AW: [Asterisk-Users] Integrating an old PBX with Asterisk

[Andrew Kohlsmith]

On Thursday 05 August 2004 04:41, Peter Svensson wrote:
> Note that you may only be able to reach full integration for external
> calls. Not all pbx:es can be convinced to hand off some extensions to
> Asterisk etc. The level of integration you can get depends on your pbx.

The Norstar Meridian and MICS systems can do a pretty decent job... the trick:

- T1 card
- "services" card (or 6 port fiber/combo card, which includes services module) 
-- provides timing for the T1 card
- PRI license key
- MCDN (Meridian Customer Defined Network) licence key

depending on what you already have you might only need to purchase the MCDN 
key -- it is the trick that allows this all to work.

If the Norstar system is configured to be outside of North America you can 
apparently use Q.SIG -- but this is not allowed if the KSU thinks it is 
inside North America -- you're stuck with MCDN which from my understanding is 
a bitched-up version of Q.SIG.  As soon as my hardware shows up I plan on 
making a decent attempt at reverse-engineering MCDN.

The intent is to use MCDN to convince the KSU that there is another Norstar 
system on the other side -- with MCDN you are apparently able to light MWI, 
hand off voicemail and pretty much do anything you please.  I plan on turning 
the Norstar KSU into little more than a digital phone driver, passing all 
other functions off to Asterisk.

Now Asterisk only has limited support for Q.SIG but really aside from MWI and 
being able to tell which extension is calling there isn't much more needed to 
get a good start at replacing the proprietary crap.  I can already do 
rudimentary external voicemail support by configuring the KSU to set the OLI# 
for each extension to the extension # itself -- so the outgoing caller ID is 
really the extension set # -- * now knows who's calling and can do voicemail, 
but unfortunately I don't think there's any way to light MWI without MCDN.

-A.