Connecting to Vonage via CallManager and Cisco Gateway

[NPT_2]

I am contemplating connecting to Vonage or another VOIP provider to eliminate long distance per minute costs for our IP phones calling long distance. I am looking at needing 24 simultanious calls outbound at any given time. Is it possible to connect callmanager direct to Vonage or another provider? Or would I need to go to a gateway and then out? Has anyone setup anything similar? I know it is very easy to connect to these providers for residental with a simple gateway, but what about for larger implimentations?

[travis-dennis_2]

The current incarnation of VoIP for unlimted long distance is generally going to require some sort of MGCP client that it can control to set up and tear down calls. Most of these services send you a QoS device that also acts as the MGCP client. I am not aware of anyway to make this happen with a direct connection to CM. There are some dvelopments at MCI that should be out in the next month or 2 that get around this limitation but I can't say for sure...just things I am hearing blwoing around. I researched this for a while and couldn't find what you are looking for. Perhaps someone else out there has. If so please pass it along!

Hope this helps

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[dhingst]

Broadwing has an option to connect into their voice network using voip and it supports CallManager. It's not a total voip network but it does offer significant savings.

[jthain]

NPT,

I think what you want is to connect to an ITSP instead of a traditional Telephony provider. An ITSP accepts calls from your call manager using InterCluster Protocol.

Basically Intercluster Protocol -> IP-IP Gateway (at ITSP) -> VoiP provider.

Check out the information by looking for Cisco Multi-Service IP-to-IP gateway.

regards:jamie

[mmitchell]

I have done this for giggles. I had a CCM 3.3(4) and a 1700 router with FXO card in it. The 1700 is an h323 gateway. When you send digits to the vonage adapter I have had better success sending them as pulse digits instead of DTMF. I never spent time trying to figure out why. The drawback is that the Vonage adapter has only 2 ports each so you would have to purchase 12 adapters from them at approx $25 each recurring cost. Hope this helps