1. Interdigit Timeout
2. E.164
3. DN Length
4. Localization and Globalization
5. No Device/Line?!

One of the most interesting parts of my job designing Cisco UC solutions is dial plan design. This will be the first in a series of posts discussing enterprise dial plan design as it relates to Cisco UC. The topic for this first post? A discussion of one of the more important design constraints when it comes to dial plans: avoiding interdigit timeout.

Interdigit timeout is a primary factor every time I walk into a new organization to help with a dial plan design. Interdigit timeout occurs when a user dials a string of numbers, but the system still matches multiple possible destinations (patterns) and must wait to see if more digits will be entered or if it should pick the best match with the current dial string.

Here’s a simple example. Let’s say I allow users to dial each other internally via 4-digit extensions. The CEO has also determined that to make life easy for end users they should be able to dial a 10-digit number to reach PSTN dialers so that their office phone works just like the iPhone in their pocket. So I decide to call Deb at extension 6515. The system matches this, but also recognizes that I have a pattern 651[2-9]XXXXXX to route calls local to St. Paul, MN out the St. Paul site’s gateway. Deb’s 6515 extension has the same digits as an Irish pub in St. Paul, MN with a phone number 6515551234. Because of this, it must wait a few seconds to see if I will enter more digits to dial that Irish pub where a tall, cold glass of Guinness awaits or if I really intended to dial Deb. This is very confusing to users who are not used to hearing silence or waiting for the phone to start playing ringback. Chaos ensues and the help desk manager just started researching office pranks to exact revenge on the voice team.

Let’s apply this to UCM on a larger scale. In any UCM we likely have thousands of potential patterns that exist as DNs, Translation Patterns, and Route Patterns. To incur interdigit timeout we need variable length patterns. If every pattern was 4 digits long the system would never need to wait to see if there is a 5th digit. Once we have variable length patterns we can quickly eliminate overlap (which causes interdigit timeout) with a different leading digit. This is why you often have PSTN access codes (e.g. dial 9 for an outside line). I like to create a Leading Digit chart to help understand potential areas for overlap. This requires knowing all extension ranges, DID ranges, PSTN patterns, etc. and might look like this.

• 0 – Reserved for Operator
• 1 – Extensions at Site1 – 4 digits, 1000-1499
• 2 – Extensions at Site2 – 4 digits, 2700-2799
• 3 – Extensions at Site3 – 5 digits, 30000-31999
• 4 – Extensions at Site4 – 4 digits, 4000-4999
• 5 – Open
• 6 – Open
• 7 – Open
• 8 – Extensions at Site5 – 4 digits, 8100-8199
• 9 – Reserved for PSTN Access Code
• * – Reserved for feature codes
• # – Reserved as end of dialing string termination character
• + – E.164 Prefix

This is a pretty concise way of showing where we have room for expansion when ordering new DID ranges to make them fit in the existing dial plan without overlap. The example above is an ideal situation with some leading digits completely open and some with plenty of room for expansion.

Many large enterprises don’t have this luxury. As often as I have a small company with an ideal outcome in their “Leading Digit” analysis I have another company that states, “We have 50 sites with a mix of 3, 4 and 5 digit extension dialing that start with every digit, 1-9”. Often that company is moving from many disparate phone systems at each site to a single, centralized phone system for all sites. It’s easy to explain that some changes need to occur to make this work when all sites must be taken into consideration. What isn’t so easy is getting end users (and execs) to accept these changes. We try to find the change that will have the smallest impact.

What techniques can we use to avoid interdigit timeout issues? Here are a few examples:

1.  Implement a site access code. Each site has a 2-digit site code followed by a 4-digit extension and some renumbering may be required.
   1. 22 1234
2. Use a prefix character like *. This is very similar to the idea of a site access code, but a slightly different track. It essentially moves a client on an existing 4-digit dial plan to a 5-digit dial plan and takes advantage of the fact that * is typically not used in dial plans or extensions today.
   1. *1234
3. Require a suffix or terminating character to signal to UCM that the user is done entering digits. The standard terminating character is #.
   1. 1234#
4. Renumber the extensions at some sites to open up a leading digit like 9 to use as a global PSTN Access Code. Alternate: Buy more DIDs and renumber.
5. Limit the scope of these shorter dial strings. Rather than allowing all users to 4-digit dial every other user allow 4-digit dialing only within a single site and calls to other sites require the full DID.

Generally I end up with some variation or mix of these options. In subsequent posts on dial plan design this topic of avoiding interdigit timeout will be a common theme. Next we’ll look at the ITU-T’s E.164 recommendation including it’s ability to help avoid interdigit timeout.