[wpatterson82]

Hello everyone,

I've been tasked with creating a failover phone system incase our 4 T1's go down... again...

I've been googling and can't seem to get a clear understanding of what to do. I'm pretty good with asterisk but this is just a little over my head at the moment.

We currently have a PRI from our T1 provider which connects into our old proprietary PBX (not asterisk). What I want to do is add an asterisk box to our network which will connect to a SIP Provider on the internet via our backup ISP.

When our T1's are down the provider will automatically forward the DID's to our backup DID's (at the SIP Provider). Asterisk will then answer the calls coming in and forward them to our main PBX (via PRI).

So the question is ... what equipment do I need to add to the asterisk box?! Our old PBX requires a PRI connection, do I purchase a PCI T1 Card? If so how do I have it act as a PRI Provider instead of just the CPE? (please excuse me if I'm not using the correct terms).

Am I correct in the assumption that asterisk will do this? Connect to a SIP Provider via an ethernet port, and then forward all calls received to the old PBX over the PRI/T1 Card?

In a sense, I just need asterisk to act as a bridge... any help would be GREATLY appreciated.