Home-Made Support Hotline

[Sil3ntSnip3a]

My High-school A+ computer repair teacher has given me an assignment to find out the best way to setup a school support hot-line for the computer repair students. What I mean* the goal is to have a support hot-line that the community can call in and have the computer repair students troubleshoot what issues they may be having. I told her that something like skype would work fine, but I think that was a pretty selfish comment and not very well thought out.

i.e. Does anyone know phone networking very well and could help me find the cheapest and most effective way to set up multiple phones on a support hot-line type of enviroment?

[acidpython]

Not a phone expert, but your best bet is to build a skype server. It shouldn't be insane to setup but you might want to google around;
here's what i just saw come up.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8592

You should also google around VOIP (voice over IP)

It should be fairly cheap i'm under the impression that the prerequisites are simply a spare computer + constant internet connection.

[Sil3ntSnip3a]

I guess my next question is if I could have multiple #'s connected, cause what we are looking for is hooking up at least 8-10 phones that could receive incoming calls from the public.

[acidpython]

The link i gave you suggests you should be able to do that. Just keep googling around;

http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=424391

The link above suggests certain skype programs can handle up to 30 simultaneous calls.

If I understand correctly you want a Skype Server (server running skype service) you could probably rig it to work with computers using softphones OR regular ata phones.

If you're looking for more direct answers try googling around for "Home call center setup"

sorry i can't help you much it's been quite some time since i've worked with VOIP phones.

[rogard]

A small asterisk box, powered by either ip04 or x86 would work great.
You could the use pstn or iax or sip trunks

[Serra]

Well if you live in Missouri there is, as of tomorrow, a magical solution for business-class VoIP I'm currently forbidden to talk about (not free mind you, but stupidly well priced for features)...

But failing that, I would imagine a skype setup would be the easiest. There are other ways to go for sure, but none I can think of that would not require the purchase of some kind of equipment. Now, if you can purchase some equipment things suddenly change, but that's another story.

A small asterisk box, powered by either ip04 or x86 would work great.
You could the use pstn or iax or sip trunks

You know, I work for a company whose main product is VoIP design/implementation and I have no idea what you just said (though, fortunately, I don't do VoIP myself). I caught words like "PSTN" and "SIP trunk" and that's about it.