Hey Guys
I need to know what kind of hardware to use for the pbx box and what software to use for my small business because I am looking to do is use the voicemail and to make incoming calls and outgoing calls from my small business and what kind of internet service I will be using is cable and also I am going to use linksys wireless router for my small business.
-
periods ( . ) are your friend. They punctuate the end of a sentence, splitting your words into separate thoughts.
-
what hardware you need depends on how many users you have. The server doesn’t have to be much, if you have under 10 users anything around 500MHz will do fine (as long as you’re not doing g.729).
2.5 You also need to decided what phones they will use and how you will talk to the PSTN (phone system). If you use analog channels you need analog interface cards. I recommend IP phones for the users because they get useful buttons like TRANSFER and HOLD instead of having to do hookflashes and star codes. Look into AAstra and SNOM for IP phones.
-
You WILL need QoS (quality of service) controls on that router. This is not optional. Prioritize all traffic coming to/from the * server’s IP address, and in * set canreinvite=no (sip.conf) so all traffic comes from the server.
-
Lastly you need to figure out if you have enough bandwidth. Each call at g.711 ulaw takes up about 80kbit/sec including overhead. Figure out how many concurrant calls you will need at a time and make sure your modem’s speed can support this number. You can reduce your bw usage by using another codec, ie iLBC, GSM or G.729. iLBC and G.729 both use a LOT of CPU. G.729 is a proprietary codec and to use it you must purchase a license from Digium, it costs $10/channel.
G.711 ulaw uses about 64kbit/sec (80k with overhead)
GSM/iLBC use around 10-15kbit/sec
G.729 uses (as I recall) around 9kbit/sec.
well I be using cable connection that is 5mpbs x 768 kbps and also I be hosting my own webserver off that same connection.
768k upload? That will handle at least a few calls without problems.
You should NOT host your website from this though. That 768k upload is going to be the bottleneck and having people hit your website off that will make it even worse. Besides, that’s usually against the cable co TOS.
get a cheap virtual host, godaddy.com will do it for like $5/mo
I got some good news. I just found a new cable internet service that would let me host my own webserver and my own internet phone which the service is 2mb upstream and 2mb downstream all for 34.95 a month or I can upgrade upto 5mb upstream and 5upstream for 39.95 a month so that is some good news for me and also I can get static ip address’s 2. 
We’ve been dealing with the issue of finding a VOIP provider that won’t
A: Give us more hardware
B: Charge us for a middle man
We just wan’t a friggen long distance provider… we got a dial tone and willing to get local moved over.
Problem is… we keep finding out they wana charge us more for extra odds and ends.
Anyone know raw service providers?
And its through SIP… nothing fancy but just prue and simple SIP.
<figured this question hasn’t been answered and VOIP usually needs a server to route things anyway… keeps it cheap>
There are a whole list of providers which just sell you “time”
connect.voicepulse.com
vitelity.net
voipstreet.com
it goes on and on…
to update this- 2mb up/down will be good, 5mb up/down is even better. You NEED quality of service controls on the WAN side- to prioritize VoIP traffic. This is NOT optional regardless of what BW you get.
also just wanted to toss in a vote for connect.voicepulse.com… they rock.
as for providers there is an extensive list on voip-info.org, look for voip service providers. there are three categories- residential, business and b2b. the b2b side are the ones that cannot require hardware and stuff like that. Plain SIP is also called BYOD or Bring Your Own Device. Some residential type carriers that support it are broadvoice, quantumvoice, and viatalk.
hope that helps!
now would I be able to host my website and email, pbx and fax to email on one webserver or not?
Yes on all the above. However I would highly recommend hosting web and possibly email offsite- you can get virtual hosting for only a few bucks a month. And with that, your entire office won’t stop working when someone posts your website on (any major publication or site).
see i am trying to say way from the virtual web hosting that is why I am building my own webserver and after I build it I am going to update my internet service to 5mb upload and 5mb download.
I think that’s a bad idea, because your website is the most public-facing bit of your business. Also, your ENTIRE COMPANY is running off that 5mbit dsl link, which means if it gets jammed up the phones go down, email stops, people can’t surf, etc.
And if your company gets a sudden traffic spike, either from a DDOS attack (it happens) or from being featured in some form of popular website or publication, that will direct a LOT of traffic down your 5mbit DSL. Given that the result of the DSL getting jammed is no phones, I think $5/mo is worth it for the website. Email you can host yourself usually but the website should be kept separate.
its not a dsl line its a cable line
same thing. my point is that it’s a weak link, if it goes down or gets jammed you lose your phones. $5/mo isnt a lot, so why risk it?
well i am a small business online and paying extra 5 dollars a month for hosting it some where else could be used for paying for electric, internet bill or even for shipping the product. so you see what i am trying to do to host my own webserver?
yes i see but i still disagree.
you are a small business so any publicity you can get is good right? the more people that know about you the better. So obviously getting listed on a popular website or in a magazine would be good. Marketing would be good too.
Now imagine that you have a marketing campaign or something and a zillion people visit your site at once. This slows your cable to a crawl. Now your potential customers can not only NOT get your website but they also can’t call you on the phone. Because of that bottleneck you are gridlocked, nobody can talk to you. of all the people taht want to place orders, none can get through.
In such a case, you will certainly feel that $5 would have been well spent, yes? Because if that happens you will probably quickly go over your bandwidth allocation and have to upgrade. So instead of having to redirect DNS, etc etc you can just tell the hosting provider to bill you again and you are back online. Compare this to at least an hour or two to get setup with hosting and upload your site thru a jammed connection?
Granted most of this is unlikely. But as the traffic to your site grows, you will need to offload your hosting eventually. IMHO, saving money is good but there’s a difference between being frugal and being cheap
but either way its your business, I hope it does well!
Listen to IronHelix. We made MSN site of the week - twice. Talk about a jam-up. And we have 155 Mbps both directions on an OC-3. Pray SlashDot never hears about you 
Also, cable is shared bandwidth, so you don’t really have as much as you think. It is one of those “up to 5 Mbps” things. You would have to pay at least $250 per month for 5 Mbps of unshared bandwidth.
I dont have cable I have FTTH its fiber-to-the-home and yes I do have 5mb on download and upload
how it is delivered does not matter- how much is delivered is. You’re only getting 5 megabits, thats 5 megs and it doesnt matter if it comes in over cable dsl fiber satellite wireless or Carrier Pidgeon (RFC1149/RFC2549).
You only have 5 megabits.
Now for normal use thats fine, you get a few page hits an hour and thats all good. That type of usage will happily coexist with voip/email/surfing/whatever, no problem.
But when you get slashdotted or someone decides to DDOS you or something, this not only knocks your website offline but it also brings your office to a standstill as well. You cant call anybody, you cant email anybody, now that you have tons of publicity you have ceased to exist adn all your potential customers are left guessing. Even if you try to switch to a hosting provider, it takes a few hours for DNS to propogate by which time you have lost thousands of potential customers. And that loss is a lot more than $5/mo.
OTOH if you hire one of the zillion shared hosts out there, you will pay like $2-5/mo for a very simple web hosting. You can keep email in house if you want no problem. but this gains you that if you do get popular, your office is not knocked off the planet and also you can pay the hosting provider more and get back up immediately.
but if you are really determined to save $5/mo then go for it, but consider yourself warned