AW: [Asterisk-Users] some pri questions...

[Thilo Salmon]

Thomas,

> in EuroISDN it is possible to hold the call and take another. This is part
> of ISDN suplementary services.
> Or make three-way-calling ...

Suplementray services are not supported. But then, you'll find almost
every single feature to be available in asterisk itself.

> And what is with the ISDN- Services (Audio3.1 Speech Data and so on...)
> would these services go through those configuration between to ISDN
> endpoints through * ?

What you can do with asterisk is to answer a call and then dial out (or
answer once the called party picked up). As of today you cannot
explicitly set any parameters for an outgoing call (such as the
numbering plan indicator, type of number, etc.) on pri channels. 

A "transparent" switch based on user signalling does not make the most
sense anyway. Just too many features will always be missing. For
instance you cannot submit a calling party number as 'network provided'.
You will usually not see any restricted calling party numbers on
incoming calls (even though this is usually more of a legal issue than a
technical one). Another thing you can never do is forwarding toll-free
services messages such as 'the person you are calling is currently not
available' at no cost to the caller (once you pick up the line, the
caller will be billed). 

There have been some brief discussions on this list regarding SS7
signalling, which would be the prefered cure to above mentioned
shortcomings. The OpenSS7 people seem to have some drivers for at least
the E400p and the T400p board. However, they are not integrated into
asterisk and don't know how stable their code is.

Perhaps, if we can get enough people together, we might be able to
sponsor some sort of SS7 integration for asterisk. I would certainly
love to see this happening.

Thilo