Asterisk for Remote Disaster Recovery?

Greetings,
Looking for input on a possible project. My company currently has several locations along the gulf coast. Last year we took a beating and when we move our operation temporary to our DR location we discovered we didn’t have enough phone lines. Of course we didn’t expect to be out of our primary office for more than 3 days, which turned into three weeks, but any way. We couldn’t get enough lines in to meet our needs.

This is my idea and I would like to get feed back on it…

  1. In New Orleans we have a PBX that has a PRI feeding it.
  2. In Houston we have a PBX with 8 POTS.

Both of these locations are hooked to the local CLECS and both have at least 1.5meg of IP data transport at the locations.

I propose putting a softswitch in a more safe location, a CLEC NOC in Nashville. I would get a PRI from the CLEC in Nashville. Using the IP network, have an IP to PRI device at the New Orleans and Houston locations that would attach to the PBXs. There is also a fall back location in Calif, just in case both NO and HOU get wiped out, and I’m having a T1 brought there now.

So a recap.
Softswitch in NOC in Nashville with inbound PRI feeding IP to PRI devices at Houston and New Orleans which plug into PBXs. Using Asterisk, can I take a PRI (or two) from the CLEC along with a block of numbers, route those numbers to the proper PBXs via the Internet (VPN) using IP to PRI devices. Then when disaster strikes AGAIN, reroute those numbers to the standing PBX.

Open to suggestions…

Thanks.

At a fundamental level an approach may be to switch from PRI interfaces to the PSTN to VoIP/MPLS interfaces. This would allow maximum flexibility in rerouting traffic in the network to the sites that may receive it. Then adding something like Asterisk to an additional disaster recovery location would be a snap.

Just one approach of many. But, the approach you mention would also work, as Asterisk may do this dynamically with simple configurations. Of course, you may want to send calls via an MPLS VPN than over the internet, as the internet always offers some unknowns as it concerns jitter and packet loss.

MuppetMaster,

Thank you for your reply. Would you know of any situation that may be doing this currently? I would hate to re invent the wheel, not that i mind, but due to the fact that hurricane season is only a few months away…

Also, is there a good source of PRI equipment for the CPE?

Again your input is most appreciated.

Anthony