Book Image

The 3CX IP PBX Tutorial

Book Image

The 3CX IP PBX Tutorial

Overview of this book

Traditional PBX systems have often been expensive and proprietary. With 3CX, you can now create an easy-to-use, complete, and cost-effective phone system on Microsoft Windows. This practical guide offers the insight that a reader needs to exploit the potential that 3CX has to offer.This practical hands-on book covers everything you need to know about designing, installing and customizing 3CX to create an all-inclusive phone system. It takes a real-world approach that walks you through all aspects of 3CX and its features. From installing the software, to backing things up, to understanding what hardware you need – this book covers it all.The 3CX IP PBX Tutorial will take you from knowing very little about VoIP to almost expert level with detailed how-tos on every aspect of 3CX. Starting with the basics, and covering the free version of 3CX as well as the more advanced features of the Enterprise version, you will learn it all.In other words, this book covers numerous topics such as installation and configuration of 3CX, choosing a VoIP Provider, integration of a trunk into 3CX, the commonly used 3CX hardware, and backing up your phone system.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
The 3CX IP PBX Tutorial
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
Preface

Chapter 1. Getting Started with the 3CX Phone System

Welcome to this book on the 3CX IP PBX software-based phone system. In this chapter, we'll take a look at what 3CX is and where 3CX fits in the big picture of modern phone systems. We'll do a couple of comparisons such as hardware-based phone systems versus software-based phone systems, Asterisk compared to Windows-based systems, and 3CX Free edition compared to 3CX Commercial edition. We will take a look at the major components of the 3CX Phone System and at what is not included in 3CX. We'll also discuss a bit about the company—3CX.

In this chapter, we will take a look at the following:

  • About the 3CX company

  • What the 3CX Phone System is

  • Comparing hardware-based and software-based phone systems

  • Asterisk versus Windows Phone System

  • Major components of the 3CX Phone System

  • Some characteristics of the 3CX Phone System

  • What the 3CX Phone System is not

About the company—3CX

3CX is relatively new to the telephony world being founded in 2005 by Nick Galea as compared to Asterisk in 1999, pbxnsip in 2001, and Objectworld's UC Server product in 2001. Nick is a seasoned software entrepreneur having started several other well-established companies including 2X (thin client software) and Acunetix (web security).

What does the name 3CX stand for? According to 3CX CEO, Nick Galea, 3CX stands for Connect, Communicate, and Collaborate.