Door Phone on Cisco system

[Trilinkcomm]

It's been a while since I've been on here and haven't been doing too much telephony work lately. At my usual job, they decided to change over from our Nortel BCM 450 system to a Cisco VoIP system. Well the IT guy that did the swap neglected to take into account our 2 outdoor doorphones/intercoms. They were Nortel doorphones and worked perfectly with our older system.

Since my upper management doesn't want to spend the money and rather go to Home Depot and get 2 doorbells, I'm trying to keep the cost down. I've already researched it a little bit and found that Viking makes a unit that would work OK but the cost will not get approved. Another option I can across is a Bogen ADP1 that would work on an analog line configured as a ring down circuit. My thought was to purchase a Cisco ATA (186 or 187) and connect our 2 doorphones to the 2 ports on the ATA.

My question now, since I'm not very familiar with Cisco programming, is can the ports on the ATA be configured as a ring down circuit for the doorphones and can it ring a group of phones. Is this also an easy thing to accomplish in the programming or is it very involved. I don't want to overwhelm our IT guy.

If we can go this route, I think we can get the cost to approximately $500.

Thanks for any help or suggestions you can offer.

 

[whykap]

Although not recommended you can use ATAs to do what you described, including ring down configuration
The big question is:
Are the existing Nortel doorphones analog or are they Nortel proprietary digital devices that connected to digital ports on your BCM?
If that's the case you have no choice but to replace them.

 

[Trilinkcomm]

Thanks whykap. I know I definitely need to replace the Nortel doorphones since they are specifically Nortel equipment. I was planning on going with the Bogen ADP1 which is a analog unit along with the Cisco ATA.

Do you know if programming the ATA with a ring down circuit for the 2 doorphones is difficult? I'm not sure how much knowledge our IT guy has on our new system.

Thanks

 

[hanluc6933]

Do you have a FXS card on the router? You could go this route instead of using an ATA. The programming isn't to involved for setting up a hotdial on these phones.

~Han


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