[Asterisk-Users] Channel banks, voicemail, and immediate=no

[Carlton J. O'Riley]

I'm using a channel bank with a T1 card on the Asterisk server and have
defined the FXS channels (user phones) to the context of [internal] and
don't have any problems using the dial plans with the full digits.  I
haven't had any of them try to go to the i extension after the first digit.
Not sure what configuration you're using that is causing this problem.  I
have immediate=no as well.
 

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Chris A. Icide
Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 11:27 AM
To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Channel banks, voicemail, and immediate=no

When using a channel bank for analog handsets, you have a couple options in
the way you handle transactions involving the analog handsets and
origination.

With immediate set to no, it appears to me that soon as a digit is pressed
after going off-hook, the single digit is taken and processed against the
context that the channel is associated with from the configuration in
zapata.conf.

With immediate set to yes, the extension s in the channel's context is
processed.

As far as I know, the method of handling channel bank based analog handsets
is to use immediate=yes and then have extension s put the phone directly
into a DISA command with no-password and a context for processing the
entered calls.

I have also tried in the past setting immediate=no, parsing off the first
digit and sending the call into separate contexts (see example below)

example with immediate=yes

exten => s,1,DISA,no-password|internal


example with immediate=no

exten => 9,1,DISA,no-password|pstn-gateway


In the first case, the problem I have is this:  If I place the handset
directly into DISA, how can I get stuttertone MWI indication?

If I use the second method, in many cases, there is NO dialtone provided to
the phone until after a dtmf entry is recieved.  This I suspect is a channel
bank issue because it seems to work on some banks, and not on others.


Given the use of channel banks as a method to allow large number of analog
phones to access an asterisk system, is there any way (or perhaps any
interest in developing a method) to actually treat analog handsets on a
channel bank like any other UA?  In other words, why not have a method
besides the two above so that I can stick the phones into a context (which
understands it's for handling analog phones on a channel bank) that actually
provides dial tone, and accepts dtmf until a match to the context extensions
is found?  In other words, with immediate=no, I'd like to see asterisk not
jump on the first dtmf and try to match (going to i, if no match exists),
but actually wait for as many dtmf's as required to match an extension in
the context (e.g. exten => _1NXXNXXXXXX waits for 10 digits if dtmf 1 is the
first digit).


On a different track, am I doing something wrong above?  For people who have
configured channel banks for use with asterisk, have you found a 'perfect'
configuration that you prefer to use?

-Chris

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