question: Cisco IP 7960 phones able to connect to NEC NEAX 2000 IPS PBX?

Hi,

This may not be possible, but I thought I'd write and findout.

Currently we ave a NEC NEAX 2000 IPS PBX that uses Dterm Series phones for the end user. They are not satisfactory, and I was wondering if there is a way to connect Cisco 7960 IP telephones to the NEC PBX?

If we have to buy a gateway, we would seriously consider doing so.

Thank you for your help and please feel free to ask me for any clarification.

Thank you,

Tazzer

Reply to
rodballingall
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Try this:

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It allows you to directly connect 8 IP phones to an NEC PBX.

Actually I am currently using this in my office to connect an 802.11b SIP phone to an Avaya PBX and it works great. This unit handles all different PBXs.

Depending on the IP phone though you might need to use a SIP Proxy though but you should be able to locate an opoensource / free one or purchase one. There are a few on the market that are not very expensive. You might even be able to get away with simply using DNS if you have to.

Reply to
Ray Cassick (Home)

I think you should be considering whether or not your NEC NEAX is able to work with SIP signalling, which is probably the only way to do this.

The cisco phone can take a SIP firmware load so you don't have to run SCCP. I've even seen them interfaced with an Avaya telephone system using their SIP server solution, although in practice I haven't seen any of the Avaya shops lining up to graft cisco phones onto their systems.

SIP would open your range of telephone devices to a broad range of devices beyond the cisco phones. It would keep you from getting locked into any one provider.

Tom

Identify the protocols the NEAX can work with first, choose your endpoint hardware second.

Reply to
Tom Lynn

Thanks Ray and Tom,

I'm beginning to see it will looks something like this: cisco 7960 phones > cisco call manager > SIP gateway > Neax 2000 ips

NEC has a product called Univerge that I think would be the sip gateway portion. I have about 200 cisco phones, and I can see from the link Ray gave that the intel machine does not support cisco.

The open source idea is interesting. Somehow using Astricks as a gateway might be possible-- though I'm too much of a newbie to know.

The only piece that must remain constant is the neax 2000 ips (it's mandated). This enables all of our offices to have nice 4 digit dialing and queues. However, if I can change the end piece to a cisco

7960 it will greatly save us time in wiring and allow people to move freely-- just plug in the phone to a port.

Thanks for moving me forward in my thinking. Be nice if I could find someone else who has done exactly this :-)

--Tazzer

Reply to
tazzer

I guess I misinterpreted this from the first page of the link to mean Cisco was not supported.:

Handset compatibility Nortel Avaya NEC Siemens

I suppose handset in this case does not refer to ip phones?

Regardless, I still need to figure out how to take about 200 cisco IP phones and get them to work with the Nec Neax 2000. The SIP gatway seems to be the way to go, unless someone can tell me differenet. Otherwise we will just have to settle with what we have.

Thanks.

Reply to
tazzer

Where did you see that Cisco phones are not supported?

Reply to
Ray Cassick (Home)

Ok, that handset list is if you are using the model that can drive phones. There is also a model of PIMG that can be used to help migrate away form a TDM based PBX to an IP based one. This model lets you drive various digital stations that you might have and still maintain an IP based PBX system on the back end.

The emulating units (The MTL, RLM, DNI and LS models) will connect to the PBX using a station port and drive an IPphone form there.

Reply to
Ray Cassick (Home)

Tazzer, take a look at the network diagram examples at the website that was suggested.

Buying the cisco call manager solution for your requirements is like using a sledgehammer to drive in a thumbtack!

If you don't like what you see, you can still look at sip gateway products from Nortel which should allow you to use the cisco phones with a SIP firmware load.

Reply to
Tom Lynn

Thanks guys,

As you may have guessed, I'm come into this sideways and am just sorting things out.

I should have given the backstory to my question.

Our regional office had been running Cisco Call manager with Cisco

7960's for years. Then our head office brought in the NEC NEAX 2000 IPS pbx with the digital handsets (dterm) and mothballed the cisco equipment. The goal was to have us all on the same equipment and allow queueing, 4 digit dialing, etc between both offices. The IP connectivity is between the two offices.

The system is working well with the exception of how much work is involved in maintaining staff moves and changes-- lots of rewiring and manual maintaining of the handset port list.

This all happened before my time with the company.

Seeing as how we have the Cisco equipment already, I thought it would be worth figuring out if we could get at least the phones to co-exist. The re-wiring of extensions is fairly time consuming with the dterm digital phones and it would be a huge win to not have to do that anymore.

Thanks for your suggestions and patience-- At least I know this is possible :-) . Also thanks for the pointer to the network diagram.

Reply to
tazzer

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