Setting up the MultiTech MultiVoip BRI Gateway

About the MultiVoip

MultiVOIP® is a range of mid-market carrier class TDM gateway devices which can be usd as bridges between traditional telephony systems on private networks or, alternatively as TDM gateways to VoIP switches like SARK/SAIL. The MultiVOIP gateway is available in analog or digital models ranging from one to 60 ports. All MultiVOIP gateways connect directly to phones, fax machines, key systems, PSTN lines or a PBX to provide real-time, toll-quality voice connections to any office on a VoIP network. Its flexible architecture and robust feature set meet the demands of a broad range of IP telephony applications. The MVP410ST? (featured below) supports 1 to 4 (2 to 8 channels) BRI circuis and will freely translate traffic to and from a SIP UA. It is easy to set-up and should provide rock-solid high quality voice and FAX communications across TDM/VoIP boundaries. All MVP units have the same easy-to-setup GUI interface making integration with SARK/SAIL a straightforward task.

Setting up the MVP104ST? for SARK/SAIL MultiVoip

In the ethernet screen, choose an address for your MVP to run at and fill out the correct gateway details for your network.

On the SIP screen chose your port (5060). Enter the address of your SARK Box in the proxy address field and tick the "use SIP Proxy" box.

Now you must fill out the "phonebook" entries. Rather confusingly, Multitech use the term "outbound" to refer to calls going to and from the SARK box and "Inbound" to refer to calls going to and from the TDM network. (Hmmm).

In the "outbound" address book tick "Accept any number", select "SIP" as uour transport protocol and fill out the address of your SARK/SAIL box as shown in the screenshot.

In the "inbound" address book tick "Accept any number", select "Hunting" for your channel number (this will use the first available free ISDN channel to route your outbound call).

That's it, your MultiVoip is now ready to go. The only other things you will need to do are to turn off silence suppression (in Voice/FAX) - the MVP suppression is a bit aggressive and it can mess up your MOH playback. You should also look at whther you want DTMF to be transmitted upstream as in-band or out-of-band. IN the UK, in-band seems to work best.

Finally click on "save and reboot" - the MVP is a firmware type device (much like a modem or router) and it needs to be rebooted after you make your changes.

At the server-manager screen select Trunks==>NewTrunk and choose MultiVoip from the pull down menu of carriers. Fill it out as shown in the screen below. This will create a trunk called MultiVoip.

Next create DiD Trunks for each of the inbound numbers you expect to receive from the ISDN circuits. Choose PTT_DiD_Group from the carrier drop down.

Fill out the DiD Range or create individual DiDs (if they are not contiguous numbers).

Here is the final Trunk layout ready to receive calls inbound for the various DiDs you have. Of course, each one can be individually routed by editing the individual trunk entries.

Ok - you're all done. The MVP104ST? is now ready to receive and send calls directly from the SARK/SAIL box to the ISDN network.

Conclusion

The MVP410ST? is extremely user friendly and easy to set up as a SIP gateway. We have several in the field and while we did have a few initial firmware problems with calls locking up, the MultiTech people provided excellent technical suport and gave us fixes which eventually solved the problems we had. The MVP range provides a very good alternative to the rather fragmented Digium Support for ISDN BRI.