Combing thru the Wiki, I did find that Asterisk does have some secret sauce with respect to sorting out what the caller is dialing...
It is covered in the wiki page "Asterisk Extension Mapping" http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk+Extension+Matching This page does an excellent job of explaining the intuitive logic that Asterisk uses to determine when you are dialing an extension or dialing an outside number. To followup on the excellent suggestions thus far, I have concluded... 1) For an office environment, where dialing "9" for an outside line is not uncommon, the "dial 9" option may make sense for a cleaner implementation. 2) For a home (or small office) environment, where nobody expects to have to dial a "9", it is better to rely on the Asterisk Extension Mapping logic. PLUS... Numbering your extensions in the "100" to "119" range (or for larger environments 1000 to 1199) will provide the cleanest interface. This is because a leading 1 indicates a long distance call, and the number following a leading 1 cannot be a "0" or a "1" for long distance. Therefore, asterisk can determine with the second digit dialed that you are dialing an extension, and not a long distance number. Anyone have any comments on the above suggestions? > If this topic has been discussed already, please point me to it. I have looked, and I don't see any discussion in the past couple of months or in > the wiki. > > When setting up your inside extensions, it can be helpful to choose the numbering carefully. Ideally, you would like it to not conflict with the > dialing of an outside number. > > For example, the extension... > > 1212 > > Is very similar to dialing a new york long distance number: > > 1-212-555.1212 > > The phone company intentionally avoids some number combinations. Local numbers never start with a "1". This way, the Phone company switch knows > that any number that starts with a "1" needs long distance routing. > > ------------------ > > Some switch systems avoid this issue by requiring that extensions dial a 9 > to get an outside number. This allows the use of any extension numbers internally, as long as they do not begin with a "9"! > > I can setup asterisk to work this way. > > ------------------ > > What would be a wise choice for your extension numbering if you were just > setting up a new system? > > Is there a "better to use" set of extensions, that avoids confusion with dialing of external numbers. > > ------------------ > > Or perhaps, I am way off base. Does asterisk have some magic sauce that makes this a moot issue? > > Thanks in advance. > _______________________________________________ > Asterisk-Users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
