How to Prevent receiving phone calls to Tandberg Endpoint?

[jlu]

Here is the situation. We have a gateway that we just set up a bunch of Direct-Inward-Dials using the Tandberg Gateway. The problem is that we are now receiving phone calls through the gateway on our systems that are interrupting meetings ( for meetings that are using the rooms for purposes other than videoconferencing). Because we have twenty phone numbers and twenty rooms, this seems to be a problem. Currently our temporary solution has been to disconnect the network from the codec or change the E.164 alias unless we know we are receiving an ISDN video call – this solution is a waste of time and has caused more problems than needed.



What I want is a way to not allow incoming telephone calls through the Tandberg Gateway, but still allow ISDN originated calls through.



The Tandberg codecs have a great feature where you can turn incoming telephone calls off. However, this only applies to ISDN. (Part of the reason we went with one vendor is so that problems like this would not occur... maybe we picked the wrong vendor).



I called Tandberg tech support in North America. Their solution was to turn off auto-answer – however, this is not a feature we do not want to give up. Besides, all of our Crestron code is written assuming that auto-answer is turned on. The assumption also being that the “incoming telephone calls” feature on the Tandberg codec would actually work.



In addition to all Tandberg endpoints (2500, 6000) we also use the Radvision Gatekeeper (‘Dial Plan’ is not enabled – I don’t know if this feature would help). I was hoping to find a solution for this problem through the gatekeeper, but no luck so far. I can limit telephone calls out, but can’t turn them off incoming, which is the problem.



With the rooms I am concerned about, we use integrated Crestron systems. I might need to write some code that tells the Tandberg to hang up if the call is 64 kbps (audio only). However, with the way the control code is written right now, that would be a major rewrite.



Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for any ideas.

[Darren Goulden]

The TANDBERG GW has a maxbw feature for DID


maxbw: Sets the maximum bandwidth to be used when setting up a GW call using DID

If i were you, i would speak with TANDBERG and request a minbw feature in the GW's next software release, saves you re-writing all your control code :banana:

Daz

[WIZBANG]

Saw a similar issue a few years ago where someone dialed in over ISDN mistakenly by dialing the wrong number and got into a very important video call. The only reason the conference participants knew he was even there was when he spoke up asking who all the other people were on the line. If i remember correctly, there was no way the site could remove the caller without taking down the video as well. A simple Y/N box on incoming audio calls would fix the issue. The recommendation to resolve it was to remove options for all but "data only" calls through the ISDN, the site had a XAP for audio calls.

Paul

[jdd188]

I experienced this problem last year. At our site we do video only from our network, so i've limited all the endpoints to accept a minium of 128kbs. That way all 64kbs calls are rejected automatically. To allow a mix of phone and VTC connections we just set up an MCU session on our bridge and allow the phone connections that way.

This may or may not be acceptable for you situation, but i hope it helps.

Jd

[dginter001]

Could you wire in some sort of hard switch to disable the ISDN circuit when incoming calls are not desired? Perhaps just stick it in the same housing as the lighting controls for the room.

[trapehzoid]

you can turn off DID routing and just use IVR for incoming calls. that way people will not get to you unless they mean it. how intrusive that is or not depends on how much you use incoming calls vs the annoyance of wrong # calls.