https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qeumDfpdoE

I started my career running Nortel PBXes. I'd thought about setting up an Asterisk PBX and running a couple of SIP phones off of it, but if I could put an entire PBX for a couple of hundred dollars and run vintage desk phones off of it, that might be too much of a temptation.

http://wildflower.diablonet.net/~scaron/nortelathome.html has a lot of information about buying a Nortel switch.
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Re: PLEASE STOP ME
By: poindexter FORTRAN to All on Tue Feb 25 2025 11:00 am

Howdy,

I started my career running Nortel PBXes. I'd thought about setting up an Asterisk PBX and running a couple of SIP phones off of it, but if I could put an entire PBX for a couple of hundred dollars and run vintage desk phones off of it, that might be too much of a temptation.

About 10+ years ago, I moved into a new house that had ethernet in every room. I converted my incoming POTS line to VOIP, and had VOIP phones in the rooms.

It worked well - my kids were babies, so I used the phones in their rooms as baby monitors - I dialed the phones into a "conference", and our living/bedroom into the same conference (but read only) - so we could hear the kids, but they couldnt hear us.

In my office, I had a nice "executive" phone - I am a fan of SNOM phones. I had a USA number, a UK number and my Oz number (I had a global roal at the time), so folks in those counties could call me at the cost of a local country phone call.

All of this was hanging of asterisk running on a Beagle Bone Black.

Sadly, nobody has land lines anymore, so the whole kit is now in a box as it was getting more dust that usage. I've even tried selling the phones and no interest.

It was a fun project though.


...δεσ∩
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Re: PLEASE STOP ME
By: deon to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed Feb 26 2025 08:40 am

In my office, I had a nice "executive" phone - I am a fan of SNOM phones. I had a USA number, a UK number and my Oz number (I had a global roal at the time), so folks in those counties could call me at the cost of a local country phone call.

I'm trying to get a uk number through a SIP provider so I can have my in-laws call a local number and get to us in California. I need a UK address, though.

I'd have a lot better time setting up a 3cx or Asterisk PBX than going old-school, I think.
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on 25 Feb 2025, poindexter FORTRAN said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qeumDfpdoE

I started my career running Nortel PBXes. I'd thought about setting up an Asterisk PBX and running a couple of SIP phones off of it, but if I
could put an entire PBX for a couple of hundred dollars and run vintage desk phones off of it, that might be too much of a temptation.

http://wildflower.diablonet.net/~scaron/nortelathome.html has a lot of information about buying a Nortel switch.

Ha! I also started the telecom sliver of my career on an old Nortel Meridian. I'm not sure of the exact model, but it was one of the large freestanding ones with, IIRC, 4 (or 6?) modules/cabinets. I haven't thought about that thing in years, so it's really giving my memory a workout trying to recall any of the details. I'll never forget the first time I saw it's absolutely insane spread of manuals - I want to say placed side by side on a shelf, they were 3-4 feet long. :P Fun times.

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I started my career running Nortel PBXes. I'd thought about setting up an Asterisk PBX and running a couple of SIP phones off of it, but if I
could put an entire PBX for a couple of hundred dollars and run vintage desk phones off of it, that might be too much of a temptation.

PBXes drive me nuts - so many options and settings to dial in... one of my Youtube favorites just dropped a killer video explaining one of the more tame 'PBX' offerings;

https://youtu.be/nCPpkY1TD9Q?si=Cmm3ix8OO0iuqpJD



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|08.........

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It worked well - my kids were babies, so I used the phones in their
rooms as baby monitors - I dialed the phones into a "conference", and
our living/bedroom into the same conference (but read only) - so we
could hear the kids, but they couldnt hear us.

Very cool project.

I did some work/hobbies with an Astrisk system as well. Regarding sale calls which I had automatically routed to a digital assistant. Forget the name of it all, but have the recording still to date. :>

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jack phlash wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Ha! I also started the telecom sliver of my career on an old Nortel Meridian. I'm not sure of the exact model, but it was one of the large freestanding ones with, IIRC, 4 (or 6?) modules/cabinets. I haven't thought about that thing in years, so it's really giving my memory a workout trying to recall any of the details. I'll never forget the
first time I saw it's absolutely insane spread of manuals - I want to
say placed side by side on a shelf, they were 3-4 feet long. :P Fun
times.

Those spiral bound "NTPs". I remember the first time I found them in PDF
form, how great it was.

I have a cheat sheet on my web site at https://www.kataan.org/nortel-pbx-cheat-sheet/ that still gets hits to
this day.






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on 26 Feb 2025, poindexter FORTRAN said...

Those spiral bound "NTPs". I remember the first time I found them in PDF form, how great it was.

I have a cheat sheet on my web site at https://www.kataan.org/nortel-pbx-cheat-sheet/ that still gets hits to this day.

Another random memory - and I bet you know the name of this software, but I've long forgotten it - but it had a GUI configuration utility, but when you hit save it would open up a terminal, connect to the switch's CLI, and then execute all of the CLI commands needed to make the changes you just did via the GUI one at a time. I laughed my ass off the first time I saw that. I never really used it myself, but one of my coworkers preferred it.

Most of my Nortel knowledge was supplanted by the Avaya Definity we replaced it with (which we started chipping away at with cheaper and much nicer VOIP systems almost immediately, but that's another story) and the terrible Toshiba Strata I had at my last job. I was much more heavily involved with both of those than I was the Meridian - I did more layer 1 work with that thing than anything else, honestly. Apart from sometimes having to help some co-workers on another team manage their Cisco gear, I've not touched anything phone related for quite a few years.

