[Asterisk-Users] newbie questions

[Gary G. Hendershot]

Getting Asterisk to work with the proprietary phones from your Lucent PBX is
not likely to happen ...  you might be able to use Asterisk to act as a
"front end" to your Lucent PBX by using FXS cards ... you would have
Asterisk interface with the CO, then ring the Lucent box ... but you would
not be able to make use of most of the PBX features of Asterisk doing this
...  

about all you would get for your trouble is Attendant and VoiceMail ... how
your Lucent phones would then retrieve voicemail would be a real challenge
... suspect they would have to pick up an "outside line" and dial a code
into Asterisk to retrieve it ... transfers from Asterisk to specific Lucent
extensions would not work ...

You might be able to get a card for the Lucent box that would permit it to
accept connections from a standard analog phone ... this would let you
connect Asterisk as an extension ... grabbling an outside line would be a
"dial 9" chore for Asterisk ... but connecting it as an extension would
permit the auto attendant to do direct transfers to Lucent phones ...

Best thing to do would be to replace the proprietary phones with generic SIP
phones ...  doing this would make your Asterisk configuration cleaner and
easier to manage ...  also a lot more predictable ...

Check the wiki at http://www.voip-info.org ...  there are a number of
articles about how to interface Asterisk with legacy phone systems ... some
are quite creative and overcome most limitations ...

G.Hendershot


-----Original Message-----
From: Jean-Francois Theroux [mailto:jftheroux at privalodc.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 3:14 PM
To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] newbie questions

Hello,

	At the office we have a Lucent PBX, which has 3 lines coming from
the 
CO. 2 are used for phones, 1 for fax. In the office, we have 16 phones. 
All those are connected in the PBX. We do not have an automated system 
nor voicemail system for now. But this is something we would like to 
have now. Since we do a lot of work with Linux, I was asked to look into 
asterisk to deplace our PBX. Software-wise, I don't have any problems 
yet, doesn't look too bad hard to configure.

	Now, I know I would need a quad-port FXO card for our lines coming
in 
from the CO in that PC. What would be the best way to connect all those 
16 digital phones to the Asterisk box? I could always buy quad-ports FXS 
cards for now, as we don't use the 16 phones, but I don't think that's 
going to work well in the future when the company grows and we require 
more phones.

	Keep in mind telephony is very very new to me. Any help would be
very 
appreciated.

-- 
Jean-Francois Theroux
Systems administrator
PrivalODC
514.726.3732
http://www.privalodc.com