T1/ISDN integration with VoiP?

Sure. What you want is a PBX. VoIP is just a way to carry voice traffic. On the IP side, the number of conversations is only limited by the size of your Internet connection.

If you don't already have a PBX, look at Asterisk, a virtual Linux based PBX. Its IP connection is an Ethernet card. For the individual phone users, if you want to use existing phone wiring, the company that gives away Asterisk also sells adapter cards for regular phone extension lines, or you can run your PBX over your office lan and use individual IP phones or IP terminal adapters at each desk.

Reply to
John R. Levine
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If I have VoiP and use a converter to what normally would be a POTS line, what if, instead, the converter went to a T1 or ISDN set up. Could I have 23 or 24 incoming VoiP calls, each going to a different DID number? Could I have an outgoing call center with 23 or 24 agents each talking over VoiP at the same time to 23 or 24 different people?

Reply to
Dave

I am not sure exactly what you are asking about.

You say "voip converter"; is this a PABX, a soft switch or what?

For a cheap alternative you can fire up a pc with asterisk and a T1 card (sangoma is the cheapest), and switch the calls to and from the T1. Similar stories for Cisco and other PABX vendors; although the word "cheap" is not appropriate for these.

Configured as an ISDN PRI a T1 will give you 23 slots for phone calls. An E1 will give you 30. You may get one more on each if they are set up as "R1" channels; which are just digitized POTS phone lines with in-band signalling AKA DTMF.

If you can terminate the T1 to an IP/VOIP provider (QoS-based VPN definatly recommended) then you can encode the calls with a codec using less space, giving you somewhere between 50 and 100 calls over the same physical T1 or G.703 circuit, now running IP instead of some PRI protocol at some expence in processing power.

You also need to distribute the VOIP channels locally, but as long as you have a switched, full duplex LAN you should have plenty capacity for VOIP locally.

-- mrr

Reply to
Morten Reistad

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