Configuration with 10 SIP accounts

[nn4l]

Our company has 10 employees working from their home offices. The phone company has provided a block of 10 consecutive phone numbers, each number has its own SIP account and password. Currently we have configured all phones (SNOM 370) such that each of them logs in directly to its account – works but obviously we don’t have any PBX features other than plain telephony.

 

What we want to do is using pbxnsip as the middle man, handling all voice mail, transferring calls to a colleague etc. and use the phone company to handle all incoming and outgoing (land line) calls.

 

How would I configure pbxnsip in this situation? Do I need to configure 10 trunks, one for each account? That would be a showstopper because I then need the Enterprise 100 license which is too expensive.

 

How do I create a single dial plan so that each outgoing call chooses the right account at the phone company so that the called party sees the correct caller id (which is set by the phone company dependent on the selected account)?

[andrewgroup]

How do I create a single dial plan so that each outgoing call chooses the right account at the phone company so that the called party sees the correct caller id (which is set by the phone company dependent on the selected account)?

 

I would first begin by asking the ITSP phone company if they support a SIP trunk as opposed to individual accounts, Most do. If not you might want to mention the name here in the forums so others can decide accordingly.

[Vodia PBX]

You should sonsider assigning tel: alias names to the extensions. For example, if an extension has the DID number 2121234567, use the name tel:2121234567 as one of the alias names for the acconut (you can have several). For representing the number on outbound calls, try RFC3325 and the other methods in the trunk setup. This really depends on the operator how they want to have it. See http://wiki.pbxnsip.com/index.php/Outbound_Calls_on_Trunk.

 

Inbound is another story. If you want to send all calls to the same auto attendant, things are simple. Just tell the trunk where to send all calls. Take a look at http://wiki.pbxnsip.com/index.php/Inbound_Calls_on_Trunk for other scenarios.

[andrewgroup]

Our company has 10 employees working from their home offices. The phone company has provided a block of 10 consecutive phone numbers, each number has its own SIP account and password.

 

Let me assume a few things. 10 employees work from home. Does this mean that you have employees working in an office?

 

Let me ask a dumb question. Why are these users not registering their phones agains the company PBXnSIP as opposed to what sounds like a hosted phone system?

 

If these numbers were part of the bigger company SIP trunk then the previous advise about create TEL: alias within each phone account might give you what you intended to have when the phone company set up the added numbers. DID to 10 remote office workers.

 

Are we close?

[nn4l]

Yes, we all work from home, there is no real office. The PBXnSIP software is hosted on a Linux box in a commercial data center. So this box is actually our company PBX. I have now configured PBXnSIP with 10 trunks (to each of the SIP accounts) and 10 dial plans. Each employee has two identities on the SNOM telephone, one is the account of the central number, the other account is his own account. So each user can choose whether to dial out using the central number (for calling new customers for example) or using his own number. Customers can call the central number or the extension if they know it. Also internal calls, routing etc. works just fine.

 

The phone company sold us the 10 SIP accounts because we ordered it this way (out of ignorance) but it can be reconfigured to a SIP trunk.

 

However, having true SIP accounts may not be a bad idea: In case our Linux box fails we could quickly reconfigure our telephones to directly connect with the phone company. So we will not lose connectivity. I think this is a good thing to have and I am not sure whether I should give this up if I can avoid it.

 

My only problem is whether I have to use 10 trunks since this requires a much more expensive license key.

 

In Germany (where I am located) most ISPs offer high-speed DSL plus several SIP accounts plus telephony flatrate plus router for small money. I pay about US$50/month for unlimited 16 MBit DSL, unlimited telephony and 8 SIP accounts. So if PBXnSIP would offer the 10 user version with 10 trunks instead of just one, that would be a killer product.

[Vodia PBX]

If operators start to require that every DID has it's own registration - good night. Technically it is no problem having ten registrations, but when we are talking about more eventually the 16 MBit will be eaten up by REGISTER messages.

 

From a license policy nothing is written in stone (or in C++). If there is a need to have a special version for German operators then that can be done.

 

Now that we have the new German prompts!

[brandywinetech.com]

you can absolutely control OB caller ID based on the users extension , your reseller should be able to set this up for you ..

 

 

I would not bother with 10 trunks, if your Linux box goes down that much you have a bigger problem to give up excellent PBX functions for "just in case" scenarios ..

 

get the single trunk and do it right, make a hot swap box in case the server crashes and have the provider allow you to route calls to your cell phones if your SIP registration is lost ..