Anybody know anything about VOIP systems?

[saluki9]

We're looking to upgrade our phone systems here at the salt mine.

Our IT folks who have been terrific so far have proposed a system from Mitel (CX 3300)

I was just wondering if anybody here had any experience with them.

[AJ Dual]

Nope, all-Cisco shop here. Sorry.

I know Mitel is one of the top-tier players though. Should be fine. It's success will depend more on the competence of your IT dept. (or the outside vendor that sets it up if they don't have the expertise/manpower) than the hardware.

Done right, a VOIP system will provide you with tons more flexibility, and save you on infrastructure costs, since you're only maintaining one wiring standard in your office. Plus there's organizational savings, since once you get your legs under you, all your telephony really becomes an IT discipline, and there's not much need to maintain a separate telecom group. (Assuming your organization has enough seats to have needed on-site telecom guys in the first place.)

Honestly, once you've spent even a week or two on a well-run VOIP system, phones that needed a wholly different set of wiring than your office data/LAN will seem well.. strange and anachronistic.

Ultimately, a lot of the utility and flexibility of a VOIP system is not that it's "VOIP". At least from the end-user experience. It's because they're designed and implimented by IT people. Digital office phone systems have been around since the 80's. But those systems were from phone/voicemail companies who looked at it from the standpoint of making a "phone better" by leveraging digital technology.

VOIP vendors looked at from the other direction: "How can we take computers and LAN's and make them pretend to be phones?" And thus you get lots more flexibility, things like the ability to let your own users manage their extension from a web portal, etc. Since VOIP solutions leverage standard networking and Internet TCP/IP, you can even send one of your phones home with a user, hook it up to a broadband connection, and (with the proper configuration) it'll act just like any other extension in your actual office.

[zagzig]

If your IT guys have some Linux knowledge have them checkout Asterisk (open source PBX) or Trixbox (Asterisk bundled with the OS and other goodies). I started my own business a few years ago and needed a PBX. Coming from a Linux background, I decided to play around with Asterisk and I'm so glad I did. Asterisk provides all the features of your high-end systems(and even some features that are not available). Best part is that the software and OS are free and runs on inexpensive non-proprietary hardware. Also, being that it's open source there is a ton of flexibility.

My setup is relatively small with one Asterisk box and 12 VoIP phones (Polycom). I have 1 landline for backup purposes only and 4 SIP trunks from a VoIP provider providing me with 8 lines. I know people who are using this to run call centers though with 100+ users.

[gwalchmai]

Yeah, VOIP is great. You know how when your T1 goes down and you call your ISP and talk to them about getting it back up? Well, that's a thing of the past with VOIP. ;)

[AJ Dual]

Yeah, VOIP is great. You know how when your T1 goes down and you call your ISP and talk to them about getting it back up? Well, that's a thing of the past with VOIP. ;)

A. A 1.5 mbt T1? Where, a Russian gulag? :rofl:

B. Your analog/POTS system was feeding into a digital trunk somewhere anyway, and the bigger your business, the closer to your comm closet it was.

C. It's called redundancy. It's industry standard to have two fiber lines, on two different carriers. If it's a dumbass with a backhoe, he could just as easily destroy your multi-inch thick POTS twisted pairs too.

D. It's kinda odd nobody in your IT organization does not have a cellphone, much less the obligatory million and one Crackberrys on their belts.

[Patrick Graham]

If your IT guys have some Linux knowledge have them checkout Asterisk (open source PBX) or Trixbox (Asterisk bundled with the OS and other goodies). I started my own business a few years ago and needed a PBX. Coming from a Linux background, I decided to play around with Asterisk and I'm so glad I did. Asterisk provides all the features of your high-end systems(and even some features that are not available). Best part is that the software and OS are free and runs on inexpensive non-proprietary hardware. Also, being that it's open source there is a ton of flexibility.

My setup is relatively small with one Asterisk box and 12 VoIP phones (Polycom). I have 1 landline for backup purposes only and 4 SIP trunks from a VoIP provider providing me with 8 lines. I know people who are using this to run call centers though with 100+ users.


TrixBox now is pretty cool. :cool:

I'm setting one up at a Tee Shirt shop as we speak.

[kenpoprofessor]

A. A 1.5 mbt T1? Where, a Russian gulag? :rofl:

B. Your analog/POTS system was feeding into a digital trunk somewhere anyway, and the bigger your business, the closer to your comm closet it was.

C. It's called redundancy. It's industry standard to have two fiber lines, on two different carriers. If it's a dumbass with a backhoe, he could just as easily destroy your multi-inch thick POTS twisted pairs too.
D. It's kinda odd nobody in your IT organization does not have a cellphone, much less the obligatory million and one Crackberrys on their belts.

