pixelbend

Hi all,

The company I work for has had nothing but problems with our phone system. We have 8 lines of a non-dedicated T-1 coming into our PBX system. We have also recently had problems with our broadband internet connection.

I started wondering about VoIP as a solution to our problems. Does nyone have any experience with this? What do we need? What equipment will we need? Are there any good websites for researching this?

Thanks

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cj22009

Pixe I do this for a living try to explain what types of troubles your having also tell me the type of pbx they have it sounds like it could be a issue with your circuit not the phone system VoIp can be a good solution if you by the right equip but more than likley you have a circuit issue esspecialy if you are having dropped calls and slow internet speed if your company has a full 24 channel T and yall are only using 8 channels off of it for voice I dont really see it being a pbx issue not unless your using alot of band width on the data side then you can run into issues there

pixelbend

thanks for the reply. Our issues with the phone system and the internet are seprate. Our phone system does have a circuit issue, we have been going back and forth with Bell and our carrier about it for a while. We have a fractional T1, that goes into a box that we didn't buy from Bell, so they won't service it and our carrier (a local company) doesn't seem to want to service it either. We will probably have to get a whole new T1 router, but the phone system isn't my biggest concern right now.

Our internet connection is a 802.11 wireless connection to our local ISP. (Line of sight, boosted 802.11, tower to tower) It was a good deal, but since then the ISP has been bought out and speeds have really gone into the toilet. We considered going to a dedicated T1 for data, but it is going to be more than triple what we are paying now.

That's when I thought about VoIP. Kill two birds with one stone. Data and phone service over one line. Is this a good idea?

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maleficent

One of my customers has VoIP installed in one of their sattelite offices, sadly it's a sales office. Now, I am not sure if it was just poor project planning on their part, or the company that did the installation - but they just had an awful time with it getting it up- -this sales office was without phone service for close to 3 days while they got the kinks worked out. Now it's running pretty seemlessly but it was ugly for a while.

A few months back one of the inflight magazines did a story on technology in the 21st century and Voice OVer Ip was one of those advances... It was good faror about 10 minutes of reading and I didnt learn anything new.. but bottom line assessment from the author of the article... CTOs would be well advised to wait on this one.. .the techology is still quite new and it's still got some issues, for an office where phones are mission critical, it's not the best way to go... (Since it was an inflight magazine I'd probably take it with a grain of salt)

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bendsley

Asterisk is a complete PBX in software. It runs on Linux, BSD, Windows and OS X and provides all of the features you would expect from a PBX and more. Asterisk does voice over IP in four protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware.

Asterisk provides Voicemail services with Directory, Call Conferencing, Interactive Voice Response, Call Queuing. It has support for three-way calling, caller ID services, ADSI, SIP, H.323 (as both client and gateway), MGCP (call manager only) and SCCP/Skinny (limited). Check the Features section for a more complete list.

Asterisk needs no additional hardware for Voice-over-IP. A single (or multiple) VOIP provider(s) can be used for outgoing and/or incoming calls (outgoing and incoming calls can be handled through entirely different VOIP and/or telco providers)

For interconnection with digital and analog telephony equipment, Asterisk supports a number of hardware devices, most notably all of the hardware manufactured by Asterisk's sponsors, Digium. Digium has single and quad span T1 and E1 interfaces for interconnection to PRI lines and channel banks. In addition, single to quad port analog FXO and FXS cards are available and are popular for small installations. Other vendors' cards can be used for BRI (ISDN2) or quad- and octo- port BRI based upon CAPI compatible cards or HFC chipset cards.

Lastly, standalone devices are available to do a wide range of tasks including providing fxo and fxs ports that simply plug into the LAN and register to Asterisk as an available device. Asterisk-based telephony solutions offer a rich and flexible feature set. Asterisk offers both classical PBX functionality and advanced features, and interoperates with traditional standards-based telephony systems and Voice over IP systems. Asterisk offers the features one would expect of a large proprietary PBX system such as Voicemail, Conference Bridging, Call Queuing, and Call Detail Records.

