asterisk users - Apr 2003 - Busy out lines...

Hi Folks,


Is their someway to busy a trunk ? 

eg: during midnight to dawn, we need to busyout 50% of our lines when
call queues can become too long if we get busy, so we would rather
present a busy signal, is there some way this could be easily done then
undone when required ?

Gary
.

Well, you could be nasty and just answer and then play busy tones to them,
or you could do what Telstra does and answer and play the "We are too busy
dealing with other calls to talk to you, please re-try later".

The other option if you are using either BRI or PRI direct into asterisk
might be to return a busy signal after checking a variable which describes
how many calls you currently have. I know the BRI/PRI spec allows for this,
but I don't know if asterisk provides for a way to do this ?? Perhaps from
an AGI?? Or perhaps it is done automatically like this:

s,1,Busy

Just some thoughts, hopefully someone else will come up with some better
insights :)

Regards,
Adam