4 thoughts on - Questions… Connecting Asterisk To The World

• This is not my area of expertise, but I’ll throw my $0.02 in…

  When you ‘request an outgoing line’ by dialing 0, that call leg is processed by Asterisk, thus, that is what the phone ‘sees’ as the dialed number and that’s what the phone will send when ‘redial’ is pressed.

  I think you need to make the outbound dial a single ‘transaction’ either by using an extension pattern that includes the 0 like ‘05555555555’ to dial 555-555-5555 or eliminate the 0 (and the idiom of ‘requesting an outgoing line’) and detect an internal vs external call via extension pattern matching.

  Does your internal extension numbering plan conflict with external national numbering plan?

  Dialing a prefix digit seems so 1970s to me.

• this is the dialplan that I use:

  [ReceiveCallOut]
  exten = s,1,Read(LOKAL,,,,1,5)
  same = n,Dial(SIP/${LOKAL}@tt)
  same = n,Hangup()

  When the user dials “0”, the HiCOM ISDN switch immediately goes “online” to the outgoing ISDN Copper Cable – connected to … A) …. B)

  A) connected to the NTBA in the wall jack to the NTBA phone company…
  the dialing preceeds to continue “offline” no dailtones are heard.
  The call is completed and connects

  B) connected to the Asterisk ISDN Card….

  Asterisk server reacts by executing the above dial plan…

  CLI > “answered call from “….” to “s”

  The user has an open “answered” line and the dialing are collected by
  listening to the DTMF tones. The generated dial tones can be heard
  on the phone line.

  Somehow the signaling on the line of the outgoing call is differant when the cable is handeled by the PBX or by asterisk.

  But why ?

  Can’t asterisk be configured to handle a call exactly as the otherwise connected phone company’s PBX would?

  thanks for listening,

  Stefan

• I would:

  ) Drop the ‘dial 0’ anachronism.

  ) Not use read().

  ) Use extension pattern matching.

  For example, in the US, I would have something like (off the top of my head):

  ; external, local
  exten = _nxxxxxx,1, verbose(1,[${EXTEN}@${CONTEXT})
  same = n, goto(dial-local,${EXTEN},1)
  same = n, hangup()

  ; external, domestic
  exten = _nxxnxxxxxx,1, verbose(1,[${EXTEN}@${CONTEXT})
  same = n, goto(${CONTEXT},1${EXTEN},1)
  same = n, hangup()

  ; external, domestic
  exten = _1nxxnxxxxxx,1, verbose(1,[${EXTEN}@${CONTEXT})
  same = n, goto(dial-domestic,${EXTEN},1)
  same = n, hangup()

  ; international
  exten = _011x.,1, verbose(1,[${EXTEN}@${CONTEXT})
  same = n, goto(dial-international,${EXTEN},1)
  same = n, hangup()

  ; internal
  exten = _[2-9]xxx,1, verbose(1,[${EXTEN}@${CONTEXT})
  same = n, goto(dial-internal,${EXTEN},1)
  same = n, hangup()

  This sounds weird and very foreign (strange and unfamiliar, not as being a characteristic of a different country) to me. So, as a caller, I would hear the ‘0’ DTMF but no other tones? No feedback as I press keys?

  The dialplan does not reflect your intentions.

  Dialplan and channel configuration.

  My guess is yes.

• Your problem is that you are still thinking in terms of old-fashioned, clicky-
  clicky mechanical telephone exchanges. Instead of “dialling 0 to request an outside line”, you need to let Asterisk accept all the digits and then determine for itself whether the call is going to be an inside or outside one.

  – If the user dials 3 digits (or however long your internal numbers are),
  treat it as an internal number.
  – If the user dials 6 digits (or however long numbers are on your local exchange), treat it as an external, local number.
  – If the user dials 11 digits starting with 0 (or however long a number is in your country, including the STD code), treat it as an external, STD number.
  – If the number dials 9 or more digits starting with 00, treat it as an external, IDD number.

  It will make your dialplan a little more complicated; but if it is too simple, you won’t be taking full advantage of the power of Asterisk.