Hi there, I’m new to FreePBX, has been installing NEC on premises systems for years and was quite happy until they announced exit from the market.
Here is dilemma, I’ve recently acquired new client and sold him 5 nec systems for his offices, they are happy, but they need call recording feature and voice mail to email feature. Instead of investing into dead end nec, I’m planning to introduce Freepbx in between. All offices are independent businesses and don’t interact with each other, so they don’t need one centralized solution.
Here is how I see it: each location will get its own on premises Freepbx server, which will connect to existing SIP trunk provider and then deliver these trunks to NEC. Freepbx will play main greeting/announcement and route calls to first available trunk on NEC side. If call is not answered it will go to freepbx voicemail. Nec will only handle ringing of its extensions, internal transfers and intercom calls.
Currently each NEC system has 4 sip trunks with Clearfly and 2 analog trunks through Linksys ATAs also delivered by Clearfly.
Last night I downloaded Debian 12 and installed FreePBX 17. Now I’ll be going over tutorials and try to figure it out.
How should I setup sip trunks to another pbx in freepbx? As extensions or there is another option?
Hi Vitaliy:
Welcome to FreePBX 17, Sangoma, and Digium/Asterisk
What you are asking about and thinking about doing is super-cool. Congrats for starting on these types of rollouts and use-cases (wonderful to hear).
We have done these similar type setups for Avaya IP Office, a few different Panasonic PBX units, and thought about it for the NEC SL21000 series. You can do it!
In our LAB work area:
we have a brand new NEC SL2100 for this same purpose, but we have not gotten to it yet.
What type of hardware are you thinking about using for your Debian 12 / FreePBX installs?
Early idea for you to consider:
For your FreePBX 17 box (in front): maybe try using (SIP) extensions registered on the NEC (vs) another SIP trunk from FreePBX back to the SL21000.
Maybe I can help you more …
Keep posting your progress and ideas.
I got it up and running on hardware I had on hand it’s intel rugged nuc i5 fanless. Will probably switch to ready made appliances eventually, but before investing into it, need to make sure it works.
The NUC you describe seems like it is nearly ideal for a normal office sized rollout of a FreePBX solution.
For the NEC PBX behind it:
Can you remind us what are some of the main things the NEC logic lacks which FreePBX offers?
Sometimes bringing in SIP (from the outside) works smoother when you deliver it to an Asterisk/FreePBX LAN build, and then deliver SIP “locally” to the NEC PBX … (called: B2BUA)
you are on to something here : much easier to troubleshoot SIP from FreePBX (example) using sngrep from the CLI
In the days ahead:
Are you looking forward to using PoE style IP phones when not using NEC digital phones?
Remember: you can use a USB-dongle for WiFi on those IP phones which lack a “wall jack” (inside wiring) during your install … come back later and do the inside wiring runs
NEC SL2100 lacks call recording feature, CRM integration and overall very complex system to learn, there are no training material or tutorials out there. Programming interface is not intuitive at all, there are literally hundreds of proprietary settings without any explanation in manuals. Sl2100 was planned as more affordable small system to be sold by resellers of SV9100 enterprise grade system. So called tech support portal NTAC was never open to resellers of SL2100 series. Another main disadvantage of sl2100 is confusing and slow licensing scheme, it takes 3-5 days to get a license for a feature you want.
Nevertheless, their hardware is rock solid. I have many PBXs running for 10+ years with 100% uptime. If there are no requirements for anything more than calls, greetings voice and intercom, they are superior systems.
Again, due to them leaving US market, I’m planning on slowly introducing Freepbx solutions. I’m leaning towards on premises setups just because it’s easier to manage for me. At most locations I also provide and manage network infrastructure with cellular wan failover in place, as well as linksys or grandsteam fxs to a different sip provider as backup. All locations prewired for VoIP phones with Poe switches in most, so switching over wouldn’t take long. I can have both phones on the desk to make it easier for customers to transition
Thanks for mentioning more about all those proprietary settings involved in learning the NEC SL2100 series (logic).
We put our LAB bench unit back in its packaging and took it off the “to do list” for now.
If we can help more along the way:
with you learning more about using FreePBX / Sangoma, keep us posted
We are doing a lot of the same things (similar)!
Keep going!
I’ve ended up posting a job on one of those freelancers web sites and hired a guy from Ukraine who configured a dialplan and other settings in freepbx to do exactly what I needed within 2 hours over remote desktop session. It was pretty impressive to watch him work.
We did waste a lot of time on fixing Sangoma bugs that came with initial installation, freepbx web gui wouldn’t load, there was not enough memory allocated for php, so he had to manually change something in Debian system configs, luckily I hired a guy with deep knowledge of Linux.
As of right now it’s been running good for few days in home lab.
The only thing we couldn’t get to work is CID of extension on NEC side to be recorded in freepbx CDR. So there is no way of knowing which extension placed or answered a call.
It would be helpful if Sangoma posted training/how-to videos on YouTube. There is nothing out there for version 17. All of the material available is very old,
For someone like me who’s considering getting into freepbx it is a red flag, for me to commit I would like to see Sangoma commitment to train and support resellers, installers, end users.
To help more with CDRs.
The built-in module with FreePBX (CDR reports) is good for most. I like it, and it works well, but for some it is lacking.
In a few of the commerical systems: they do not have anything CDR (this has been a drag): sort of the reason a few people “put FreePBX in front” of these systems, so they can have a CDR report (even emailed to them).
Check out the free version of Asternic’s CDR reports
(not to be confused with their) Call Center Stats program
Check it out here:
About | Asternic Call Center Stats
They also have a $100 (onetime) paid version for this program
You can run BOTH the FreePBX CDR Reports module and Asternic CDR Reports on the same system because they have a different view of the call database.
Keep going!
Shawn, I’ll definitely look into it. CDR in freepbx works well enough, I really like how you can access Call Recording on the same page. I think proper solution is to create virtual extensions in freepbx and assign DIDs to route calls to individual NEC extensions. No reason to invest too much into temporary workaround. Ones NEC is gone we will switch to all Sangoma endpoints and reconfigure from scratch.
Nice. I like this approach too.
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