We are looking to hookup FreePBX in a VMWare with a PRI from TimeWarner (Spectrum).
Our current system: fiber comes into our building and connects to a “RAD” box (ETX-203AX). This splits the fiber to internet, P2P, and PRI via 3 RJ45 jacks.
The PRI jack is connected to a Cisco IAD2431-1T1E1, and an RJ45 jack on this labeled “T1/E1 1/0” connects to our old PBX.
I want to know, to connect this to a virtualized FreePBX, do I need another piece (pri gateway), or can TimeWarner configure one of these boxes to handoff an IP address to my FreePBX ?
Technically the ethernet uses RJ45 wiring , but the PRI will use RJ48 wiring, they look the same but the RX/TX pairs are different…
It it highly unlikey that you can easily connect a PRI to a virtualized anything, you would need a T1/E1 capable hardware interface (Sangoma/Digium/Xorcom/cheap chinese knockoff) and both VT-X and VT-D (or the AMD equiv.) aware CPU’s and then you need to provision for the PCI passthrough which is highly dependent on your personal virtualization choice , BUT you can do it “virtually” by running Dahdi on the server’s hardware (just dahdi, NOT Asterisk) and cross-connect to a dynamic-eth dahdi instance over layer 2, running on your virtual machine ( it works very well, but takes a little RTFMing and a very UNBUSY ethernet connection )
You should likely best use a PRI-SIP gateway to do all that (Hardware from Patton, (other than your RAD) ,Multiquip Sangoma . . . and let all that shit do it for you).
Or you could ask Time Warner to give you a SIP handoff instead of PRI.
Whatever they sell to the end user, SIP trunks, POTS, PRI, it’s all SIP backbone, so there is no real difference between them anymore except for the pricing model and the device they install at customer premise for handoff.
So if you don’t need PRI (maybe you do for the old PBX if it can’t do SIP), go with SIP trunks.
And the hand-off can’t provide a reliable clock for your PBX,. Some legacy PBI’s have a punitive license cost for SIP channels, be careful as you migrate and further some of these guys lie about G711 for modems/ATM’s/tivos/TimeClocks/Alasrm panels/Fire Panels/Elavators etc, yes they might possibly handle FAX (lamely) but be forewarned, they will all die over SIPand then you will be absolutely liable when the Big Red Truck never got the call and your bosses house burned down
FWIW one of my AT&T managers suggested I needed to maintain Copper Pairs to ensure such critical connections, and of course these need to NOT go through your PBX to be UL approved. Trouble is that in that particular location they no longer will provide 1MB’s (go figure that shit I guess another trip to the PUC here is in order . . .)
and further some of these guys lie about G711 for modems/ATM’s/tivos/TimeClocks/Alasrm panels/Fire Panels/Elavators etc, yes they might possibly handle FAX (lamely) but be forewarned, they will all die over SIPand then you will be absolutely liable when the Big Red Truck never got the call and your bosses house burned down 
I guess another trip to the PUC here is in order . . .)