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need advice on how to use VOIP with Avaya PBX

T

ThePiston

Senior member
Right now at work we have 6 normal phone lines plus an Avaya PBX that routes calls throughout the office. We have about 15 Avaya phones too that are compatible.

I want to go to VOIP, but I'm pretty sure the PBX will not work with it as it needs a normal tone.

I'm almost positive I can add some sort of adapter or other hardware in between the incoming VOIP lines and the PBX to make the PBX think they are normal phone lines.

Anyone help me out with this?

Thanks
 
ThePiston said:
Right now at work we have 6 normal phone lines plus an Avaya PBX that routes calls throughout the office. We have about 15 Avaya phones too that are compatible.

I want to go to VOIP, but I'm pretty sure the PBX will not work with it as it needs a normal tone.

I'm almost positive I can add some sort of adapter or other hardware in between the incoming VOIP lines and the PBX to make the PBX think they are normal phone lines.

Anyone help me out with this?

Thanks
Click to expand...

One correction I am assuming you are in the USA.
If that is not the case ignore everything below as I know nothing about foreign countries.

there is NO difference between VOIP dial tone and POTS dial tone unless you have a GROUND START system. Really old, not real common [except pay phones], really annoying, not compatible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_start

If you do not have a ground start system, the only time you will know is if something is wrong with your VOIP/internet service. In which case, it be the same as if something was wrong with your POTS service.

The trick is knowing where your current providers lines run to meet YOUR system, usually a punch down block system of some sort, what interface system your VOIP and PBX systems support [RS-232 versus RJ jacks versus IDC for the actual UTP [usually cat 5 these days] pairs, and the tools you will need to work with it [all are available from lowes/home depot like stores these days but you still need to know what they are and how to use them].

AVAYA is a fairly new company that spun off Lucent who spun off AT&T back in the day and unlikely to even have a ground start system available as they were DOA long before they existed as pay phones started to disappear in our society. Your current phone company should know what you are paying for and you could ask them your IT guy should also know what kind of system you have so you could ask him.
 
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Yep, USA and I'm the IT guy 🙂

I have an Avaya Partner Messaging system. (looks like this one: http://www.jtlowvoltage.com/new-canaan-connecticut.html) The lines are Cavtel and come into those push down slots before going into the PBX through a normal phone line connector. I've never heard of ground start so I doubt I have it.

Are you saying I should be able to just switch the lines going into the PBX with the VOIP lines? I called them and they said that wouldn't work, but they may have just been trying to sell me a new system.
 
You need a VOIP provider that will provide you an ATA with analog lines in a hunt group. Not all will do that. Most of them just give you a multi-channel SIP account.

Somewhere like voip.ms you can do it yourself and use an Adtran TA908 as a media gateway between the VOIP "accounts" and the PBX. Or if you want to go cheap you could use a Linksys SPA8000.
 
doesn't the PBX do the hunting? from my research I think a gateway would work. I'll look at the Linksys SPA8000
 
ThePiston said:
doesn't the PBX do the hunting? from my research I think a gateway would work. I'll look at the Linksys SPA8000
Click to expand...

No, the service provider has to do the hunt group (the act of "rolling over" to additional phone lines when the primary number is already busy.)

I believe that the SPA8000 has a feature where it can take a multi-channel SIP account and have it simulate a hunt group on its FXS ports, but I'm not sure and I've never used it.

My customers that order SIP service with an analog handoff get individual SIP accounts for each line that I program to specific ports on whatever ATA they want, and then I set up a hunt group for them if they need that. I typically recommend the Adtran TA900-series because it is extremely high quality and has a 10-year warranty. The SPA8000 works, but it isn't nearly as nice a box.
 
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