asterisk users - Nov 2003 - ISDN PBX + IVR + Voicemail Configuration - Sanity Check ...

Hi All,

First of all, please no flames about the footer of this message. It's being
inserted into all outgoing email by the server here without asking me
personally first once I send out email. Since I've been very interested in
setting up an Asterisk PBX + IVR + Voicemail system to support a small
business and a foundation for quite some time now, in order to replace their
current ISDN PBX, I've been following the discussions on this list and have
been reading whatever I could find or ran into about Asterisk.

Although my favorite configuration would consist of an ISDN2 telco
connection on the outside and running multiple ISDN phones from a single
point-to-multipoint nt-mode ISDN controller (CologneChip based) on the
inside, this does not seem to be supported very well at this stage. ISDN bus
power, as described by the PBX4Linux initiative, is not much of an issue for
me personally, because all our ISDN equipment have their own power supply.
Hopefully support for internal ISDN S-busses will become available in time,
as we, like many others in Europe, have made significant investments in ISDN
equipment over the years and like to be able to use it with Asterisk.

For the time being I've decided to hookup an Asterisk box to one to the
internal extension ports of our PBX and run an IVR and Voicemail system on
it. Before I do, I would appreciate more experienced Asterisk users to
review my plans and check whether my ambitions are feasible. The
configuration that I would like to setup has the following characteristics:

a. Pentium 166 (am I pushing it ?) based Asterisk box running Linux (what
flavour ?)
b. Hooked up to ISDN PBX using an ISDN4Linux (chan_modem ?) or CAPI4Linux
(chan_capi ?) compatible ISDN controller.
c. Asterisk accepting external calls from MSN's configured in PBX and
transferred to Asterisk box (trivial !)
d. Custom IVR application (module or AGI based ?) presenting caller with
usual IVR stuff according to our needs and transfering (chan_modem or
chan_capi, which one can do it ?) calls to the phones connected to the PBX.
e. Setup voice mail and make sure PBX transfers calls to it when
appropriate.

Can this be done like this ?

Regards,
Hans Vledder
The Netherlands

P.S. He who comes up with clean internal ISDN bus (point to multi-point)
support for Asterisk, based on CologneChip based equipment receives an 18"
large Dutch cheese in the mail, right after I've wiped away my tears of
happiness !



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Hi Hans,

Am Don, 2003-11-06 um 15.58 schrieb Vledder, Hans:
> P.S. He who comes up with clean internal ISDN bus (point to multi-point)
> support for Asterisk, based on CologneChip based equipment receives an
18"
> large Dutch cheese in the mail, right after I've wiped away my tears of
> happiness !
> 
I am currently working on a zaptel driver for the hfc-s pci a based ISDN
cards and the modifications to make libpri work with BRIs. And of course
NT mode will be supported. We will also have a 4 port BRI card available
in mid/late november that works in TE and NT mode (onboard termination).
Check out www.junghanns.net/asterisk/ during the next week.

regards

kapejod
-- 
Klaus-Peter Junghanns

CEO,CTO
Junghanns.NET GmbH
Breite Strasse 13 - 12167 Berlin - Germany
fon:	+49 30 79705392
fax:	+49 30 79705391
iaxtel:	1-700-157-8753
email:	kpj@junghanns.net
http://www.junghanns.net/asterisk

P.S. i have no idea where i should put the 18" cheese ;-) if it was
19"
i could bring it into the colo...

Hi Hans,
> b. Hooked up to ISDN PBX using an ISDN4Linux (chan_modem ?) or CAPI4Linux
> (chan_capi ?) compatible ISDN controller.
We had real problems with chan_modem, where Asterisk would deadlock after 
the first call was hung up. We saw this with both 0.5.0 and CVS from 
late October. Other people have reported success with chan_modem, so I 
don't know if it's a site-specific issue.

We are using CAPI now which seems to work reasonably well, except that we
had an unexplained total ISDN failure a few days ago, which was fixed by
restarting Asterisk.

In case anyone is interested in the deadlock, which also affects 
analog modems for us, here is the backtrace:

#0  0xffffe002 in ?? ()
#1  0x08052355 in ast_log (level=0, file=0x80b42a8 "asterisk.c",
line=337,
    function=0x80b4304 "urg_handler", fmt=0x80b42f4 "Urgent
handler\n")
    at logger.c:266
#2  0x080832a2 in urg_handler (num=-4) at asterisk.c:337
#3  <signal handler called>
#4  0xffffe000 in ?? ()
#5  0x08093ef6 in el_getc (el=0x80ca970, cp=0xbfffea4b
"@??\f\b\214?^??\002")
    at read.c:347
#6  0x08093d65 in read_getcmd (el=0x80ca970,
    cmdnum=0xfffffffc <Address 0xfffffffc out of bounds>,
    ch=0xbfffea4b "@??\f\b\214?^??\002") at read.c:243
#7  0x08094025 in el_gets (el=0x80ca970, nread=0xbfffea8c) at read.c:443
#8  0x08082761 in main (argc=135064312, argv=0xbfffea8c) at
asterisk.c:1459
#9  0x420156a4 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/tls/libc.so.6
(gdb)
(gdb) up
#1  0x08052355 in ast_log (level=0, file=0x80b42a8 "asterisk.c",
line=337,
    function=0x80b4304 "urg_handler", fmt=0x80b42f4 "Urgent
handler\n")
    at logger.c:266
266             ast_mutex_lock(&loglock);
> P.S. He who comes up with clean internal ISDN bus (point to multi-point)
> support for Asterisk, based on CologneChip based equipment receives an
18"
> large Dutch cheese in the mail, right after I've wiped away my tears of
> happiness !
We are really looking forward to trying this too. Klaus-Peter is the man 
=) (sorry dan, can't use your softphone on *nix).

Cheers, Chris.
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