[asterisk-users] Looking for wisdom - One Asterisk system - Multi-incoming trunks

[Jeff LaCoursiere]

On Wed, 29 Jul 2009, Myles Wakeham wrote:

> I'm pretty new to this whole Asterisk system & VoIP thing, but being a
> programmer by trade the complexity didn't scare me off (at least not yet)...
>
> I have setup an Asterisk system for my home & home office.  My wife & I
> run two separate businesses from home, and we have a general family home
> phone line as well.  The cost of all these lines with analog carriers
> was getting ridiculous, so I'm moving over to a SIP carrier.  I created
> one account for a single phone number with a SIP carrier (BroadVoice)
> and have it working well with my Asterisk system and one SIP phone here
> as a test.  I have IPCop as my Firewall/IDS system and all the SIP/NAT
> routing stuff is working fine (now).
>
> I started the process today to get our other phone numbers moved over to
> BroadVoice.  I checked with them regarding how this is setup and they
> said that what I was doing was ok, but I thought getting some 'peer
> review' on this wouldn't be such a bad idea so I welcome any comments,
> etc. on this.
>
> My approach is to have one trunk provided by the SIP provider.  All
> numbers are allocated to that trunk (BroadVoice let me do that when I
> setup the number transfer).  Asterisk receives an incoming call on that
> trunk and determines the calling number that it was requesting (not sure
>  how to get this, but Broadvoice assured me I could).  Anyway after
> determining what the call was destined for, I then route the call to the
>  appropriate context in the extensions to handle it.
>
> I'm fine with setting up all the logic, flow, etc. for the calls.
>
> But here's where I'm not sure what to do.  I'm getting 4 line
> Grandstream phones for my office and my wife's office.  And an ATA
> adapter for the general home line.  The home line will always call out
> using the home phone number.  The office numbers, however, should change
> their caller ID and caller name based on which extension is pressed on
> the phone for the outgoing call.  I can see how to do this with the
> Grandstream SIP phones, and have this working ok for my test phone line.
>
> Broadvoice, however, won't let me change the outgoing caller ID.
> Apparently they have to do this on a trunk by trunk basis.  So if I want
> to have an outgoing call go through line 1 (let's say its ACME Inc), I
> want it to show 'XXX-XXX-XXXX Acme Inc' for the Caller ID.  But if the
> call is being sent through line 2 (let's say its SMITH PROPERTY) I want
> it to show 'YYY-YYY-YYYY Smith Property' for the Caller ID.  It looks
> like in order to do that, I need to purchase separate trunks for each of
> the outgoing lines.
>
> Does this sound right?  Should I have purchased all separate trunks up
> front and then have the phone number transfer associated with the trunk
> for it?  Or is this only something that will affect outgoing calls, so
> its not a big deal?  And what about when the line is busy?  How is that
> handled?  I was on the phone yesterday when another call came in, and it
> came in, jumped to a different extension and then eventually went to
> voice mail as I didn't answer it.  Will my plan to use one trunk for all
> incoming lines make sense here, or am I likely to get all of this mixed
> up with calls coming in for one business and being routed to the wrong
> place?
>
> Any suggestions, thoughts or critique would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thank you wise Asterisk gurus!
>
> Myles

Hi Myles,

You don't have to send the traffic back to broadvoice for outbound if you 
don't want or need to.  Perhaps you can send the home traffic to 
Broadvoice and pick another carrier to send your other outbound traffic 
to, perhaps one that won't be so picky about your outbound CID.

j