[asterisk-users] USA BRI -- any hope at all?

[Joe Greco]

> >You might want to look into Cisco hardware, their WIC-1B-U cards work =20
> fine in the US, or they did 10 years ago when I last used them for =20
> VoIP. 

No, you didn't.  :-)  You might have used a VIC-2BRI-S/T-TE or one of 
the other voice cards...  but the WIC cards are WAN Interface Cards.
If only it were that easy.

> Used the WIC-1B-U is going for under $50 on eBay.  An old 1600 =20
> or 1700 series router with an IOS that supports SIP wouldn't cost much =20
> either.

I can probably dig up such a setup here if anyone wants one, except it
won't do VoIP.

> Help me connect the dots here.  I indeed see WIC-1B-U cards and 1721 =
> routers.  It looks like a pair could be purchased for probably $25.  How =

Yeah, that won't work...

> does that fit into an Asterisk system?  I can see how it would be used =
> for 128K data, but how does Asterisk pick up and manipulate the data?  =
> Call setup? Call answering?  Does the 1721 deliver VoIP data that =
> Asterisk can process?  Does Asterisk have a channel interface that can =
> accept and use this?

Asterisk would deal with it just as it would any other SIP-based
service adapter, I would imagine.  Imagine it as a large Sipura
3000, or whatever the contemporary VOIP-to-POTS gateway of the
modern era is.

Have a look at the compatibility chart at 

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk652/tk653/technologies_tech_note09186a0080111b16.shtml

This will give you an idea about combinations that ought to work, I
believe.  Unfortunately, I don't know if any of them are cheap.

We've had BRI for over a decade.  It rocks.  It's incredibly flexible
and is not susceptible to the radio stations that are broadcasting at
50 billion gigawatts half a mile from here (POTS goes to hell).  I can
do fun stuff like terminating calls into a USR I-Modem, giving me the
ability to do 56k remote dialup access into our local network, etc.

Unfortunately, getting it to work with Asterisk is a bit of a boggle.

We had considered going the Cisco route.  All things considered, that
has a lot going for it, but the last time I evaluated that solution,
it was expensive and the configuration looked somewhat complicated,
and I wasn't confident I could manage it without assistance.

The other workable solution that I'm aware of seems to involve the
Eicon Diva Server boards, which I've heard work.

We're currently using an Adtran Atlas 550 to convert the BRI to T1 or
PRI or something that Asterisk *can* handle, and this works pretty
well.  There are some caveats, however, such as the fact that we can
not get the Adtran to originate outgoing calls with the second DN on
a BRI line (incoming is just fine, though).

If anyone goes the Cisco route and is willing to share information
on how that worked, and configuration snippets, let me know.

I'm quite happy to share what we've done with anyone who is interested
in our solution.

As for the people who are claiming that BRI is dead, well, not quite.
I had called SBC or Ameritech or whatever they were called that day
several years ago for what appeared to be a loop problem, and had
gotten the "oh I know who you need to talk to" runaround of about
twelve departments.  However, recently, our Adtran 550 had baked
something in its configuration, and we lost one of the BRI's.  Not
suspecting a problem with the 550, having rebooted it and having
eyeballed the config and logs, I dialed with dread the new customer
service number for AT&T (which is the number they hand out for POTS
repair).  I was dumbfounded to navigate the automated system and
then to talk immediately to a gentleman who not only told me that
the line was a BRI, but also that it appeared to be fine but that
they weren't seeing a D channel.  Thinking it might be a fried port
on the Adtran, I reconfigured to a different port, and it worked.
Doh!  So then I cleared the configuration on the old port (verifying
that it *also* looked correct) and re-entered it, and ... it worked.
Double doh!

So, if anything, the support situation for BRI's has improved, at
least for us here.  I expect that the number of new installs is not
at an all-time high or anything. 

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.