asterisk users - Jan 2005 - ISP connection to the PSTN using Asterisk

If you are wanting more than 8-12 lines (fxo or fxs), you need
to go with a t1 card and channel bank.  a single t1 card will 
support up to 24 lines, and a t1 card + channel bank is generally
cheaper than 3 fully loaded TDM cards anyways.



Jon.



On Monday 24 January 2005 09:14 am, Ashling O'Driscoll
wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Could someone let me know the most common way that an Internet ISP
> would allow customers access to the PSTN?? Do they buy multiple fxo
> cards such as the TDM400P and rent multiple lines from a larger
> provider??
>
> Would the best way be to connect to a third party voice/pstn
> gateway?? Is that simply a matter of forwarding all sip traffic
> destined for the pstn to another provider with a gateway and then
> they have to worry about the number of lines etc??And if that is the
> case, I presume no extra hardware is required?
>
> Thanks,
> Aisling.
>
>
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Hi all,

Could someone let me know the most common way that an Internet ISP
would allow customers access to the PSTN?? Do they buy multiple fxo
cards such as the TDM400P and rent multiple lines from a larger
provider?? 

Would the best way be to connect to a third party voice/pstn
gateway?? Is that simply a matter of forwarding all sip traffic
destined for the pstn to another provider with a gateway and then
they have to worry about the number of lines etc??And if that is the
case, I presume no extra hardware is required?

Thanks,
Aisling.


-------------------Legal  Disclaimer---------------------------------------

The above electronic mail transmission is confidential and intended only for the
person to whom it is addressed. Its contents may be protected by legal and/or
professional privilege. Should it be received by you in error please contact the
sender at the above quoted email address. Any unauthorised form of reproduction
of this message is strictly prohibited. The Institute does not guarantee the
security of any information electronically transmitted and is not liable if the
information contained in this communication is not a proper and complete record
of the message as transmitted by the sender nor for any delay in its receipt.

Hi Ashling,

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005, Ashling O'Driscoll wrote:
> Could someone let me know the most common way that an Internet ISP
> would allow customers access to the PSTN?? Do they buy multiple fxo
> cards such as the TDM400P and rent multiple lines from a larger
> provider??
Do you mean how does an ISP allow its customers to make outbound voice
calls using its infrastructure?

Most ISPs these days will use something like a cisco AS5300 or AS5800, or 
an Ascend MAX TNT (it's been 5 years since I've played the ISP game,
these
model numbers are probably dating me ;-).  They take multiple PRIs from 
the telco(s) which can be terminated as either individual B channels (for 
ISDN calls) or into "digital modems" (for analogue modem dialup). 
AFAIK
the latter can be used as DSPs to permit in/outbound voice traffic.
> Would the best way be to connect to a third party voice/pstn
> gateway?? Is that simply a matter of forwarding all sip traffic
> destined for the pstn to another provider with a gateway and then
> they have to worry about the number of lines etc??And if that is the
> case, I presume no extra hardware is required?
Depending on the economics involved this might be a sensible way of doing 
it - a third party could be enlisted to take the SIP traffic and deliver 
it to it's ultimate destination.  The hand off would most likely be across
a private interconnect (ethernet within a co-lo, or a dedicated circuit 
between sites) to ensure the link is not congested.


-Ronan

Guys-

I've been wondering this same thing, and considering putting up an 
Asterisk gateway here (a small local ISP) to offer my customers VoIP 
service. I've been considering the options, but it really looks like I'd
rather have someone else handle the termination...it just looks like a 
big hassle. Anyway, since one of our outbound connections is a DS-3 from 
AT&T, I started looking at what they might be able to offer, and came 
across this:

http://www.business.att.com/default/index.jsp?pageid=gc_index&branchid=gc

...which looks like it would be just perfect for what I want to do. Has 
anybody used this service with Asterisk? Does it work well? From the 
document there it looks like it would be perfectly straightforward. Of 
course, I haven't gotten AT&T's rates yet, but that's one of the
things
I'm working on today.

If anybody has any information about this service, experiences, or sees 
any potential problems, I'd love to hear about them.

Thanks

Hunter.

Ashling O'Driscoll wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>Could someone let me know the most common way that an Internet ISP
>would allow customers access to the PSTN?? Do they buy multiple fxo
>cards such as the TDM400P and rent multiple lines from a larger
>provider?? 
>
>Would the best way be to connect to a third party voice/pstn
>gateway?? Is that simply a matter of forwarding all sip traffic
>destined for the pstn to another provider with a gateway and then
>they have to worry about the number of lines etc??And if that is the
>case, I presume no extra hardware is required?
>
>Thanks,
>Aisling.
>
>
>-------------------Legal  Disclaimer---------------------------------------
>
>The above electronic mail transmission is confidential and intended only for
the person to whom it is addressed. Its contents may be protected by legal
and/or professional privilege. Should it be received by you in error please
contact the sender at the above quoted email address. Any unauthorised form of
reproduction of this message is strictly prohibited. The Institute does not
guarantee the security of any information electronically transmitted and is not
liable if the information contained in this communication is not a proper and
complete record of the message as transmitted by the sender nor for any delay in
its receipt.
>
>_______________________________________________
>Asterisk-Users mailing list
>Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
>http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>  
>

Aisling-

Yes, I've been wondering about this part of the system too. I'm at a 
small local ISP, and have a few customers currently connecting through 
me to some of the SIP providers (Vonage, NuFone, etc.) but have been 
thinking about putting up my own PSTN gateway. It just seems like a 
really big hassle though, working out the various agreements and getting 
PRI's and all that. So I was looking for an easier way, and stumbled 
across this:

http://www.business.att.com/default/index.jsp?pageid=gc_index&branchid=gc

...AT&T is one of our backbone providers, so it seems like a great idea 
to me. If I'm reading this (sparse) documentation right, it seems I can 
just set up my asterisk server to send H.323 to them and they will worry 
about the routing from there. Right? Of course, I don't know what their 
rates are looking like, but I thought I'd ask everyone around here...has 
anybody used this service, and could share their experience? Or can 
anybody see potential pitfalls with doing things this way?

Thanks

Hunter.

Ashling O'Driscoll wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>Could someone let me know the most common way that an Internet ISP
>would allow customers access to the PSTN?? Do they buy multiple fxo
>cards such as the TDM400P and rent multiple lines from a larger
>provider?? 
>
>Would the best way be to connect to a third party voice/pstn
>gateway?? Is that simply a matter of forwarding all sip traffic
>destined for the pstn to another provider with a gateway and then
>they have to worry about the number of lines etc??And if that is the
>case, I presume no extra hardware is required?
>
>Thanks,
>Aisling.
>
>
>-------------------Legal  Disclaimer---------------------------------------
>
>The above electronic mail transmission is confidential and intended only for
the person to whom it is addressed. Its contents may be protected by legal
and/or professional privilege. Should it be received by you in error please
contact the sender at the above quoted email address. Any unauthorised form of
reproduction of this message is strictly prohibited. The Institute does not
guarantee the security of any information electronically transmitted and is not
liable if the information contained in this communication is not a proper and
complete record of the message as transmitted by the sender nor for any delay in
its receipt.
>
>_______________________________________________
>Asterisk-Users mailing list
>Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
>http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>  
>