Call Features:

* ADSI On-Screen Menu System
* Alarm Receiver
* Append Message
* Authentication
* Automated Attendant
* Blacklists
* Blind Transfer
* Call Detail Records
* Call Forward on Busy
* Call Forward on No Answer
* Call Forward Variable
* Call Monitoring
* Call Parking
* Call Queuing
* Call Recording
* Call Retrieval
* Call Routing (DID & ANI)
* Call Snooping
* Call Transfer
* Call Waiting
* Caller ID
* Caller ID Blocking
* Caller ID on Call Waiting
* Calling Cards
* Conference Bridging
* Database Store / Retrieve
* Database Integration
* Dial by Name
* Direct Inward System Access
* Distinctive Ring
* Distributed Universal Number Discovery (DUNDi™)
* Do Not Disturb
* E911
* ENUM
* Fax Transmit and Receive (3rd Party OSS Package)
* Flexible Extension Logic
* Interactive Directory Listing
* Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
* Local and Remote Call Agents
* Macros
* Music On Hold
* Music On Transfer
o Flexible Mp3-based System
o Random or Linear Play
o Volume Control
* Predictive Dialer
* Privacy
* Open Settlement Protocol (OSP)
* Overhead Paging
* Protocol Conversion
* Remote Call Pickup
* Remote Office Support
* Roaming Extensions
* Route by Caller ID
* SMS Messaging
* Spell / Say
* Streaming Media Access
* Supervised Transfer
* Talk Detection
* Text-to-Speech (via Festival)
* Three-way Calling
* Time and Date
* Transcoding
* Trunking
* VoIP Gateways
* Voicemail
o Visual Indicator for Message Waiting
o Stutter Dialtone for Message Waiting
o Voicemail to email
o Voicemail Groups
o Web Voicemail Interface
* Zapateller

Computer-Telephony Integration

* AGI (Asterisk Gateway Interface)
* Graphical Call Manager
* Outbound Call Spooling
* Predictive Dialer
* TCP/IP Management Interface

Scalability

* TDMoE (Time Division Multiplex over Ethernet)
o Allows direct connection of Asterisk PBX
o Zero latency
o Uses commodity Ethernet hardware
* Voice-over IP
o Allows for integration of physically separate installations
o Uses commonly deployed data connections
o Allows a unified dialplan across multiple offices

Codecs

* ADPCM
* G.711 (A-Law & μ-Law)
* G.723.1 (pass through)
* G.726
* G.729 (through purchase of commercial license through Digium)
* GSM
* iLBC
* Linear
* LPC-10
* Speex

Protocols

* IAX™ (Inter-Asterisk Exchange)
* H.323
* SIP (Session Initiation Protocol)
* MGCP (Media Gateway Control Protocol
* SCCP (Cisco® Skinny®)

Traditional Telephony Interoperability

* E&M
* E&M Wink
* Feature Group D
* FXS
* FXO
* GR-303
* Loopstart
* Groundstart
* Kewlstart
* MF and DTMF support
* Robbed-bit Signaling (RBS) Types

PRI Protocols

* 4ESS
* BRI (ISDN4Linux)
* DMS100
* EuroISDN
* Lucent 5E
* National ISDN2
* NFAS






www.digium.com
www.asterisk.org
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk

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pixelbend

wow, thanks for the info. The one question I have left is: if I setup my own box, do I still need a VoIP service provider? (I assume I do)

I have been talking to a sales rep from braodband.com about VoIP. I'm supposed to have a conference call with him today. We'll see what kind of price quotes we get from him and that will probably tell us if this is something worth persuing or not.

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bendsley

Well, you can see if your ISP will give you SIP trunks. With the SIP trunk, you will be given phones numbers that are associated with your ISPs switch and they will pass the information on to you. If you still want copper lines, for backup lines and fax reasons, you'll need a Zaptel card from Digium.com. I have a TD400M card with 2 FXO and 2 FXS ports on it.

__________________
"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane."

cj22009

pix you may still not have to buy a whole new box depending on what pbx you have if its a newer on there may be an upgrade for it to make it a voip switch get a full T and if its upgradeable change the cards out and boom there you go but if its and older switch more than likely you cant do this. We install 3-coms voip system and cisco and avaya the 3-com is great for small buissness you can have a few as five phones and as many as 100 and its not real pricey either

Jackebear

I don't know too much about company VoIP phone sytems but for home use I have been extremely satisfied. I am overseas and the cost of phoning Canada from Japan was unbelievable even using phone cards.

I used Dialpad through the computer first with a headset and had probably a 70% success rate and a lot of echos and static to go with my connections. A year ago, I bought one of those Cisco ATA boxes that hook up directly to the cable and bought a regular cordless phone and...holy moly, what a change!!. I would say 99% crystal clear success. Most of my friends think I am calling outside there house it's so clear.

It's going to take time for all the bugs to be ironed out, especially with many phones using cable at once but I think it's going to be worth it in the long run. I love my VoIP phone service and soon I will have a number in the States my family and friends can use to call me here in Nippon...cool.

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