Chapter 7. Outside Connectivity

Table of Contents

The Basics of Trunking
Fundamental Dialplan for Outside Connectivity
PSTN Circuits
Traditional PSTN Trunks
Analog telephony
Digital telephony
Installing PSTN Trunks
Downloading and installing DAHDI
Configuring digital circuits
Configuring analog circuits
VoIP
PSTN Termination
PSTN Origination
VoIP to VoIP
Configuring VoIP Trunks
Configuring SIP trunks between Asterisk systems
Configuring IAX trunks between Asterisk systems
Emergency Dialing
Conclusion

You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.

Wayne Dyer

In the previous chapters, we have covered a lot of important information that is essential to a working Asterisk system. However, we have yet to accomplish the one thing that is vital to any useful PBX: namely, connecting it to the outside world. In this chapter we will rectify that situation.

The architecture of Asterisk is significant, due in large part to the fact that it treats all channel types as equal. This is in contrast to a traditional PBX, where trunks (which connect to the outside world) and extensions (which connect to users and resources) are very different. The fact that the Asterisk dialplan treats all channels in a similar manner means that in an Asterisk system you can accomplish very easily things that are much more difficult (or impossible) to achieve on a traditional PBX.

This flexibility does come with a price, however. Since the system does not inherently know the difference between an internal resource (such as a telephone set) and an external resource (for example, a telco circuit), it is up to you to ensure that your dialplan handles each type of resource appropriately.