[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk & Avaya Legend

[Lacy Moore - Aspendora]

Greetings All,

I'm about to embark on what will hopefully be a wonderous journey.  We will
be slowly moving towards a full Asterisk solution, but along the way, I have
to put up with the Legend system for a little while longer.

So far, I've only been able to look at this from a theory perspective, since
we don't have the hardware yet (namely a PRI card).  Our current setup has
an Avaya Legend system with 25 lines consisting of both POTS and BRI.  I am
consolidating all of that onto a PRI.  At this point, this is more to do
with saving money ($1300 the old way, versus $540 with a PRI).  Because of
this, I have to take baby steps.  My first step is to get an Asterisk server
connected between the PRI coming in and the Legend system.  The Legend
system has a DS1 card that has never been used.  I have no idea why it was
here, but it looks like it can be put to use.  I am getting a 2 port card
for the Asterisk server.

Now, here is what I'm not sure of at this moment.  For the time being, is it
possible to just pass the PRI through the Asterisk to the Legend?  Will
there by any type of dialplans or anything that need to be created?  Will it
pass the DID information through?  I was trying to look at this from the
perspective that the Legend will be a channel bank, but I don't think that's
a correct assumption.  I think this more closely fits tying two Asterisk
servers together with a T1, but I haven't been able to find any info on
this.

The idea is to bring the PRI in and move the phone numbers off the various
POTS and BRI over to the PRI.  This phone system services several different
companies (which weren't being served too well with the limitation of only 3
automated attendants, dialing out was with just any number showing on caller
ID, etc.).  I want to be able to move one company at a time off the Legend
and onto the Asterisk.  Then, at the end, I was hoping to be able to use the
Legend as a sort of channel bank (for faxes and modems) until we could
afford a digital fax board.

Fortunately, through a combination of other things, even making this initial
first move (over to the PRI), we will be saving $1000 a month.  Once we
start seeing those savings, we can start putting that into a much better
server and IP Phones.  In our case, the savings are significant.  I just
have to get over the initial learning curve.

I'm also assuming that I will have to configure the DS1 (it's actually a
100D) board on the Legend.  My sales rep with the PRI provider had mentioned
being able to do the cutover in a day, but I'm thinking I would rather get
the PRI installed, and then maybe the next week have the numbers ported.
THat would give me time to get everything up and running with a couple of
new DIDs that will be implemented (not the existing numbers), and give me a
chance to make sure I know what I am doing before we move our numbers off
the BRI and POTS over to the PRI.  I don't want to move the numbers and then
find out I missed something or something doesn't work.  IN a worst case
scenario, I can always hire a Legend expert to setup the 100D with the PRI
connected to it and not through the Asterisk server, but that's a last
resort situation.

Can anyone offer any pointers, or maybe point out anything obvious that I am
missing?  Or, even confirm that what I'm trying to do is possible.  I have
the two port card on order and would like to play with it before the PRI
gets installed.  I don't like working in theory on this, I'd feel much
better with the equipment in hand, even without the PRI, I can still setup a
VoIP account and make sure that I can pass the call through the Asterisk
into the Legend.

Assuming all this works, I think just having Asterisk in there would solve
one problem.  It seems that I could set up a dial plan so that if I dial 9
it would use the caller ID of one company, dial 8 to use the caller ID of
another, etc.  On the user side, they would have to dial 9 twice to place an
outgoing call (since the Legend requires a 9 for an outside line), but I
think I could also set the dialplan up so that if the number dialed is a
standard number, it would just use a generic caller ID number.

I guess I'm still confused as whether Asterisk will pass the DID information
onto the Legend.  If someone could point me in a direction regarding this,
I'd appreciate it.  I haven't found anything, which makes me worried this
isn't possible (whether because of technology or Asterisk).

Thank you, and again, any and all comments are welcome.

Lacy Moore
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