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jack phlash wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

I have a cheat sheet on my web site at https://www.kataan.org/nortel-pbx-cheat-sheet/ that still gets hits to this day.

Another random memory - and I bet you know the name of this software,
but I've long forgotten it - but it had a GUI configuration utility,
but when you hit save it would open up a terminal, connect to the
switch's CLI, and then execute all of the CLI commands needed to make
the changes you just did via the GUI one at a time. I laughed my ass
off the first time I saw that. I never really used it myself, but one
of my coworkers preferred it.

Oh, man - can't remember the name. People passed around a bunch of
Procomm scripts that automated mass changes and other MAC work, I got a
copy from one of the service techs. We had to use Procomm because it
was the only one that mapped the function keys correctly for Meridian
Mail.

from sometimes having to help some co-workers on another team manage
their Cisco gear, I've not touched anything phone related for quite a
few years.

It seemed like, being an IT generalist, that I got handed telco MAC
work as one of my responsibilities. Most recently, I'm managing a
couple of Asterisk PBXes in Canada. At least I'm not crawling under
desks and managing wiring...



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on 01 Mar 2025, poindexter FORTRAN said...

It seemed like, being an IT generalist, that I got handed telco MAC
work as one of my responsibilities. Most recently, I'm managing a
couple of Asterisk PBXes in Canada. At least I'm not crawling under
desks and managing wiring...

That's indeed how I got into telephony stuff - I worked on it quite a bit at those two jobs and generally enjoyed it, even. Today, our teams (and indeed my work) is much more segregated, and our Telecom group is very much its own thing. We occasionally have the odd power struggle with them over who owns what equipment, and the occasional internal support request, but otherwise rarely interact.

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Re: Re: PLEASE STOP ME
By: jack phlash to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat Mar 01 2025 01:55 pm

thing. We occasionally have the odd power struggle with them over who owns what equipment, and the occasional internal support request, but otherwise rarely interact.

Oh, man - the '90s were replete with power struggles. We went from running dedicated voice circuits for PBXes to MPLS, having to share one circuit for voice, video and data, then phones went IP and we needed to create VLANs, which the networking guys wanted to control, then SIP trunks between PBXes became a thing and everything went IP...

When I started a few years earlier, you'd be happy to set up dialing plans to get cheap LD costs between sites, maybe ISDN trunks, but most likely supertrunks (24 analog lines riding across a T1). To get voicemail messages across a network, one VM system would call the other and transfer the .wav file and message info across 2 dialup modems!
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on 01 Mar 2025, poindexter FORTRAN said...

Oh, man - the '90s were replete with power struggles. We went from
running dedicated voice circuits for PBXes to MPLS, having to share one circuit for voice, video and data, then phones went IP and we needed to create VLANs, which the networking guys wanted to control, then SIP
trunks between PBXes became a thing and everything went IP...

For sure! The Nortel to Avaya change I mentioned was in the midst of one such, giant power struggle.

Short version: IT got outsourced, with all of us who were retained hired by the outside company to continue in our old roles, more or less, but the one IT dude who was ostensibly originally hired to be the lead for Telecom (though in reality, was a generalist like the rest of us) wasn't - he stayed behind to support the phone system. He had a chip on his shoulder and despite us all being friends before this, became a total miserable prick pretty much overnight, and he seemed to invest a lot of time purposely getting into our shit and otherwise fucking with us. Some of the contentious meetings between his manager and ours were legendary.

Anyway, the dude hated the Nortel for numerous, largely justified reasons (though IMO his biggest issue with it is that he never bothered to put the effort into trying to learn how to properly admin it) and had a lot of experience with Avaya from a previous gig, so he was eventually able to get it replaced. Once we were brought back in house years later, he was let go, and IT assumed control over the phone system once again and we got to learn firsthand what a piece of shit his expensive new Avaya was.

We'd had various projects (satellite call centers, etc.) that had us working a lot with separate VOIP phone systems, so we quickly decided we needed to ditch that albatross around our necks. Actually, replacing our corporate HQ's phones (leased from the building owner at a premium) with a much nicer and much cheaper VOIP system was one of the major feathers in my cap from my brief time as a (working) manager there.

When I started a few years earlier, you'd be happy to set up dialing
plans to get cheap LD costs between sites, maybe ISDN trunks, but most likely supertrunks (24 analog lines riding across a T1). To get
voicemail messages across a network, one VM system would call the other and transfer the .wav file and message info across 2 dialup modems!

Simpler times when all you needed was a PRI or two, although arguably modern IP based systems can be even simpler. I miss those days, though by the time I really got into this stuff change was already well underway.

One of the shocking differences was that when I started at the aforementioned company they had like 4 or 5 FTEs whose sole job it was to manage telecom plans and billing for our branch offices. Says a lot about the inefficiency of the before times, sure but also a lot about how vital telephony was to business back then.

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Re: Re: PLEASE STOP ME
By: jack phlash to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Mar 02 2025 10:45 am

One of the shocking differences was that when I started at the aforementione company they had like 4 or 5 FTEs whose sole job it was to manage telecom plans and billing for our branch offices. Says a lot about the inefficiency of the before times, sure but also a lot about how vital telephony was to business back then.

Ostensibly, my first job's responsibility was analyzing reporting from a call accounting system and analyzing billing - this was for a retail call center with 150 agents!

It wasn't long before I was doing MAC work and making their Novell network in the corner play nice with an IBM LAN Server and AS/400s. I installed their first voicemail system and retired the little carrousel with hand-written messages at the front desk. Installed a SCO XENIX system to do reporting off of a merchandising system on an AS/400. The rest, as they say, is history...
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