[Asterisk-Users] Connecting asterisk to existing PBX - newbie question

[Sascha Ferley]

Hi Dan,

First, i seem to have found myself in about the same dilema where another
phone reseller tried to push a client into a 45k+ solution from
Televantage, which i must say from what i have seen seems to be the
crapiest software on the market today, though hailed by some telco's as
the next biggest thing. (Maybe someone here can explaain more as per why
the hell the software of televantage is soo crapy expensive and sooooo
unstable) .. Anyways enuf of the rant..

Sip phones can run you in the order of about 1k per set aswell, looking at
some of the cisco's, but if a basic sip hand set is fine, like a polycom,
or a siemens hipoint (not sure of their prices, but nice sets anyways), i
can definitly see the solution.

As per your solution, i would just stick a couple TDM400p cards in there
with 4fxs slots, and if required that you need a pri, you can still do
this as such. Depending on the existing phones, the inter-tel ones, you
might be able to use them directly on the asterisk system aswell ..

Cheap cost .. less then 1 phone for a couple cards, and a basic system
depending on user amount you might be able to get away with a older P3.

Hope that helps

S.


On Wed, 6 Apr 2005, Dan Reagan wrote:

> I have a question regarding interoperability between Asterisk and an
> Inter-Tel (I believe it's an Axxess) PBX at a client's location.
>
> My clients currently have an Inter-Tel system that they're fairly happy
> with but they're being bludgeoned by Inter-Tel for their proprietary IP
> based phones. The phones themselves are on the order of $1,000 each
> (they're in a lease and only see the monthly charge when they add a new
> phone. That $1000 is a rough approximation on my part from the last
> lease addition which was $24/month with 42 months remaining).
>
> I believe that many of the people that they have who are currently using
> the proprietary phones would be quite happy with a basic SIP phone (they
> don't need ACD login or other advanced features) however Inter-Tel's SIP
> gateway product is quite expensive. The sales person never actually gave
> me a real quote but said things like "pushing $10,000" and "very
> expensive" and "You don't really want it". My feeling was that they want
> to keep this client with their proprietary phones (and at $1000 each I
> can see why).
>
> I think that I could craft a gateway of some sort out of an Asterisk box
> doing nothing but taking a handoff from the Inter-Tel PBX and passing it
> out to SIP phones attached to the Asterisk machine but I'm not
> absolutely certain how to go about it. Off the top of my head I see two
> rough directions to go but I'm somewhat out of my depth and would
> appreciate any insight, particularly with regard to the details <g>.
>
> First, I could take an existing 'single line card' in the Inter-Tel
> system (8 FXS ports already installed in the existing PBX) and run that
> into 8 FXO ports on the Asterisk machine. I'm assuming that from there
> it would be a fairly straightforward to set up a 1 to 1 mapping of
> incoming FXO to connected SIP phones.
>
> Second, I could take an existing T1 card (I'd have to buy an upgrade to
> get PRI functionality if required) and connect it to the Asterisk box.
> At first glance this seems to be a more flexible and better solution but
> I believe that on the Inter-Tel side I'd have some issues with mapping
> extensions to the outgoing PRI ports and/or extensions on the asterisk
> side and a fair amount of jiggling to get things working right.
>
> Alternatively, would it be possible to just stick something like the
> AudioCodes MP108-FXO in the middle of the 8 FXS ports on the Inter-Tel
> PBX and some SIP phones? Initially I thought that this would work but
> further reading has led me to think that this wouldn't work and that's
> what led me back to Asterisk.
>
> That's my very rough thinking. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
> Also, I'm sorry if this has been covered before on the list or
> elsewhere. I spent some time digging through the archives and couldn't
> find anything helpful but I'm sure that I wasn't perfectly thorough.
>
> Dan Reagan
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