How to join two locations into one

[Bob]

Hi,

I presently have two business locations each with their own proprietary KSU and 15 phone stations each. One is Toshiba and the other is NEC. Each location has six AT&T PSTN lines and one TeleBlend (SunRocket replacement) VoIP line. Hope TeleBlend works out!

I suppose I could install 3CX at one location and both locations can be on the same PBX. The local users should have excellent in-house voice quality on the 100MB Ethernet and excellent voice quality on the PSTN lines. The remote location on the other hand will only have internet VoIP quality (even when calling an extension in the next room).

Assuming my theory above is valid, is it possible to install 3CX at each location and have the two 3CX installations connected to look like one PBX system? That way, all in-house communications should have excellent voice quality on their respective 100MB Ethernet and with each 3CX having its own PSTN lines, should result in excellent voice quality for outbound calls too. I suppose extension to extension calls between locations will be reduced to internet VoIP quality via presumed 3CX connectors.

Also, if all this is possible, can the PSTN lines be shared too? i.e. if 3CX #1 has all PSTN lines busy, can it connect to 3CX #2 and use its PSTN lines (albeit at internet VoIP voice quality)?

Thanks!

 

[SY]

External lines (devices), fallback lines(destination), external extensions, forwarding rules, "IP addresses" are the same for any internet entities...

I have no recipes, sorry. You could try to make some combination of all available features of PBX (I hope they are enough simple and localized, also I guess they could do exact job that you require)

Thanks,
Stepan

 

[Bob]

I read that the enterprise edition supports Windows clustering. Maybe this is something that might play into what I'm after?

 

[SY]

I read that the enterprise edition supports Windows clustering. Maybe this is something that might play into what I'm after?

You can ask support team about it.

Regards,
Stepan

 

[RobLloyd]

Clustering (while not yet added to the Enterprise edition) will not do what you want. Clustering is only if 1 server dies the other one will take over. It's not having 2 identical servers running at the same time w/ the same software and configuration. Only 1 can run at a time.

I read that the enterprise edition supports Windows clustering. Maybe this is something that might play into what I'm after?

 

[Bob]

Thanks Rob, I kinda figured that would be the way, but I was hoping that if 3CX got clustering going, maybe it wouldn't be too much more to connect two 3CX installations into one PBX system.

 

[Ralph]

Have you considered setting up a VPN between the two sites

Setting up a VPN between the 2 sites might simplify your solution and could improve performance since you wouldn't have to involve Stun servers etc.

 

[Bob]

Ralph,

I happen to have a VPN between the two sites, but it isn't clear to me that I can have two 3CX installations interconnected in such a way that it looks like one PBX system.

Examples:

A phone registered on PBX #1 calls extention 101 and it rings a phone that is registered to PBX #2

An outside call is picked up by the automated attendant on PBX #1 and can transfer the caller to a phone on PBX #2.

All CO's (outside lines) registered on PBX #1 are busy so a phone registered to PBX #1 uses PBX #2's CO's as an alternate.

 

[Ralph]

Morning

Good mornig,

I don't think that capability is in 3CX, at least not yet.

This may not be a workable fix for you but you can transfer calls to phone numbers. For example if a call comes into PBX1, rings extesion 200 and no one answers you could have it transferred to a phone line on PBX2 that rings extension 300 there. Keep in mind you would be using 3 lines to do this ( The line used for the incomming call, The line used to transfer the call to PBX2, and the line for the incomming call on PBX2).

I do like the idea of integrating multiple 3CX servers. I think Asterisk currently has this capability, perhaps 3CX is working on it? In any case you should post the reccomendation on the "Feature Requests" forum.

Take care

 

[Bob]

FYI I posted to the feature request forum the subject "Interconnect 3CX Servers between sites". Below is my response.

Hi Bob,

Thanks for your feedback.

Yes, we are working on a way to connect the phone systems - this will be part of a future version of the enterprise edition.

Probably by Q4 we will have this feature

 

[Ralph]

Well good news in the future

Glad to hear they are working on it.

Thanks for sharing.

Take care

 

[Ralph]

Interesting

Thank you nickybrg,

I am going to have to play with this sometime myself. :shock:

Your idea and adaptation of the existing architecture is masterful

Thanks again