'll probably have to upgrade my router and install surge-protection on the wiring.

And, that's why I haven't played much with the IP04 lately.