We are setting up two 50 user sites using Asterisk. The one site will be using 16 PSTN lines from the exchange and the other will be running a single PRI line. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how we could get the Asterisk telephone system to fail over to a few analog telephone extensions in the event of an extended power failure. Having the Asterisk server on a UPS is obviously the first line of defence but that isn’t going to last an entire day or two. Does anyone know of any channel bank or gateway or some other device to solve this problem? A normal analog PBX automaticaly fails all its incoming lines onto the extension lines in the event of a power failure and we need to achieve the same kind of effect with Asterisk.
[quote=“hylan”]We are setting up two 50 user sites using Asterisk. The one site will be using 16 PSTN lines from the exchange and the other will be running a single PRI line. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how we could get the Asterisk telephone system to fail over to a few analog telephone extensions in the event of an extended power failure. Having the Asterisk server on a UPS is obviously the first line of defence but that isn’t going to last an entire day or two. Does anyone know of any channel bank or gateway or some other device to solve this problem? A normal analog PBX automaticaly fails all its incoming lines onto the extension lines in the event of a power failure and we need to achieve the same kind of effect with Asterisk.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated [/quote]
I hope somebody has experience with this, because I was wondering the same.
Even a channel bank will require SOME local power, so that’s not really a viable solution.
The thing most companies do is have not only a T1, but 4-6 analog trunks that will carry two way traffic.
The local provider will program the trunk group that comes in to the T1 to fail over to the trunk group made up of the analog circuits.
The analog circuits will typically pass through a power failure transfer panel of some sort (Avaya 808A or equivalent) on the way into the PBX. That way they’re useful as PBX trunks as well as emergency communications.
In the event of a total loss of power, the PBX is shut down, the transfer panel connects the analog trunks directly to analog phones installed in designated places on the premises, and emergency communications take over from there. All incoming calls will ring to the analog lines, even the calls that would have normally passed through the T1, since the CO will see the T1 as unavailable and simply hunt to the analog trunks.
