asterisk users - Sep 2008 - Bizarre international call problem.

Hi, all.  We've got a PoS legacy PBX at my company that doesn't have
call
accounting.  I figured, "Hey, why not stick a dual-span T1 Asterisk-based
system in the middle?"  Then, I just passively pass in-bound calls to the
PBX, and outbound calls to the PSTN.  I can then have Asterisk do all the
call accounting, and everything should Just Work.  Right?

Well, not so much.

My outbound dialing rule was incredibly complex:
exten => _X.,1,Dial(${PASSTHROUGHTRUNK}/${EXTEN})

And everything seemed to be working ducky, until I went to call Germany
and got -- a local cell phone number.  Needless to say, this puzzled me
greatly.  A quick look at my log, though, showed that all calls dialed
with "011" were being submitted from the PBX to the Asterisk box
without
the "011".  (Ironically, if I dial the number with "011011"
in front, it
goes through fine.)

So I'm confused: any ideas on how this worked when the PBX was hooked
straight to the PSTN?  Is there some SS7 signal or something that says,
"This is an international call", when the number has no 011 preface? 
I'd
hate to have to revert, but I will if need be... *sigh*

Thanks for any insights.  I'm totally flummoxed.

-Ken

> My outbound dialing rule was incredibly complex:
> exten => _X.,1,Dial(${PASSTHROUGHTRUNK}/${EXTEN})
>
> And everything seemed to be working ducky, until I went to call Germany
> and got -- a local cell phone number.  Needless to say, this puzzled me
> greatly.  A quick look at my log, though, showed that all calls dialed
> with "011" were being submitted from the PBX to the Asterisk box
without
> the "011".  (Ironically, if I dial the number with
"011011" in front, it
> goes through fine.)
>
> So I'm confused: any ideas on how this worked when the PBX was hooked
> straight to the PSTN?
I seem to end up answering these 'PoS legacy PBX' questions, so here
goes...

You have handsets connected to your proprietary PBX. Most domestic
things you dial on your proprietary PBX handsets get passed directly
through to your asterisk box without getting mangled by your
proprietary PBX. International calls that are prefixed by 011 are
getting mangled by your proprietary PBX. Are you already getting to
what I'm going to suggest?

Modify your proprietary PBX to not mangle your international calls.

Asterisk is doing what its told when it gets a proper number to dial,
as you demonstrated by your extra 011 padding work-around. Your
problem is not with Asterisk, your problem is with your PBX. You could
even have your workaround be to buy a VoIP hard phone, hook it to your
Asterisk, and have people dial internationally with that phone. Then
buy some more VoIP hard phones, and stop buying any more handsets for
your proprietary PBX. Do that a few more times, then put your
proprietary PBX on eBay.

Problem solved ;)

On Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:04:30 -0400 (EDT), Ken D'Ambrosio
wrote:
> So I'm confused: any ideas on how this worked when the PBX was hooked
> straight to the PSTN?  Is there some SS7 signal or something that says,
> "This is an international call", when the number has no 011
preface?  I'd
> hate to have to revert, but I will if need be... *sigh*
the provider may be tagging it on. have you checked pridialplan, or
prilocaldialplan settings and playing around with that in zapata.conf ?

-- 
Regards,                           /\_/\   "All dogs go to heaven."
dinesh at alphaque.com                (0 0)   http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/
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