Using Multiple Outbound Dial-Peers on Cisco Access Servers

Posted on in voice

You might run into a situation where you have multiple PRIs or T1s for outbound calling on your Cisco Access Server (Cisco AS5350 or other model). In order to ensure that all outbound calls are using both circuits, you need to configure two outbound dial peers. In order for the calls to use both circuits, use the same destination pattern in each dial-peer.

dial-peer 101 pots
 description Outbound Calls #1
 destination-pattern .+
 port 1:D
dial-peer 102 pots
 description Outbound Calls #2
 destination-pattern .+
 port 2:D

Please note that your configuration might look slight different depending on whether you are using PRIs or T1s. Also, a different version of Cisco IOS might result in slightly altered syntax.

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If you have two circuits and incoming calls roll from the first circuit to the second, you might want to force outbound calls to use the second circuit first before rolling onto the first. You can control which circuit is preferred by adding the preference command to the dial-peer. Keep in mind, Cisco IOS gives preference to the dial-peer with the lowest preference value.

dial-peer 101 pots
 description Outbound Calls #1
 destination-pattern .+
 port 1:D
 preference 1
dial-peer 102 pots
 description Outbound Calls #2
 destination-pattern .+
 port 2:D
 preference 0

In the above case, calls will go out dial-peer 102 until there are no more DS0s left. Then calls will start going out dial-peer 101.

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