atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums VOIP Phones & IP PBX VoIP & Cloud Phones, Hosted PBX, General IP Phones Why don't IP phones have universal many DSS buttons like digital system phones?

Ahhh man, didn't we have an icon of someone beating a dead horse around here somewhere?

It all works depending on the needs

Hmmm...



No, no...not quite...



Might fit, but no...

Wait!




Looks like I found it!

The asterisk is strong with this one! LOL

We sell, install and maintain Tadiran systems and have since the early 1980's. The IP provisioning is WONDERFUL!! We are also now doing Asterisk and MANY things that the Tadiran does very, very simply are not so simple in the Asterisk, ie. how many lines of code does it take in the Asterisk to simply toll restrict specific stations and allow others full access?? Secondly, while SOME of the components of the Asterisk are relatively inexpensive, much of this "free" system is NOT. Purchasing the right server/s, gateways etc. are NOT inexpensive and we often find that deploying a Tadiran to a IP environment is significantly LESS expensive and far more user friendly (Gawd, I HATE that term!!)

YES, the world of SIP telephony is upon us and will continue to be so, but until more telephone types (like most of us here) get into the game, feature function of these systems is going to be rough sledding for the end user.

Ahhhh, how many lines indeed. Let us count the ways...

First we have one method that assumes you dont want any long-distance dialing (one-line):
exten => _NXXNXXXXXX,1,congestion


Unless you are referring to blocking 900#'s, then it's 4...

exten => _900NXXXXXX,1,congestion
exten => _976NXXXXXX,1,congestion
exten => _977NXXXXXX,1,congestion
exten => _978NXXXXXX,1,congestion

Unless you just want to allow local calling to your free LATA, then it's 1 line for 7-digit plus one line for each of your 10-digit LATA.

exten => _NXXXXXX,1,Dial(Zap/G1)
exten => _727NXXXXXX,1,Dial(Zap/G1)
exten => _813NXXXXXX,1,Dial(Zap/G1)
exten => _863NXXXXXX,1,Dial(Zap/G1)
exten => _941NXXXXXX,1,Dial(Zap/G1)

(those are my "local" dialing area's)

Ofcourse, to just allow everything to dial is just 1 line as well:

exten => _X.,1,Dial(Zap/G1)

The point is that it's not necessarily harder, just different then what you are used to. The difference is everyone is approaching Asterisk expecting the low-level stuff to be done already leaving just the high level configuration, like assigning BLF's, assigning extensions, programming IVR menus/prompts. When you get greeted with programming an IVR from scratch it becomes overwhelming most of the time. It would be like if your tadiran showed up with no software on it and you had to write it. That's more along the lines of what Asterisk is.

Hey there Kumba!! Good response, BUT (there's ALWAYS one of those isn't there?) What I want to do is exclude SOME stations from dialing long distance, not ALL of the stations. And I can't just allocate a specific line/trunk here, the client has too few trunks already!!

I'd like to clarify a bit here also. YES, I am PROUDLY a "telephone guy". I've spent the past 30 years in this career and I love it, always have. I also embrace the world of "Computer Telephony", it is exciting and challenging and the future for all of us. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of this, for me anyway, is learning linux and Asterisk. Believe me, learning to write those lines of code and understanding what the hell I'm creating is a bit daunting at 61 years of age! I learned how to program in Basic in the 70's, and for many years I would got to a DOS prompt from windows and use the DOS commands to make our PC's do what I wanted them to do, and got it done MUCH more quickly than I could using the Windows commands.

I WILL learn all of this, I have already implemented a couple of Asterisk systems using the "crutch" of trixbox and I'm happy with the results, because my clients are happy with them.

We at this company pride ourselves on creative implementations and developments. Using a Tadiran as the host system and a combination of Samsung DCS (old versions), Tadiran IP phones at other locations, Multitech MVP products on an AT&T MPLS network and a lot of brainwork, we have been able to do some things that all of these manufacturers told us woouldn't work. Like, sending a call to an 800 number for one specific remote location over the E&M set-up of the multitechs and in a no-answer condition having that call overflow to yet another remote location for call coverage. Sounds simple huh? The Tadiran assumes the call has been anwered on the far side becaues the Multiteh has "handled" the call and the Samsung simply will NOT do a call forwrd external over E&M.

"nough said...creativity and working on the "slick board is a way of life for us.....even us old telephone guys!!

PM Sent for a better method to do dialing control (off-topic for this post)