asterisk users - Jan 2005 - Asterisk and InterTel Axxess system?

Hi all,

My office recently purchased an InterTel Axxess system with the IPRC 
card for VoIP.  To our suprise, this card allows the InterTel endpoints 
and MGCP endpoints to work, but not SIP clients.  I was really 
expecting to get a SIP softphone working with this setup, but that 
appears to require our vendor to sell us a SIP gateway and licenses at 
a not yet determined price.

With this background, I have a few questions:

Is * a proper tool to provide a SIP<->MGCP gateway?  Am I even asking 
for something that makes sense?
If so, where's the best "from the ground up, assume I don't know
the
lingo" guidance on how to get where I want to go?  Like many open 
source projects, the documentation I've seen so far seems to assume the 
reader is not a newbie in this field.  I'm hoping there's introductory 
documentation someone can point me towards.  Asterisk 101, if you will.

I have *@home running on an old PC, but don't have a clue where to 
begin configuring, or what proper configurations would look like 
anyway....

Regards,

Steve.

--
Steve Yuroff
Network and System Administrator
The Hiebing Group
315 Wisconsin Ave. | Madison, WI 53703
syuroff@hiebing.com
ph: 608.256.6357 | fax: 608.256.0693
www.hiebing.com

Hi Steve -
> Is * a proper tool to provide a SIP<->MGCP gateway?  Am I even asking
> for something that makes sense?
Sure.  I think * is perfect for what you describe.  In fact, I don't 
really know of another tool that could bridge SIP and MGCP.

> If so, where's the best "from the ground up, assume I don't
know the
> lingo" guidance on how to get where I want to go?  Like many open
> source projects, the documentation I've seen so far seems to assume the
> reader is not a newbie in this field.  I'm hoping there's
introductory
> documentation someone can point me towards.  Asterisk 101, if you will.
Well...  There's really not a guide for the beginner, which is sort of 
a catch-22, since everyone has to begin somewhere.  The closest thing 
you'll get to a beginner guide is the asterisk section of the wiki 
(http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk).  I don't exactly find it to 
be complete, but you can fill in the holes with the ADP (* 
documentation project): 
http://ourproject.org/docman/view.php/116/150/vm1.html
Also, if you are patient, the archives of this mailing list cover a 
million and one issues.

> I have *@home running on an old PC, but don't have a clue where to
> begin configuring, or what proper configurations would look like
> anyway....
I don't use MGCP, but if you want to see my sip.conf and 
extensions.conf, just let me know.

Good luck, and enjoy the great city of Madison (I lived there for 8 
years and loved it)!

Thanks,
Noah

-----Original Message-----
My office recently purchased an InterTel Axxess system with the IPRC 
card for VoIP.  To our suprise, this card allows the InterTel endpoints 
and MGCP endpoints to work, but not SIP clients.  I was really 
expecting to get a SIP softphone working with this setup, but that 
appears to require our vendor to sell us a SIP gateway and licenses at 
a not yet determined price.

-the sip server comes bundled with an application called Unified
Communicator which is pretty cool but also pretty costly.  Besides that, the
licensing for the SIP endpoints is not so cool.

With this background, I have a few questions:

Is * a proper tool to provide a SIP<->MGCP gateway?  Am I even asking 
for something that makes sense?
If so, where's the best "from the ground up, assume I don't know
the
lingo" guidance on how to get where I want to go?  Like many open 
source projects, the documentation I've seen so far seems to assume the 
reader is not a newbie in this field.  I'm hoping there's introductory 
documentation someone can point me towards.  Asterisk 101, if you will.

-You are asking the wrong question here.  Don't think of designing your *
solution around the limitations of the Inter-Tel.  Besides, if you currently
have * up and running (in any capacity) you can make * do what you want it
to.  Your problem in the end will be making the Axxess work with *.

I don't know what version of Axxess you are running but the very recently
released version 9.0 supports SIP trunking (I think) via the IPRC card).  It
will require a couple of licenses but I think it is a better idea then doing
MGCP<->SIP stuff.  I haven't played with MGCP in * but the Inter-Tel
uses an
OEM'd AudioCodes box as an FXO gateway and I have had nothing but problems
with them.  Can't tell if it is gateway related or Axxess related but I
ended up putting a PRI into the Axxess and connecting to * via that PRI,
then doing all of my IP stuff (via SIP) in *.

I have access to an axxess for testing so I will play with it a bit and see
if I can figure out a better way.

Jason Kawakami
www.optellabs.com
Salt Lake City, UT