I have been working on a small, 2-node mesh technology demonstrator as a promotional aid for my club.

I have successfully provided VOIP communications with Yealink-T19P phones and the free version of the 3CX PBX on my laptop. My mini-mesh uses 2, WRT54L's and V3.0 mesh firmware. I've arranged my hardware to take advantage of standards-compliant POE power to make the whole arrangement easy to deploy at club meetings, field days, etc... .

My next step is to take more advantage of my hardware/software. I have a few questions:

1) Has anybody experience with providing DHCP Option 66 service the mesh? I've got to find a way to automatically setup phones. My SIP phones have a neat PnP capability, but it doesn't seem to work over the mesh.

2) 3CX seems to be very comprehensive PBX system. Does anybody else use this on a mesh? What were your experience with 3CX?

Thanks for any comments,

Greg, AI4ZR

Has anybody experience with providing DHCP Option 66 service the mesh?
Yes. Does it work? Results may vary. Quick Google search yields: https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=7315. You could also set the TFTP server location directly on the phone. Sometimes it will even allow you input a hostname instead of an IP Address!

3CX seems to be very comprehensive PBX system...What were your experience with 3CX?
It's limited. The free version only allows for 4 concurrent internal and external calls at any given time. But if that limitation is not a problem, feel free to use it. However, keep in mind that AsteriskNOW and Elastix are free and give you more freedom all for the same functionality as 3CX.