Media Gateway Integration

Forums

We have been mulling around with the idea of introducing a Media Gateway in to our hosted PBX deployment to allow for the inbound calls to be routed via PRI, while keeping outbound traffic routed out through SIP trunking. I just have a couple of questions for anyone here that would feel like sharing.

Has anyone here had any experience (good or bad) with any Media Gateways?

Are there any blatant disadvantages to running with this configuration? I believe that processor load on the box due to codec translation would be one. Would this have much bearing on a box with roughly 350 extensions on it?

Are there any specific Media Gateways that you would recommend / not recommend? Why / why not?

Thanks in advance!!

-Devand

Submitted by brian on Tue, 01/31/2012 Permalink

Your going to pay at least $2000 to get a carrier grade PRI gateway.

I would suggest getting 2 decent servers and 2 DUAL Port PRI cards and building a PRI gateway using Asterisk or freeswitch. That gives you great control as your gateways will be running something your used to (if you use Asterisk) built on a rock solid OS(linux).

You can build a very stripped down version of Asterisk for this purpose.

Submitted by eeman on Wed, 02/01/2012 Permalink

due to legal issues with telecom .. a PRI (while beautiful call quality) limits you in terms of origination footprint. When you buy a PRI you buy it to a specific rate center. This means that the only numbers the telecom is allowed to deliver to you are numbers in that specific rate center. This works fine if your business market is never going to go outside of this rate center but if you plan to offer service in multiple cities, this can be a significant cost in order to get PRI service in every rate center you wish to do business.

Submitted by devand_cloud on Wed, 02/01/2012 Permalink

Hey Erik,

Thanks for the reply. We are aware of the typical PRI limitations, however I have been led to believe that there is a local PRI vendor that has the ability to provide DIDs from different rate centres on the same PRI.

I would like to ask you though, if you were to use a media gateway in front of your PBX, which brand would you use and why?

My company currently has some staff attending the VoIP conference taking place in Miami, and both Sangoma and AudioCodes have booths there. They are wondering if i can gather any feedback on either of those suppliers so they can get some more information on them while they are there.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!

Submitted by eeman on Thu, 02/02/2012 Permalink

I do use one, for my long distance PRI's to get a good rate on toll-free origination. I use a server with a digium TE420 card and asterisk with some rather simple dialplan that sends its traffic over to my other routing servers.

Submitted by devand_cloud on Thu, 02/02/2012 Permalink

Hmm, alright. Would you say it's better to use a PRI card as opposed to an external carrier-grade PRI gateway in front of our PBX?

Or, would you recommend doing as brian has suggested, and build my own PRI gateway?

If it's not too much to ask, could you give me some pros / cons of either?

If anyone else has any input on the matter as well, that would be just as much appreciated!

Thanks guys.

-Devand

Submitted by eeman on Fri, 02/03/2012 Permalink

i wouldnt put the pri card directly into the MTE box. It would work, but this would cut back on the scalability of the single server as per call load would go up. put the pri card in a second box and trunk the calls back to your mte box via SIP.