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Trunking 2 branch offices and 1 HQ office


kellenw

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I have gone through the knowledge base and searched the forums, which shed a little light on this topic, but I'm still having a hard time wrapping my mind around the full concept and setup process.

 

I currently have 2 CS410's running the latest v4 beta in the testing lab that will be placed in the branch offices. I plan to purchase a windows pbxnsip license for HQ.

 

The system needs to do the following:

- All users in all 3 locations can intercom each other.

- Calls can be transferred from one office to any of the others.

- Users can dial out on CO lines of other offices.

 

Things I would like the system to do, but could live without if I had to:

- BLF possible for CO lines of other offices. (without registing phone to other office's pbx)

- Ability to pickup another office's ringing CO line (also without registering phone to other office's pbx... multiple registrations cause too many issues for me).

- BLF for phone extensions of other offices (again, without registering phone to other office's pbx).

 

Is this possible? Am I crazy for wanting to try it? Can someone point me to any documentation that covers this?

 

Thanks for any input or advice!

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Is this possible? Am I crazy for wanting to try it? Can someone point me to any documentation that covers this?

 

This is not crazy. AFAIK there is no special document that covers such a setup. We do the same thing.

 

In our setup, we have an extension in HQ for each branch office (whatever that exactly is :) ). Then in the branch office we just register to this extension. That's essentially it. It has some drawbacks with the Caller-ID presentation, but this solves many problems with NAT & Co.

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I have gone through the knowledge base and searched the forums, which shed a little light on this topic, but I'm still having a hard time wrapping my mind around the full concept and setup process.

 

I currently have 2 CS410's running the latest v4 beta in the testing lab that will be placed in the branch offices. I plan to purchase a windows pbxnsip license for HQ.

 

The system needs to do the following:

- All users in all 3 locations can intercom each other.

- Calls can be transferred from one office to any of the others.

- Users can dial out on CO lines of other offices.

 

Things I would like the system to do, but could live without if I had to:

- BLF possible for CO lines of other offices. (without registing phone to other office's pbx)

- Ability to pickup another office's ringing CO line (also without registering phone to other office's pbx... multiple registrations cause too many issues for me).

- BLF for phone extensions of other offices (again, without registering phone to other office's pbx).

 

Is this possible? Am I crazy for wanting to try it? Can someone point me to any documentation that covers this?

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This is not crazy. AFAIK there is no special document that covers such a setup. We do the same thing.

 

In our setup, we have an extension in HQ for each branch office (whatever that exactly is :) ). Then in the branch office we just register to this extension. That's essentially it. It has some drawbacks with the Caller-ID presentation, but this solves many problems with NAT & Co.

 

This would probably work out perfectly. I figured I would have to setup "gateway" trunks and so forth. Simple exensions and registrations would be a breeze, if they can accomplish what I'm looking for.

 

I'm going to work on setting this up in the lab between the two CS410's I have, and I'll report back. Thanks pbxnsip!

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Okay. I setup an extension (900) on the "HQ" box in the lab, and a trunk on the "branch" box to register to it. Both boxes show the extension is correctly registered.

 

Now, how do I go about paging, transferring and using phone lines from one box on the other? I've tried the usual, but I'm stumped.

 

Thanks!

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Okay. I setup an extension (900) on the "HQ" box in the lab, and a trunk on the "branch" box to register to it. Both boxes show the extension is correctly registered.

 

Now, how do I go about paging, transferring and using phone lines from one box on the other? I've tried the usual, but I'm stumped.

 

Thanks!

 

Any advice? Thanks!

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If you do what pbxnsip has suggested (above) you are setting up what's called a E&M (Ear & Mouth) trunk pair. I'm really disappointed that pbxnsip is offering this as the solution as it is a brutal, old-school hack. It's like someone there doesn't understand VoIP at all, or this concept of using more than one cs410 was completely off their radar when they designed it. Anyway, here's what they mean:

 

Extension dial tone from one cs410 is an outgoing "trunk" on your windows box and vice versa. You will need to adjust dialing rules on the windows box to send all direct dial extension traffic for a specific office over the correct "trunk".

 

So, if you have extensions in office A starting with 4xxx, and extensions in office B starting with 5xxx, make a dialing rule that that uses the correct trunk when it sees that pattern. You will also have to set this up in reverse on every system to handle calls back to the main office AND calls between branch offices. But when you're done, anyone can pick up any phone in any office and just dial the extension they want. You could do intercom and paging as well, but that requires more thought...

 

In any case, - NOT ideal and really shouldn't be suggested or used I think - because:

  • In this setup it uses TWO extension licenses on each system and requires an additional extension license on EVERY system for every office you add!
  • You can't mix extensions and have to have separate number groups (e.g. 2xxx, 3xxx, and 4xxx) or have a "code" for each office (e.g. dial 7+extension for New York and 8+extension for Boston)
  • It really doesn't scale well and can get very confusing very quickly.

Ideally there should be a better way to do this using ENUM and registering each pbx with each other. I am trying to set up exactly the same thing but am facing the same problem but it seems these guys never considered this as an option.

 

Pbxnsip hinted somewhere that this might be supported in a future release, but they haven't released a date so this might be your only (very expensive) option for now.

 

AK

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