Merlin Legend PRI and Adtran Atlas 550

[davew]

Well as they say change is the only thing that is a constant. The good folks at Charter Business services have come in and convinced the powers that they can save us a ton of money by selling us WAN and PRI telephone services. After contracts are negotiated and signed they tell me that they can only deliver the PRI's with switch type NI-2. I expressed my concerns very strongly that the Merlin legend will not work that way 'Please" deliver me a Switch Type: AT Custom 5ESS and I'll set mine for 5ESS and everybody will be happy. No can do they say NI-2 only but they say I can buy a Adtran Atlas 550 and put Switch type NI-2 in and get 5ESS out. That does not compute. I have read the Atlas 550 user manual it does not indicate that to me at all. What did I miss.

I am new to this type of converting so forgive me if I am asking a simple question.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for using the ADTRAN Support Forums.

Actually, under the ATLAS Dial Plan, every entry is independent, and ATLAS acts as a switchboard to route calls through from one interface to another. In the DIAL PLAN, the interfaces are configured based on what they are connecting to. So NETWORK TERM connects to the PSTN Network, and USER TERM connets to your user equipment.

By configuring the NETWORK TERM as a "National ISDN" switch type (in the ATLAS this is NI-2), and the USER TERM for Lucent 5E, and the ATLAS will "translate" between them when processing calls through.

(This is done quite a bit in Canada to convert DMS-100 to NI-2.)

Hope this helps,

Patrick