Need some direction please.

[spodonnell]

I have a customer that is trying to setup a internet long distance service where he will provide PSTN connectivity as well as be a relay between other Voip based carriers.

Although I have alot of experience with VOIP, I'm limited in the VOIP in the context of the "carrier" designs.

Can someone point out the "standard" pieces of what makes up a carrier design like this? (Protocols, GK, Proxy, etc.) or point me to a good link.

I just need a starting point.

Thanks in advance.

Scott

[jtufail]

As far as the carrier designs are concerned, I am assuming that you are will either be passing the voip traffic to the T1 ( CAS or PRI or E1R2 signaling) to the carriers or accepting the traditional telephony calls on these T1 interfaces and packetizing the calls to send over ip.

The first thing to note would be the equipment. Depending on the traffic your choices can vary from 36xx, 37xx series router for medium traffic to AS53xx routers for heavy traffic volumes.

As far as signaling protocols are concerned you would have choice of either PRI , CAS or E1 R2 and that would depend on what carrier you choose and their capability. Cisco routers can be configured to do all three.

For Call admission control you it would be a good idea to install a Gatekeeper. A cisco 36xx is a good platform for the GK functionality. Bear in mind that GK is an optional feature and not necessary to be installed.

Please review the following doc, it has some good guidlines.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk652/tk701/technologies_white_paper09186a00800d6b64.shtml

I hope that helps.

Javed