asterisk users - Dec 2004 - Integrating * with Mitel SX2000 Lite

Hi All,

Our experience with * to date has been a bit limited.  It's a 4xCisco
7960 network, linking our head office with a faraday caged datacenter.
As a way of putting voicecomms into a sealed room, it was quick and easy
to deploy, and works very well.  As typically happens, we've now thought
about extending the use of asterisk - and a new opportunity has cropped
up.  In three months time, we have a couple of new small offices coming
on stream.  Prices quoted for POTS comms have been expensive, so we've
decided to look at providing an Asterisk/VOIP solution for the 30 or so
users, and just having a couple of local analogue lines for fax and
emergency use.  The aim of the asterisk solution is to provide both
external POTS connectivity and the ability to make internal calls to our
existing head office network.  (350 extension Mitel SX2000).   In theory
we should be able to assign a head-office DDI number for each desk in
the new offices, and route calls transparently via the asterisk server
to the VOIP extension.

Current plan is that we buy a digium TE110P Card, and crossover-connect
it to the Mitel PABX as a secondary exchange.  Asterisk will have no
direct PSTN connection, but will route all non VOIP to VOIP calls via
the Mitel.  Unfortunately I can't find any info on the * Wiki or in the
list archives about how to go about configuring this combination.  Mitel
have confirmed that the E1/EuroISDN option should connect to the PABX,
and that 'QSIG can be enabled on the exchange' but have stopped short of
saying that the two will talk to each other.

1.  Does anybody have any experience of trying to get * talking to a
Mitel SX2000 Lite?
2.  Is there a definitive list of what asterisks implementation of QSIG
supports, and what it doesn't?  Is the current support level likely to
be sufficient for the above, or do we need to look at some alternative
method/protocol?
3.  What pitfalls do we need to look out for when implementing the
above, over and above the usual datacomms latency/capacity issues?
4.  Coming from a datacomms/systems background, I find all this talk of
channel banks, spans, signalling protocols, TDM and so on a bit of a
foreign language.  Does anyone know of a good primer on the web
somewhere that would help in getting up to speed with voicecomms
terminology?
 
Any help gratefully received, 

Chris Morgan
UFI Limited   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20041210/a80c1abd/attachment.htm

Hi Chris

I've done quite a bit of work with Mitel SX2000s and got to admit I like
them a lot (give me those forms based admin screens over a Nortel command
line interface any day!). I've not interfaced an asterisk box with an
SX2000 before but it should be pretty easy (hehe, note my use of the word
"should") ;-)

I'd be tempted to set up a dialplan on the Mitel so that all VoIP
extensions start with the same digit - it'll make it less of a routing
headache in the long run. You can then subdivide on the asterisk box as
needed.. For example, on the Mitel, set 4xxx to go to the asterisk PRI.
Then on the Asterisk box you could have 40xx be assigned to users at site
A, 41xx be users at site B etc.. The sites can be SIP devices registered to
the asterisk box, or even an asterisk server of their own if it warranted
it.

There's a bit of work to do with the asterisk dialplan and also the Mitel,
handling COS and barring/restrictions etc, but it should be fairly simple
to set up.

Give me a shout if you want to discuss further.

Paul

Hello there.

I have noticed you were trying to place an asterisk box infront of an
SX2000.
I am trying to do this also, but no matter what I try the connection to
the SX2000 causes a major alarm.

Did you get this working?
If so could I please see what signalling you used to achieve this?

Thanks,
John