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PBX-to-PBX Internet trunking success with ENUM and h.323 - a first


in the preparation for the VoiP/ENUM Tutorial at RIPE-46, we had a little H.323 ENUM bakeoff.

Participating were the nic.at Asterisk Linux IP PBX in Vienna, and the www.innovaphone.com ISDN/IP PBX in Germany. Asterisk was massaged by Otmar Lendl who had just implementend H.323 ENUM lookup in the Asterisk call processing. Martin Streller of Innovaphone is the implementor of the ENUM code in their PBX.

Martin and Otmar got transparent Internet trunking with ENUM to work between an Asterisk and an IP-3000 - you dial a number with a DDI extension on the other PBX as you normally would - NO ACCESS CODES OR TRUNK PREFIXES!! - as there's an ENUM entry and both PBXes do ENUM DNS queries in outbound call processing the call is delivered via IP (h.323 in their case).

An interesting aspect of the Innovaphone device is the fact that it can do drop & insert - it has a network-side and a user-side ISDN port; if you plug it between the telco line and a vanilla PBX, it can act as a least cost routing device based on ENUM lookups - on outbound calls coming from the PBX, it will lookup the number in the DNS and divert to the Internet - otherwise the call will go to the telco in the upstream port. Which means that your old PBX could use ENUM in & outbound unchanged.

I would expect this to become more widespread as PBXes with IP & ENUM clue appear on the market.

BTW Innvoaphone has a very elegant scheme were configuring an extension i the PBX automatically produces a corresponding DNS entry - the PBX itself also acts as an ENUM DNS server for the pilot number and extensions. Currently their boxes are h.323 only but they plan to implement a SIP stack as well.


-Michael



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