Alcatel Unleashed

I need to write code that will exchange CSTA and ACSE messages with an OmniPCX office (OXO) device. Is there some documentation that describes how this is done?

A few specific questions:

1. Based on what I've found so far, the device uses CSTA phase 1. Is that correct?
2. Is there a specific port or range of ports that should be used for this type of communication? I've been using port 32000, but that seems to be for something different.
3. At least one other Alcatel device (the 4400 series) requires a one-byte exchange (one byte sent followed by one byte received) before any ACSE messages can be sent. Is it the same with the OmniPCX Office?
4. Does the device use standard BER, or does it use the two-byte IETF prefix also?

I'm somewhat new to the world of CSTA.

First of all you'll need ALU's CSTA SDK, which contains the library apicsta.lib which handles all parts of the physical communication.
The port for CSTA is 2555.
Another thing is that the PBX require you to pass an application id when you connect. The app id is retrieved from ALU and is checked and validated by the pbx. The PBX license must allow for this application id to run.
You need to be member of AAPP to retrieve the app id of course.


You can't just connect and expect to be able to start monitoring a device, this is a bit naive. The CSTA is protected by PBX licencing.

In my case, however, the software I'm writing will be sending and receiving ASN.1 encoded ACSE and CSTA messages directly to and from the device. There can be no dependencies on any vendor libraries. Any information that needs to be included in the ACSE make association message in order for the device to accept it will be provided by the user of my software.

Is there any documentation that lays out what information needs to be included in an ACSE AARQ-apdu message in order to connect to an Alcatel OXO? The previous reply mentions the need for an "application id", but where does that fit into the fields that are defined with an AARQ-apdu?