[Suggestions ?] Own small business . upgraiding voice system

Asterisk Asterisk Support
1

To All,

Thanks in advance for taking the time to look and read this post.

I own a small company and I currently have five POTS lines. Four for voice and one for faxing. It is an older system and no longer supported by the manufacture. I have looked into replacing it but all the quotes I am getting are over the 20K mark. I have worked with computers and programing for several years before I become a small business (not computer related) owner. I no longer have the time to personally spend on the techincal issues or adminstration.

From what I have been able to study * should be able to replace may four POTS voice lines. What I would like to accomplish is the following

Replace the four POTS voice lines in the office

Use * with a toll free number DID for all voice incoming calls

Use my broadband connection for this (no FXO / FXS)

Using VPN routers allow key company personnel to have ‘office’ phone at home (as well as VPN connection for thier computer)

More information on my broadband connection … it is 6 meg down / 2 meg up.

My basic understanding leads me to this setup…

  1. An Asterisk server on a dedicated 100 mip switch just for VOIP, and a second connection to the backbone Switch with QoS for VIOP.

  2. Either SIP or IAX2 handsets (IAX2 for the remote [home] handsets)

  3. A VOIP service provider that offer toll free DIDs (NuFone for example) and using the IAX2 protocal

  4. Main Router capable of mutipile hardware based VPN

  5. VPN capable router compatable with company main router for each home handset.

As for faxing I would just currently keep the one POTS I have now for faxing.

Please review and suggest. Also I am in Eastern PA and if the price is right I would be able to pay to have this accomplished for the company.

2

[quote=“pick”]To All,

a) Replace the four POTS voice lines in the office

b) Use * with a toll free number DID for all voice incoming calls

c) Use my broadband connection for this (no FXO / FXS)

d) Using VPN routers allow key company personnel to have ‘office’ phone at home (as well as VPN connection for thier computer)

e) More information on my broadband connection … it is 6 meg down / 2 meg up.

My basic understanding leads me to this setup…

  1. An Asterisk server on a dedicated 100 mip switch just for VOIP, and a second connection to the backbone Switch with QoS for VIOP.

  2. Either SIP or IAX2 handsets (IAX2 for the remote [home] handsets)

  3. A VOIP service provider that offer toll free DIDs (NuFone for example) and using the IAX2 protocal

  4. Main Router capable of mutipile hardware based VPN

  5. VPN capable router compatable with company main router for each home handset.

  6. As for faxing I would just currently keep the one POTS I have now for faxing.

Please review and suggest. Also I am in Eastern PA and if the price is right I would be able to pay to have this accomplished for the company.[/quote]

Hi I marked some of your earlier posts to keep the threading consistent.

(a) & (b) & © - I don’t understand why you would put all your eggs in one basket, personally I’d keep the POTS lines and would use for redundancy, or my preference would be to keep the inbound calls via POTS anyway - so you’re paying line rentals but its not exactly a lot. OK so there’s then the Digium cards but I would want all my companys traffic to come in via VoiP yet.

(d) Handy but Depends on the paranoia, XP Pro has the PPTP VPN built in, and combined with a soft-phone works fine for temporary off-site staff. For more permanent off-siters a hard phone with VPN router might be good - can allow calls to be made even if laptop off.

  1. Overkill - We have been running Asterisk in production environment (20+ staff) for 6 months making /taking some 5K calls per month. Out asterisk box sit just on the standard switch along with the hardhpones which have the desktop PC’s dasiy chained. No traffic shaping, VLAN or QOS, and in this time only had on 60 minute network issue that mucked up the phones a little. Traced this back to a w2K server shoving out flaky packets.

  2. SIp handsets work fine. We have temp homeworkes on X-ten lite. I would put perm homworkers on snom 190’s cos those are what we have in the office.

  3. Yes if you want to do (a) , (b), ©

  4. we use a w2k3 sever to run the VPN tunnels to the XP clients. Works well enough.

  5. Good idea - faxing over VoIP sucks. With calls coming in via POTS we have our fax machine on a SIPURA adaptor which works ok, purely for east of placing the fax machine and connecting the CAT5, rather than terming a analog line to a specific location.

Yes definately get someone to set it up for you, especially if mission critical and you don’t have time to faff/learn and make mistakes as you go. We paid 600 STG per day for 2x days and got a fully builty, installed and configured system.

g