:rofl: I'm the backhoe operator for a company installing fiber optic lines, and yep, torn out many a 50pr and 100pr that weren't marked and were direct buried without conduit (guy told the college he would save them some money). Fortunately, all of them were abandoned for the fiber :supergrin:.

Have a great gun carryin' Kenpo day

Clyde

[gwalchmai]

A. A 1.5 mbt T1? Where, a Russian gulag? :rofl:

B. Your analog/POTS system was feeding into a digital trunk somewhere anyway, and the bigger your business, the closer to your comm closet it was.

C. It's called redundancy. It's industry standard to have two fiber lines, on two different carriers. If it's a dumbass with a backhoe, he could just as easily destroy your multi-inch thick POTS twisted pairs too.

D. It's kinda odd nobody in your IT organization does not have a cellphone, much less the obligatory million and one Crackberrys on their belts. Methink thou doth protest too much, AJ. If it's as good as you imply you should only smile at my seeming naivete...

[AJ Dual]

Methink thou doth protest too much, AJ. If it's as good as you imply you should only smile at my seeming naivete...

k. :supergrin:

[gwalchmai]

BTW, what's the cost of two redundant fiber lines? ;)

[proguncali]

Cisco certified VIOP guy here.

I have a client with the Mitel....or they had a Mitel.

How many people, etc?

[AJ Dual]

BTW, what's the cost of two redundant fiber lines? ;)

What's the cost of downtime to your business?

[jakemccoy]

I'm running Vonage. I guess that means I'm an amateur. I'm thinking about doing away with VOIP and running a digital cable telephone line.

[gwalchmai]

What's the cost of downtime to your business? That's an interesting statement from someone who said "It's kinda odd nobody in your IT organization does not have a cellphone, much less the obligatory million and one Crackberrys on their belts."

Seriously, we've had occasional outages to the PBX, and survived. Most of us have cellphones and can get in touch with clients for the short time it's been down (a day is as long as I've seen). And I'm just curious because I've been seeing VOIP pitched to SMBs, which I don't think can afford redundant fiber.

But if I were advocating VOIP and redundant fiber I would be able to say how much it cost.

[kc8ykd]

That's an interesting statement from someone who said "It's kinda odd nobody in your IT organization does not have a cellphone, much less the obligatory million and one Crackberrys on their belts."

Seriously, we've had occasional outages to the PBX, and survived. Most of us have cellphones and can get in touch with clients for the short time it's been down (a day is as long as I've seen). And I'm just curious because I've been seeing VOIP pitched to SMBs, which I don't think can afford redundant fiber.

But if I were advocating VOIP and redundant fiber I would be able to say how much it cost.

I can advocate redundant connections and diverse paths without having to talk costs, why? Because I always had a telco department that handled the money side of things.

The closest I got to VOIP was our Lucent Definity system with MCK boxes doing the actual VOIP portion.

What I had to worry about was the transit paths the voice traffic took and to make sure the MCK boxes functioned. I didn't have to be concerned with costs. Uptime, reliability and traffic prioritization were key to ensuring VOIP worked well for us. The only outages we incurred were when the voice PRI's had problems. But we had like 10 voice PRI's total, some doing outbound local, outbound LD, inbound 800, inbound local. All those separate from the data side.

[geekboy]

Yeah, VOIP is great. You know how when your T1 goes down and you call your ISP and talk to them about getting it back up? Well, that's a thing of the past with VOIP. ;)LOL! I know exactly what you mean. All my lines are ITSP based and I freaked when my router couldn't route packets anymore, and sure enough, my Business FiOS Fiber lines (both) were down.

Yup, I picked up the phone to call Verizon! No dial tone. Shucks. (By habit, we reach for the phone. And yes, Crackberry saved the day.)

[saluki9]

Cisco certified VIOP guy here.

I have a client with the Mitel....or they had a Mitel.

How many people, etc?

We are only 6 people at location.

FYI the most unreliable part of our entire infrastructure has been our POTS lines. We lose them about once a month at least. :upeyes:

[zagzig]

We are only 6 people at location.

FYI the most unreliable part of our entire infrastructure has been our POTS lines. We lose them about once a month at least. :upeyes:

You could run Trixbox for under $1200 in server hardware and Polycoms. A couple of SIP trunks (4 lines) will run about $50/month with unlimited long distance in the US.

[dave_pro2a]

asterix rules.

[hihoslva]

With any VoiP company worth their salt, downtime is a not-issue.

