[Asterisk-Users] Nortel --> Asterisk-------->Asterisk

[Andrew Kohlsmith]

On January 28, 2005 09:16 pm, Ryan Cavanaugh wrote:
> I would like to link the Nortel BCM to * using the a digital trunk card.
> The BCM will continue to service the Tampa location, the * box would
> simply be used to pass extensions over the PRI to another * server in
> Sarasota and for a few SIP clients in other locations. Both servers will
> require two T100P cards. The Tampa server requiring one for
> communication with the BCM and one for the PRI to Sarasota. The Sarasota
> server will have one for communicating with the PRI to Tampa and one for
> accessing the PRI for local lines.

I don't use a BCM, but I have a Norstar MICS interfaced to * through a DTI 
card + PRI enabler.  I'm currently gearing up to reverse engineer the MCDN 
(SL1) protocol that Norstar uses to communicate between Norstar boxes and do 
things such as centralized voicemail and the like.

Every call we have goes through Asterisk -- it's been this way for the past 
year and, barring stupid mistakes of my own doing, it has worked flawlessly.

> I am really looking to achieve the following:
> 1. Reliability
> 2. Call quality
> 3. Cost effectiveness
> 4. Redundancy

One through three are serviced famously by asterisk.  All my voice calls use 
the GSM codec and I've not had one complaint.  Whenever I try to use iLBC I 
get call quality complaints, even though the system is more than powerful 
enough to handle our call volumes with iLBC.  I'd like to give g729 a shot 
and see how that works, too.

Number four can only be handled as well as you set it up -- By this I mean you 
can certainly have a decent asterisk box with redundant power supplies, RAID1 
(software RAID1 on IDE works just fine here, no need to use a proprietary 
hardware SCSI RAID1 implementation), multiple ethernet links and the like but 
remember that the BCM has only one power supply and only one T1 -- let's not 
go crazy with the redundancy here.  :-)

-A.