[Asterisk-Users] Newbie questions.....

[John Todd]

>Hi.....
>
>I have just successfully setup Asterisk with 2 Cisco 7940 phones 
>(converted for SIP) and a SIP softphone on a W2K box.....and it all 
>seems to work very well.....to those who wrote this software, it is 
>really cool.
>
>Anyway, I am new to this software, and I have a lot of questions 
>which I am hoping someone on the mailing list might be able to 
>answer for me.....I am basically trying to get an idea of  how/what 
>I can do with Asterisk that I am already doing with our existing 
>phone system....
>
>Sorry about the length of the mail....the docs don't seem to cover 
>some of the topics below.....
>
>Thanx in advance for any help.
>
>Chris.
>
>
>* We currently have a Cisco IP telephony system (using their 
>CallManager).....am I right in saying that Cisco phones using Skinny 
>will not work with asterisk? Is it ever likely too?

Skinny is not included as a channel in Asterisk at this time.

There are reports of a Skinny channel well into development - see 
http://www.sf.net/projects/sccp  and we await further testing.

>* When we connect and power on a Cisco 79X0 phone for the first 
>time, it automatically registers with the CallManager and is 
>assigned a temporary number. We then do into the CallManager admin 
>interface and assign it to its owner, give it its permanent number 
>etc. Among the things which happen are the TFTP files for the phone 
>(eg: SEP<mac_address>.cnf) get created as part of the automatic 
>registration. When I converted the phones to SIP, I had to manually 
>create config files for each phone (SIP<mac_address>.cnf 
>etc.).....is there any way I can have this happen automatically?

Yes and no.  You still will have to create a file called SIP<mac 
address>.cnf which contains the "extensions" that you expect the 
phone to use.  However, if you have an RFC compliant DHCP server, you 
should be able to make everything happen automatically except for the 
generation of that extension.  There are almost no hooks between any 
of the very sophisticated Cisco configuration files and Asterisk; 
they are _separate_ systems.  Asterisk simply deals with SIP devices 
and their SIP transactions - Asterisk does _not_ configure SIP 
devices, and Asterisk is not Cisco-specific in any treatment of SIP 
transactions.

I seem to recall that there is a Cisco 79xx administration tool in 
the http://www.vovida.org/ pages somewhere.

>* We have an 8 port E1 card in a Cisco 6509 which takes our main 
>phone trunk to the public network. Can we connect an Asterisk PBX 
>server with an E1 card to this? If so, could we then connect the 
>Asterisk PBX to the callmanager? (Perhaps with another extension 
>range).....and if so, how?

Yes.  The manual should explain further details.


>* .....or could we connect Asterisk to the 6509 over IP and so make 
>it part of the main phone system?

I don't know.  Does the 6509 talk SIP?

>* We have a Nortel Meridian PBX on our other campus which is 
>connected to our IP telephony system via an E1 link to a Cisco Vg200 
>voice H.323 gateway.......would there be any way to point asterisk 
>at this gateway and make it part of our main phone system that way? 
>....again if so how?

Yes.  That's too complex to explain adequately here, but you should 
try setting it up to answer the question yourself.

JT