[asterisk-users] 2 Asterisks to one PBX - E1 conection

[David Backeberg]

> Is there some kind of splitter which, on one side can accept two E1
> connections from Asterisks and on the other side one E1 link from PBX. This
> splitter must also recognize towards which one of two E1 links on Asterisk
> side it should send signals to. eg. when primary Asterisk fails this
> splitter should send signals to its eg. port 2 (connection towards secondary
> Asterisk).

We bought this, and loaded it up with 8 T1 ports

http://www.wti.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&category_id=7&flypage=flypage-ask.tpl&product_id=56&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=33

The AFS-16 has a serial port, which accepts commands to toggle some,
or all ports.

If you get yourself a
startech.com netrs2321
sold at several places on the internet, including directly from startech.com

which puts the serial port behind a tcp service on ethernet, and lets
any of several machines manage the serial on the AFS 16 box. We wrote
a Perl script, put it on both systems, and then when the script
detects a failure it flips the AFS 16 ports, assuming it doesn't
already have the lines. So this is a solution that allows for total
failure of one of the boxes, in fact, the way to test it out is to
yank an ethernet cable, ping fails, and then the script flips the
switch ports.

Now with all that said, I'm not sure how the prices for this solution
compare to the other solutions proposed on this thread. Get your own
quote, but the AFS-16 box was a lot of money for what it does. And now
that I'm about to scale out of this setup, I think it's better to
instead terminate the T1s into a box that converts them to VoIP
traffic, and do any failover to the Asterisk boxes using DNS or other
TCP/IP tricks. I suppose you could say that just moves the single
point of failure to the gear that does the T1-to-VoIP conversion,
probably a Cisco box. I think the Cisco box is a better long-term
investment, as it scales, trades-up, and can be used for lots of other
things, or even resold when your needs change. The other better thing
about that approach is that your Asterisk systems speak VoIP, so if
you get into a situation where you can find a VoIP service provider
that gets better pricing than your regular phone provider (so far we
haven't, once you add in the bandwidth costs) you're ready for that
day.

You could also keep all the gear you have, but change the way it's
laid out. Terminate the Ts into the Asterisk cards, but have a system
just do the T-to-voip conversion. I'd rather have an appliance do
that, and there are probably some other appliances than the Cisco
boxes.