[Asterisk-Users] RE:: Connecting asterisk to existing PBX - newbie

[Will McCown]

Jason Kawakami wrote:

> 
> -----Original Message-----
> My curiosity is inter-PBX communications and getting the dialing 
> plan correct for these phones.  My overall plan is to provide software 
> phones to the managers and executives at their residences that are 
> directly connected to the system for inter-office communications, and 
> not necessarily to allow them to dial out to the world via our PBX.
> 
> <in order to accomplish this 'properly' you will have to do this via a
> t-1/PRI card or some other type of tie-line interface.  Going from * to the
> inter-tel via fxo/fxs would work ok but from inter-tel to * you may have to
> do some funky stuff with autoattendants to give access to the context the
> softphones are in.
> 

Intertel seems to be particularly funky when it comes to tying
to other PBXs.  It will happily do E&M trunks either as analog FXO or
as T1 channels.  But in many important ways it refuses to treat
phones on the other end of the trunks as extensions (not allowing
a blind transfer for example).  (Or at least not on our even more
ancient IMX switch.)  It would not surprise me if the SIP Trunking
mentioned below had the same issues as E&M trunks over T1, and
would hear from someone who has made it work with Asterisk.

If I had the time & equipment to experiment the other option
that might be worth investigating is Intertel's "networking"
option.  Intertel intends it only for tying to other Intertel
boxes, but it does use PRI so it might actually be possible
to tie to an Asterisk via PRI and with minimal reverse engineering
get it to run.

> 
>>I have a question regarding interoperability between Asterisk and an 
>>Inter-Tel (I believe it's an Axxess) PBX at a client's location.
> 
> 
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The other way to do this besides the t-1 connection currently is to upgrade
> to 9.x of the axxess software, install an IPRC card and set it up as a SIP
> trunk and connect that to *.  Inter-Tel is, yes imagine it, charging a
> licensing fee for this that street price is probably around $100/channel.
> 


-- 
Will McCown, Rhythm & Hues, Inc., Los Angeles, CA. (310) 448-7512
will at rhythm.com