A Day in Paradise

I am setting up a PBX in our office, we are having a 3 mbit Integrated PRI coming in with a cisco QoS switch at the end of it. I don’t understand why I can’t just take any box and install Asterisk in it and then plug that into the switch.
does plugging into a switch through a T1 card give you better reliability
isn’t that what the QoS switch is for?
the PRI card in the PBX means another $1200 on the price
* awormus apologises if this is the wrong channel to ask :
awormus: Is the Cisco terminating the PRI?
eric_hill, yes
awormus: At 3MB, it’s probably two mft-t1 cards, right?
awormus: Next, does the Cisco have DSP modules?
alrs, not sure - it is probably the 2 t1s, as I know the switch has the 2 cards
awormus: Lastly, you need the IOS-VOICE software bundle (which you probably have) on the Cisco
eric_hill, not sure about the DSP modules, we haven’t settled on the actual hardware that we will use. They want to put an IAD on the end, but I don’t think that is nessesary since we’re not goign to do any analogue
awormus: You’ll need to set up VoIP targets for outbound SIP calls, and VoIP peers for inbound calls.
awormus: *if* you’re not using the Cisco for anything else, just pick up a dual port Digium T1 PRI card.
eric_hill, the cisco will deliver our internet as well and it will allocate the internet based on the number of phone lines in use
* awormus is a bit of a n00b
awormus: The Cisco is good and all, but just adds complexity to the situation.
awormus: Ah - that’s a different story.
awormus: Using a bonded PRI link with drop and insert… yes, you want a Cisco
eric_hill, OK - most of that went over my head but I will digest can you recommend a good book which will get me up to speed on Asterisk / VoIP and general concepts?
hardware etc.
awormus: I haven’t found a good book… Just realize that the Cisco is simply going to be a SIP target for placing calls out to the CO
awormus: The Cisco will accept an incoming call and direct it over to the Asterisk box as an inbound SIP call.
eric_hill, so (and excuse my ignorance) if I have a PBX that runs asterisk and I use an online SIP based service - the service will basically play the same role as the cisco
awormus: Correct. A online SIP service is simply playing the role of a SIP->Telco gateway, just as the Cisco will do.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 11:10 pm and is filed under interet, asterisk, voip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.