sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems Iwatsu Telephones & Systems pbx to pbx sip trunk

We currently have an iwatsu ECS as our main phone system. We also have a number of branch locations that have other vendors, including cisco. Since I am most familiar with cisco, it will be the one used as reference. Using ECS 8.0 I am able to send caller ID name and number via sip to the iwatsu system. I am not able to do the same going back to the cisco system. I am able to send the trunk ID, but that would require a seperate trunk for each individual station, which is a bad solution. I could also configure the CNIS table, but that would potentially screw up my caller id going to the pstn. What I really want to do is send the originating station id via sip. Is this possible, and if so, how?

This is going to be difficult to pull off. Every outbound call from the Iwatsu to a branch location is going to be treated as a trunk-to-pstn call and will follow whatever caller ID info you have set in the stations area. Sending station ID to remote Iwatsu systems is, naturally, SOP. I'd try getting your vendor on-site with a call to tech support to discuss your options. More info, like what other vendors, what SIP providers, etc is going to be needed before you can even start on this.

Does Iwatsu assume that no one will ever want to connect an Iwatsu PBX to another vendors PBX?

It took me all of 3 minutes to get a Cisco Callmanager system passing calls with caller id to an asterisk PBX and vice versa. We have been screwing around with Iwatsu for a considerably longer time. I guess vendor lock in is the name of the game here.

No- I don't think Iwatsu assumes anything of the kind. I meant that with the info you provided, it would be difficult to recommend anything. That's why I suggested your vendor and Iwatsu tech support try to get things rolling for you, that's all...

I think that is exactly what they, and most phone (not computer) vendors assume ..... you will be able to get much tighter integration between the sites.

Seems like if someone is doing a multi site solution it only makes sense to have the same equipment at all sites.

I would love to be a fly on the wall in some of these sales meetings when the cisco salesperson tries to tell customers that their system will integrate with a new cisco .... connect maybe... but not integrate :scratch:

i would be more interested in forklifting the entire iwatsu system out than installing a single new branch on iwatsu. Unfortunately, it's rather difficult to get $200k just because I dislike iwatsu. Our cisco sales team was straight up when they told us they knew they could pass calls, but not necessarily other features like caller id.

It would have been nice if iwatsu had designed for interoperability as other vendors do. They implemented the standard, but didn't take the extra step to allow caller id to send station id on the trunk. Right now I'm just ranting, hopefully in the future if anyone is considering an iwatsu system they will read this thread and realize that they be locked in to a single vendor if they buy it.

What type of voice-mail are you using on the Iwatsu. If you are using the ESNA TOL voicemail then you need to speak to your vendor they can use the voicemail to link any number of different systems together.