If your fiber line or whatever gets cut, all it takes is a call to your VoiP provider to have all your incoming calls directed to cell phones. It's a 2 minute process, and seamless. Most can have this happen automatically, without the phone call at all.

One of the great advantages of VoiP is the flexibility. My lady works for a VoiP provider, and the options for business are endless. A person can be on their cell phone on the other side of the world, yet the party they are speaking to will think they are at their desk.

Again - a good provider has no issues with downtime. Hell, even Vonage for home use has this feature; if the internet connection goes down, your calls are automatically re-directed to a phone of your choice. When I used Vonage (recently dropped them to go cell-only), I'd occasionally unplug my adapter when going out of town, and all my home calls were automatically routed to my cell.

[proguncali]

We are only 6 people at location.

FYI the most unreliable part of our entire infrastructure has been our POTS lines. We lose them about once a month at least. :upeyes:


I would be willing to give you a free consult on all of the different options that you have.

Cisco makes a great new product focused at the SMB market. It has all of the features of the full blown "Call Manager" software at an smb price.

I'm part of the beta team for implementation.

I can hook you up with a Cisco partner in your area if you are interested.

[proguncali]

BTW, what's the cost of two redundant fiber lines? ;)

What's the cost of downtime to your business?

The point is moot if you're sub 50-75 people in an office unless your net is large enough to accommodate those costs.

For most companies something like a FLEX PRI is a good option. That way when you have no one on the phone you have a full 1.5.

You can augment that with a couple of POTS lines if your PRI goes down so you still have out bounds calls.

[gwalchmai]

The point is moot if you're sub 50-75 people in an office unless your net is large enough to accommodate those costs.

For most companies something like a FLEX PRI is a good option. That way when you have no one on the phone you have a full 1.5.

You can augment that with a couple of POTS lines if your PRI goes down so you still have out bounds calls.Yeah, that was what I was getting at. We average 30 - 40 people in the office every day, and we have a PRI on a dedicated T1.

At our Dallas office we have less than 10 people and use a FLEX PRI there.

[proguncali]

Well Saluki, what's the word?

[geekboy]

I hate you guys! I really do!!!

Spent the weekend, converting my Sun SPARC/Ultra10 from Solaris to Gentoo 2008.1... then I compiled Asterisk. Then, today, I spent time reviewing different SIP Trunking providers. (I use Vonage today, but with the traditional Analog Adapters. I called Vonage, but they don't directly sell the trunked SIP lines, so I had to go with Bandwidth.COM.) I actually have been wanting to do this with my Cisco 36XX Router, but Asterisk is that much more fun.

Anyhow... I actually have it working, and I really, really, really, really love this system. I've been playing with IVR menus since 6PM. Okay, so that's what I wasn't on GlockTalk this evening. Asterisk is not bad. not bad at all. Hardest part is learning all the key files and setting up your trunks. But once that's done, it's fun just playing with the IVR system.

For VOIP, the only thing interesting (we have VOIP with mostly CISCO desk phone and PolyCOM speakerphones) is the power over Ethernet. Those switches are expensive. Oh well. I ordered a couple of GrandStream desk sets. I'm using the 3CX softphone for now (playing).

I had mine telling telemarketers that we're all busy talking to other telemarketers and that we've been attacked by monkeys. Really fun stuff to give some comic relief from the monotonous installation.

[djf]

Used VOIP at home a little bit with a grandstream phone. It was a horrendous POS. It would cut out randomly and emit high pitched squeels.

You also need to investigate QoS on routers and get switches that can support 802.1p (most higher end ones can). When I got the QoS set up on my home firewall and the 802.1p set up properly on the switch, I was able to download on the Innerweb and talk on the phone on a 1.5 Mb DSL line.

[geekboy]

Used VOIP at home a little bit with a grandstream phone. It was a horrendous POS. It would cut out randomly and emit high pitched squeels.

You also need to investigate QoS on routers and get switches that can support 802.1p (most higher end ones can). When I got the QoS set up on my home firewall and the 802.1p set up properly on the switch, I was able to download on the Innerweb and talk on the phone on a 1.5 Mb DSL line.My router and switch are no problem. They are all commercial grade (I run commercial grade websites).

Everything is working perfectly! My lines are 15Mbps/2Mbps lines to the Internet.

[djf]

My router and switch are no problem. They are all commercial grade (I run commercial grade websites).

Everything is working perfectly! My lines are 15Mbps/2Mbps lines to the Internet.

Just wait until you begin to fill up your bandwidth, especially that 2 Mb upload and you will see what I mean about proper queueing and prioritization of traffic.

