sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems Vertical Telephones & Systems MBX to SBX Networking?

Has anyone had the pleasure setting this up yet? We're going to make our first attempt on Friday and was wondering if there were any tips or suggestions to making sure everything goes off without a hitch...or at least as little hiccups as possible. Thanks in advance.

I have SBXs networked together but not SBX to MBX. I can help on the SBX side if needed.

On the MBX side, I recommend upgrading to 1.7cd. I would also change my number plan to use 4 digits. 11xx for system 1 and 21xx for system 2. This is the easiest method to me.

Add 3 don't care digits to both leading digits 1&2 to create 4 digit dialing. Then reenter the new station numbers because the old ones will be gone. In your voice network attributes you will modify your tables 1 & 2 numbering to be 11xx and 21xx.
then add the IP addresses and you're almost home.

In lines, enable Networking and I'd put the VoIP lines into group 2. Without digging, I think you also need to enable DID. I know this isn't complete but it is a good chunk of it.

FYI: I just bailed on an MBX to XTS field trial (4 pre-existing XTS sites) after discovering all my XTS's needed to be full XTS's with VoIBs (No XTSc's or LANBs). It was a bummer, but I learned a few things on the way. I hope this helps.

Thanks Dave for the tips. We actually just installed the MBX system yesterday, they aren't moving into their new building until tomorrow and they all of a sudden decided they were going to relocate their SBX to another office and wanted the networking.

Naturally we set the MBX up for 3 digits extensions out of the box...so that may be tricky for the dial plan. Perhaps if we change the SBX dial plan when we reinstall it so they use 2xx or 3xx extensions instead? I was reading the other thread yesterday about adjusting dial plans and hope it can be done easily without issues.

I'll be sure to pick your brain too Derrick if we have some issues with the SBX.

You need to use 4 digit on the SBX as well. If you don't you will run into all kinds of numbering conflicts. Also you may need to change the numbers of the Virtual Mailboxes which can remain three digits.

Dave, I am getting some clarification from Vertical about MBX-XTS networking. With multiple sites, I gather that if one were an XTS with the full 12/24 port voip card that it can act as a hub to all other sites allowing the MBX to still talk to all networked extensions. This is something that I am going to be faced with in the next few months. Hopefully the above scenario will work.

Derrick, The VoIBE can be upgraded to recognize the MBX but the small LANB boards can't. You also have to upgrade all the XTS systems to 4.1 so that the network tables in F16.7 can be set to 2 for MBX/SBX. Previously, 2 was used for Telenium.

I was also under the exact same impression as you in that XTS VoIP behaved like PRI networking. That's what sandbagged me. VoIP uses the "cloud" and what we think of as nodes actually communicate with each other directly. The very idea of a Hub with Nodes goes away.

Actually, you can make it act like a PRI networking as opposed to a cloud. It is pretty simple, you use one range of extensions at each "node" with the ip address of the hub...in this case the XTS with the 24 port card....that system has all the node ips programmed in the network tables. Call comes in from a node the hub passes it on thru a second ip port to where it needs to go.
This works. I am doing it now with some extensions that have moved from one office to another and want to keep the same extension number. I only change its location (ip address) at the original XTS and when a node calls that extension the call is relayed to where it needs to go.

Let me see if I get this. Lets say the Hub is 11xx, Node A is 21xx and Node B is 31xx.

Then when Node A dials 31xx, the hub receives the call and reroutes it to Node "B?"

Would the hub stay in the loop making the call traverse the web twice? Wouldn't that use more VoIBE ports and also double the hops to create latency concerns?

Yes, the hub stays in the loop. You are now using 4 total voip ports instead of just two, if everything went thru the cloud. This could add some latency depending on what type connection you are using...public or private but I don't think it is any worse than using ip phones with a network of systems...you can only attach the ip phone to one phone system in the network and if the user calls any station not on the same system as the ip phone, the call has to be rerouted using more than one port.

I'll start a new post for any further comments on MBX to XTS networking