Looking for a business solution using Asterisks. I have read through a lot of the information but its doing my head in and would appreciate some help or advice. In a nut shell, this is our situation.
We have 4 offices in different states. 2 are running 4 x ISDN lines (i.e. 2 x PRI giving us 4 lines) with Panasonic D816 Hybrid PABX systems. The other 2 offices have nothing at this stage.
We want to be able to easily transfer calls between offices and also have voip capabilities.
So my questions are:
Do we continue to use the existing PABX in conjunction with an Asterisk box or does it replace it?
With the offices that do not have an existing PABX, do we just purchase an Asterik Box only and put in ISDN Lines?
Do we need to puchase new phones or can we continue to use the Panasonic phones?
How many extensions to you have off the Panasonic?
Answer: We have 4 in one office and approx 6 in the other. The other two new offices will have approx 4 as well.
Are you running ISDN-PRI or BRI? It sounds from the number of lines that it’s BRI.
Answer: I thought they were PRI…not sure. They were sold as On-ramp2’s
Do you have ADSL at all of the sites and if so what capacity?
Answer: Yes we do. One office is ADSL2+ with an approx speed of 5-7MB download. All others are 1500/256 ADSL but will be upgrading.
How many extensions will you need at the new sites?
Answer: 4
Are you using any FAX machines or modems via analogue interfaces?
Answer: We have 1 PSTN line in each of the 2 existing sites for fax. With the new sites I was thinking of using a gateway of some sort.
Given the volumes required I would suggest that you replace the existing telephone system with Asterisk servers.
On each site you would have:
Asterisk IPPBX based on a cheapist PC system. I would suggest using Trixbox if you are not too familiar with Linux.
Each Asterisk system will need an ISDN-BRI connection (It sounds as if you have ISDN-BRI to me but I could be wrong, PRI is usually for larger sites - I am UK based on not sure what On-ramp2 is). Depending how many ISDN lines you might need either a single port or dual port.
Replace handsets with something like Aastra or Snom (both good quality and reasonably prices).
Get an ethernet switch for each site that support PoE and QoS. Netgear have some pretty good low cost units.
You can use something like the Linksys SPA-2000 series or a Digium IAXy for connection of faxes.
If you need analogue PSTN line connection anywhere you can use something like the Digium TDM400 with FXO modules for each PSTN line.
Inter sites calls can run across IP with an IAX2 trunk across the Internet between sites. I would look to get ADSL routers which support some sort of QoS (i.e. Billion do some good ones) to support voice and data and at busy sites a separate ADSL for voice only would be good.
You can start to route outgoing calls across the Internet to a service provider for cheaper calls eventually leaving the ISDN circuits for incoming calls only.