sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services T1's, CSU's and DSU's Channel bank as FXS ports for Asterisk?

There's a lot of old T1 channel banks floating around. I was wondering if there's a way to rig one up to give FXS ports for creating extensions on Asterisk instead of using multiple ata adapters like Sipuras. Most likely the hardware to interface with the Asterisk PC is overpriced like all T1 stuff, but has anyone actually tried this?

most channel banks will allow you to change cards out so ports can be used as FXO or FXS, the programming will need to be changed as well.

How do you reprogram the channel bank, through serial port or ethernet port or??? I have a couple Newbridges and a carrieraccess adit 600 to play with. I found manuals for the Newbridge but the carrier access site has something to hide unlesss you have a login. Anyone have documentation on the adit 600?

they do not have something to hide,they just do not want their products being serviced by unqualifed techs, or endusers for that matter. I have never used a NewBridge and really do not have much experince with Carrier access either, I am mainly an Adtran guy.

I've used to work quite a bit with the Newbridge 3624 and a tiny bit with the Carrier Access.

With the Newbridge, you can connect to the "Terminal" port located behind the locked access door.

We would use ProComm and configure it for 9600, N,8,1. The most common voice modules used with that channelbank supported loop start/ground start lines.

I will admit that channelbanks have pretty much disappeared from the scene since most PBX equipment today can connect directly to a T1 & CSU.

For you to interface anything with Asterisk wouldn't it have to be a SIP enabled device? How would you route calls to and from the analog ports through the SIP Server if they weren't?

There would also be the conversion from digital to analog. Where would that be done?

By the way, Adtran makes sip enabled routers that can do sip trunks to fxs ports. Check out the Adtran 900 series.

Well Asterisk can do SIP, IAX2 and Zaptel. Already it uses modems as FXO ports with the zaptel driver, and Digium makes T-1 cards, so I am sure it can be done. The bad thing is that a specialized interface for T-1 is rare and extremely overpriced. I always wondered why someone didn't make a T-1 to Ethernet converter. So the Adtran 900 can do SIP within the device? Sort of like a multi-port SIP ata box then? As for the CarrierAccess box, is there anyway I can get documantation for it?

There aren't many channel banks that are capable of FXS, and the ones that are, are very expensive. Don't know why....

We use channel banks mainly to connect analog stations to either an asterisk box digium T1 or a dialer's Dialogic T1. T1 cards plus a channel bank are cheaper than a 24-port station card.

re: "T1 to ethernet"....
Doesn't exist. But VegaStream makes a series of boxes that will gateway T1s, FXOs, FXSs or both to SIP. We have used one with 10 FXOs together with Asterisk.

The 900 series has the ability to take a T1 in and connect channels to a router card. Can be as many channels as needed but these are 64k data channels.

I guess it is like one big ata with varying fxs ports. You can also do FT1 passthrough if needed and I believe they also support v.35 passthrough.

Some models even have fxo/lifeline support if I recall correctly.

Hope this helps.

That's odd because both the Newbridge and CarrierAccess channel banks have fxs ports, the newbridge even has a substantial 90V ringer supply! All I want to do is use the fxs ports, no T1 comming in, just to provide multiple dial tone ports for 1a2 and single line phones.

I'm not quite sure but why wouldn't you be able to plug the box into ethernet and then use the fxs ports for your sip trunks? I don't see "why" that wouldn't work. Perhaps a call to Adtran can confirm that?

Why would the fxs sip trunks care if they came via ethernet or T1/router port?

Problem there is you are paying for all of the other bells and whistles that you won't be using anyway.

Shrug...

Fred

And getting documentation on these can be all but impossible. I wonder what the default IP would be to access features?

https://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk+Channel+Bank It seems like they have tested this thing and had success. How can I get technical info to see if mine has a compatible ethernet port?

If you mean the Adit 600, any ethernet handoff will do but you might need a crossover cable depending on the application. The CMG cards are "ok" really but I'm not a huge fan of the adit. Make sure you have the latest cmg code.

Just also know that it DOES require MGCP as the Adit does not support SIP trunks yet and it also doesn't support FXO as of yet from what I read below. (Can you do MGCP with Asterisk?)

I should also warn you that from my experience, Carrier Access doesn't think on the IP level very well. They are a voice company first with data thrown in because they felt they had to.

Just so you also know, the Adit 600 doesn't even have a way to keep time/date info in a reboot or loss of power scenario. To me it's a design flaw but they insist it was a cost saving measure. At least that's what I was told.

Carrier Access
* ADIT 600
o excellent gear perfect with Asterisk
o FXS Interfaces: supports callerid and callwaiting, doesn't seem to support callwaiting callerid, someone correct if this is wrong.
+ CMG card provides an Ethernet MGCP interface as an alternative to T1.
+ NOTE: CMG card ONLY supports FXS at this time!!!

Well Asterisk does have the MGCP protocol built in, but I am not sure what it's capabilities are. The MGCP capable phones sometimes work, but I know of no one using a channel bank with it. Still can't find a manual or info on the adit 600. Not worried about power failure, this thing came with a 48 Volt battery backup. Since it was free, what do I have to lose? Don't have the CMG card though, just the TDM controller and 3 8 port FXS cards. All I want is a better alternative to get a lot of FXS ports for extensions instead of using multible ATA boxes. What's the IP address the ADIT has on it?

You need to have a CMG card to do what you want. The router card is just for internet data. The CMG card acts as a router card for data and also terminates MGCP trunks. Make sure that your TDM code is over 9.0 rev too. If not, you'll probably want to update it.

I am trying to see if I have a CD which might contain a PDF for you.

Thanks, I would definately appreciate any documentation you can locate.

rotary500, send me your email address so I can arrange to send you PDF files. Need to see how large they are first but I have a recent document CD in front of me.

Emails sent and received.

Thank you for the help, I am looking forward to experimenting with this!