[Asterisk-biz] Meridian and Asterisk

[Scott Lykens]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 10:51:45 -0500, Daniel Grizzard
<dgrizzard at floridaortho.com> wrote:

> Anyone useing a asterisk in this situation: have a main office with a
> Meridian Option 11C and 6 satellite
> offices running norstars, would like to install an asterisk at the main
> office(not to replace the main
> office option 11C) but to use the meridian at the main office as its PSTN
> and have all of our sat. offices
> as ip phones only and get rid of the norstar systems..any one doing this of
> have any information? 

FWIW, I have an Option 11C tied to an Asterisk system and it works
pretty well using PRI. I then use Nortel's ITG to talk to a remote
location that I will be converting to Asterisk soon.

How do you plan to have the remote locations tied into the central
location?  T1? DSL/Cable modem? In your area you might want to get an
internet T1 from Time Warner Telecom and then use cable modems at each
of your remotes. Ignore this if you've got a good IP network already,
just making suggestions so that you don't have a voice quality
problem.

Another issue you'll want to make sure of is that your remote
locations have access to 911. Being a medical services provider this
is always a good idea and would necessitate either a single phone in
the office tied to a POTS line with stickers on every phone explaining
or a seperate Asterisk server at each location with a single POTS line
in it and contexts to intercept 911 and send it locally. By placing a
server with a POTS line (or even BRI if you like) at each location you
will also provide a backup route into the facility in the event you
have IP trouble and could give you bandwidth efficiencies by using IAX
trunking, assuming the potential exists for more than one call
simultaneously from one location to another.