[geekboy]

Just wait until you begin to fill up your bandwidth, especially that 2 Mb upload and you will see what I mean about proper queueing and prioritization of traffic.Running Cisco 36XX router (IOS 12.2(7b)) with QoS for Voice Services, RTP Prioritization on, and a Gigabit switch with Port prioritization. :) I hope that I'm covered.

Even with full 64kbps uncompressed G.711 PCM, I don't expect to use more than 747kbps with 10 lines running full throttle. I don't ever expect to be running more than 3 lines at any one time.

But, alas, I'm new at this VOIP thing, but not networking. This is just a small business setup (very small business operated out of my home).

[djf]

Running Cisco 36XX router (IOS 12.2(7b)) with QoS for Voice Services, RTP Prioritization on, and a Gigabit switch with Port prioritization. :) I hope that I'm covered.

Even with full 64kbps uncompressed G.711 PCM, I don't expect to use more than 747kbps with 10 lines running full throttle. I don't ever expect to be running more than 3 lines at any one time.

But, alas, I'm new at this VOIP thing, but not networking. This is just a small business setup (very small business operated out of my home).

Ahhh, you didn't mention that before. :)

I work for a tier 2 netowrk provider and we carry a lot of VOIP. It requires a lot of extra effort to make sure everyone's calls go through properly.

[geekboy]

Ahhh, you didn't mention that before. :)

I work for a tier 2 netowrk provider and we carry a lot of VOIP. It requires a lot of extra effort to make sure everyone's calls go through properly.What's an internet discussion worth if you through down all your cards on the table at once! (Didn't mean to hide anything, but I understand and greatly appreciate the re-enforcement!)

I might bother you sometime, if I have a question or two, if that's okay?

This is very cool stuff. I've been a Vonage customer for 4 years. I like having more control. (Don't laugh...) I had an old Macrotel 16H PBX in my house that was hooked up to four POTS lines coming out of the VONAGE adapters. Vonage is cool and I really like the features.

But now, I'm buying SIP trunks and have a very cool very configurable system (Asterisk) to play with. Yes, my nickname suits me!

Right this minute, I'm trying to get Gentoo 2008.1 on my Sun Netra X1. I want to use that as my primary switch (Asterisk) since it has dual ether built in, and I can do some more prioritization of packets being routed.

[djf]

What's an internet discussion worth if you through down all your cards on the table at once! (Didn't mean to hide anything, but I understand and greatly appreciate the re-enforcement!)

I might bother you sometime, if I have a question or two, if that's okay?

This is very cool stuff. I've been a Vonage customer for 4 years. I like having more control. (Don't laugh...) I had an old Macrotel 16H PBX in my house that was hooked up to four POTS lines coming out of the VONAGE adapters. Vonage is cool and I really like the features.

But now, I'm buying SIP trunks and have a very cool very configurable system (Asterisk) to play with. Yes, my nickname suits me!

Right this minute, I'm trying to get Gentoo 2008.1 on my Sun Netra X1. I want to use that as my primary switch (Asterisk) since it has dual ether built in, and I can do some more prioritization of packets being routed.

I am not that much of an expert unfortunatly. I have only run VOIP seriously at home. I don't work on the teams at my work who take care of that stuff, I only talk to them.

You are running the lowest bandwidth codec with only a few phones so you will be fine. SIP trunks are the way to go too, WAY cheaper than PRIs. The only other thing is to match codecs with your provider so asterisk doesn't burn to many cycles converting between codecs.

[geekboy]

I am not that much of an expert unfortunatly. I have only run VOIP seriously at home. I don't work on the teams at my work who take care of that stuff, I only talk to them.

You are running the lowest bandwidth codec with only a few phones so you will be fine. SIP trunks are the way to go too, WAY cheaper than PRIs. The only other thing is to match codecs with your provider so asterisk doesn't burn to many cycles converting between codecs.Awesome, see, you helped me already!

-Cheers!

[DustyBottoms]

Currently have Comcast Voip plus ATT wired. We were dropping customers on comcast (a lot of dropped packets) so we are now only calling with wired ATT.

Called Comcast and got immediate service. A repairman showed up at the schedualed time and tested everything. He said we were getting interferrence from my shop tv cable so I told him to unhook it. He then moved my router away from the phone and said goodby.

My router has been next to the phone for two years without problems.

I lost two calls the next morning, so I hooked up my shop and am cancelling Comcast Voip...

I now have to bury a five pair out to the street to get my third line from ATT installed.

No more messing around by me... A lost customer is $$$ in my business.