[Asterisk-Users] Nortel Meridian Opt 81C and PRI

[Greg Camp]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-
> bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Greg Camp
> Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 9:08 AM
> To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
> Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Nortel Meridian Opt 81C and PRI
> 
> We've been trying unsuccessfully to connect our Meridian Option 81C to
a
> TE110P via PRI.  We've followed the directions in
> asterisk-meridian-a1.pdf (link on
> http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+legacy+integration), but
it
> doesn't seem to work on our 81C (even though many, many users report
it
> works very well on Option 11's).
> 
> Has anyone had any success in getting the above combination to work
with
> Asterisk?
> 
> The results we get seem to vary depending on how closely we follow the
> reference guide that Andy put together.  If we follow it exactly, the
> d-channel comes up, but the b-channels stay in MBSY instead of IDLE.
> 
> I can post more details and config files if requested, but I'm curious
> if anyone has successfully made an Option 81C work with PRI to an
> Asterisk box.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Greg

Update:  SUCCESS!!!  There were two subtle items that allowed our Opt81C
to talk PRI to * using a TE110P:

1) On the 81C in LD 96 we had to ENL SERV <dch> for the d-channel.

2) It appears that the TE110P needs a decent "refresh" time for the
b-channels to come up cleanly.  For example, on the Nortel if you
disable the T1 or d-channel and re-enable it quickly (specifically,
anything shorter than about 45 seconds) the TE110P won't come up clean.
The Nortel will show all the b-channels as MBSY or FE MBSY.  However, if
you wait 45s - 1min then the d-channel and b-channels will come up clean
every time.

Many thanks to all who offered suggestions and worked with us on this!


Now, our latest two issues:

1) When a user on the Nortel makes a call to a user on * a 10-digit
callerid value shows up on the SIP phone instead of the users extension.
Has anyone encountered this and found a work-around?  It's been
suggested that we use a QSIG interface instead of 5ESS emulation, but
did not purchased the Nortel QSIG option so it is unavailable.

2) We would like to use Comedian Mail for company wide voicemail.  I can
setup user extensions easily enough.  I have also setup two 4-digit
extensions; one for picking up voicemail and one for leaving voicemail
for an arbitrary user.  The second ext is used primarily by the
receptionist (coming from the Nortel PBX) to redirect callers to users
voicemails.  The issue I'm having is that if you don't pass an extension
to the Voicemail() function * will prompt you one time.  If you key the
ext incorrectly the system hangs up on you.  Is there a way to prompt
the caller for the extension to leave a message for, accept the ext,
check the database, and give the caller another chance if the ext is
invalid?

Thanks,
Greg