What is the most reliable way to build a FreePBX T1 External Gateway, that will pass all traffic through with the DID/CallerID information to a FreePBX at another location? Any help or a point in the right direction would be appreciated.
We currently have a FreePBX server at one building on our campus that is directly connected to the PSTN through a TE110P card. We have built a new FreePBX, a virtual server on XenServer, at a different building. We are trying to get away from separate PBXs for each building. The new FreePBX needs to use the old T1 as the PSTN connection. The single T1 is more than sufficient for all of the buildings. To make it more interesting, we can’t move the T1. We do have good fiber networks between the buildings. I am trying to build a FreePBX server with a Sangoma T1 card, and I need it to pass all of the calls, with DID/CAllerID, to and from the main FreePBX server. It only needs to act like an external gateway. There will be not local extension on “Gateway Box”, I just need it to connect to the T1. The VOIP internal network is totally stand alone, no LAN traffic on it, so bandwidth is not an issue. Would some type of IAX trunk be the best bet? If so, any good examples out there. I keep finding a reference on Google to a config for this on the Trixbox fourms, but that link is long dead.
Perhaps given your use case and your fiber network supports the ability to have both boxes on the same ethernet (layer 2 bridging) , the most elegant way would be to just have dahdi running on your “gateway” box , no asterisk or FreePBX needed or even a layer 3 network :-). Set up dynamic span to the other box with a mac address of de:ad:be:ef:00:01 in /etc/dahdi/system.conf thusly:-
dynamic=eth,eth2/de:ad:be:ef:00:01,24,0
and then “cross-connect” them in a one-to-one fashion:-
dacs=1-24:25
on the far end the only span you need is a dynamic one back to the gateway which you then provision much the way that the original T1 was provisioned in /etc/dahdi/system.conf
You could also recycle the old box by replacing it with a redfone T1 gateway which essentially does exactly the same thing, (Redfone is dead but the hardware is very robust and zero maintenance)
Thanks James, I hadn’t thought of that, but luckily they are “very robust and zero maintenance”, In the ten years I have used them, I have needed neither.
I will say I have never used one but I always fear murphy’s law. In the last 10 years you haven’t needed them but they were available. Perhaps if you could pick em up 1/2 price to have a spare on hand It wouldn’t be too bad. I have never heard anything bad about their products and was frankly surprised when I heard they went away.