C*NET

A screen capture of the C*NET homepage

C*NET or The Collectors' Net is a VoIP network that allows collectors of telephones and vintage switching equipment to connect to each other using the Internet. Several of the museum's switches have a presence on C*NET via kercheep, however incoming calls from the network are heavily moderated.

Background

From the C*NET website:

In the fall of 2004, an email conversation began on the Telephone Collectors International mailing list. Several folks who had restored older PBXes and CO switching systems had begun to wonder, now that Voice Over IP was beginning to be viable, if there was a way to connect their switches together via the internet.

Someone mentioned the Asterisk VoIP PBX , and, with a little experimentation, the project took off, with several of the switchers creating Asterisk switches as tandems to their switches. A central switching scheme was established, office codes were assigned, and an automated method of looking up call routing was put in place. The Collectors' Net , or C*NET , was born.

Since then, we've built a private network that includes more than just electromechanical switches connected to Asterisk PBXes. So far, we have older PBXes and CO switches, key systems of various sorts, and individual telephones.

These are connected not only by Asterisk VoIP PBXes, but also by other VoIP PBXes, Analog Terminal Adapters, VoIP telephones, and soft phones. There has also been some successful experimentation involving embedding Asterisk, pre-configured, into a standard residential firewall/DSL Modem