************************* Well it did turn out to be an issue with the ATA itself. The issue is the way it sends its digits. It kept sending them like it was calling an extension instead of in the E.164 format. I ended up creating a work around in the Succesion itself to get it to work. While this might not be the best way configure this, it does work and if anybody knows a better way I am definitely all ears...
I changed the NCOS of our H.323 virtual trunks, to allow for making outgoing calls. Then in the NRS, under the gateway endpoint of the Signaling Server itself, I created a Level0 regional CDP.udp routing entry (80) with a route cost of 1.
Afterwards I went into Element manager and I created DSC 80; pointing to RLI 50, which I also created in Element manager. RLI 50 has a DMI (50)(Digit Manipulation Index) associated with it, which will delete the first two leading digits and then inserts a 9 thereby getting the call into BARS/NARS. So basically instead of dialing "9" to make a call out to the switched circuit network (public teleco network). I have to dial 80 and then whatever phone number to make a call to the outside world.
I modified the DialPlan field in the ATA with this entry:R80^(911|.r3)|X(1900|1976)|F011 . What it does is it automatically adds 80 to any number dialed except if the number dialed is 911 or the number dialed is only four digits. This allows me to retain extension to extension calling since we use four digit extensions. This string also blocks any dialing of 1900 or 1976 numbers and disallows fowarding to international numbers.
**On a side note, it appears that the first ATA I was testing with was faulty. It would just lose connectivity, the network LED would flash but I couldn't ping the device and it would unregister with the gatekeeper. It was a real pain because everytime I would try to change a configuration field via the web interface and apply the change, it would stop responding. I would then have to unplug it, wait between 5 to 10 seconds and plug it back in to get it working again. Luckily we had bought another device for testing and with which I swapped out and it seems to be working much better. I guess I should of tried that first instead of spending countless hours researching if there was a flag or a setting I could change that would solve the problem. I actually thought it was a type of power saving mode or something, LOL! Ah well, it least I have a better understanding of the ATA 188, the Succesion and how H.323 works now!
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