[cisco-voip] Need Help on CME Installation

[Doug McIntyre]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 03:38:02PM -0600, Kim, Hyoun S wrote:
> Supposedly this office is currently under contract with the local Telco.
> They wanted to go to a PRI late last year but the Cisco phone system
> wasn't ordered at the time.  If they were to move to a PRI, then work
> would have had to be done on the existing Nortel system (which is being
> leased by the telco).  They didn't want to do that because they were to
> eventually going to get that Cisco setup.  So it ends up that they
> missed the deadline and they renewed the existing configuration for
> another year.
> 
> So they are to get a PRI, but not until Dec 2010.  In which in that
> case, we'll just get a VWIC PRI interface card.


It might be well worth it in your time and the *much* longer configuration
and setup time you will have to spend in this setup to float the end
of the contract, get a PRI in from a CLEC, and port the numbers needed over. 

If they have DID lines, you are going to have to deal with the telco
for hours if not days straight just getting down exactly what they
have, how its setup, which signalling is in use, troubleshooting the
trunk group setup, etc. etc. 

Before there was PRI, there was much confusion, and much
restrictions. PRI was a savior for time, ease of use, and big time
feature sets compared to what existed beforehand. Especially for DIDs, 
hunt groups, utilizing the trunks for both inbound and outbound calls. Etc.


> Yeah, it's a big headache.  I miss doing setups with 1 or 2 PRIs.

Is it worth it getting 4 * $600 cards, and spending an extra 50-75 hours 
of configuration vs. eating up the rest of the contract for 10 months?

I figure their telco bill must be over $650 a month for the lines you
have stated, whereas a PRI from a clec can easily be half of that now
for more lines, more features, greater ease of configuration. Etc. 

> As for the FXS/DID card... hmm.  I responded earlier, so I'll just paste
> the same response.
> 
> I thought FXO was for connections coming from the telco & FXS were for
> end-devices such as analog phones, fax machines, and modems.


FXS is for stations. FXO is for loop-start CO lines. DID lines are
special analog lines with special signalling on them. Plugging DID
lines into an FXO card may damage it. There's also E&M ports, as well
as ground-start CO lines. Ie. there's more than just FXS and FXO. 

Ie. Ask the telco what they actually are before getting cards,
plugging in anything. 

> Since the lines are coming from the telco to my router, wouldn't the
> VIC2-4FXO card be the right card?

It depends on what they actually are. You need to figure out what they
are, how they are setup, what hunt groups they may be setup as, and
then match it all in your new setup. There's 3-4 signalling methods
across DID trunks for sending the data of which line this is. You'll
have to find that info out as well and match it in the configs.