Taking the plunge

Asterisk Asterisk Support
1

Hello all,

I’m the network admin for a small tech school. We are located in a single building. We are going to need a new PBX this summer and I’m rooting for *. I’ve been messing with * for about a year and a half now and all is going very well on the test system we have setup. We have about 6 phones running through a POTS line with a digium card.

The plan for this summer is to scrap our POTS lines and go with a PRI. I’m also planning on rolling out a pure * install. We’ll have under 100 phones, voicemail, and a single PRI with 24 lines. We currently only have about 60 phones and 7 POTS lines. I expect no more than 7 concurrent ingoing/outgoing calls and maybe 4 concurrent to the voicemail system. We’d like to have some DIDs setup, and have the ability to record a call now and then if someone would ever call and be threatening over the phone. I’m planning on rolling out PoE switches and using Polycom IP300 and IP500 phones with the PoE adapters from Polycom. I’ve had good luck with these phones on our test system, so I figured will just stick with them.

I’m 95% confident that all will go well, but I was wondering what kind of server load I can expect. Also, I’m pretty sure I’ve covered all the bases but I’d like your input on what I’ve missed or what I could change for the better.

Thanks,

Jeremy

2

single proc, 3GHz would be sufficient for that call load, easily…and it would give you room to grow.

we have 12 users using VICIDIAL on a single proc P4 3.0GHz with 1GB RAM and it runs great.

if you’re only expecting 7 or 8 active calls, a full T1 is a waste of money…if you can get a fractional T1, do so, otherwise you might consider going with an ITSP…

i think you’ll be pretty happy with the Polycoms, but read up on provisioning, as it would be much easier to roll out that many phones going through a provisioning method.

otherwise, it sounds like you’re good to go!

3

We have about 10 other lines that are not part of the T1 (fax, alarm, fire, etc), so the other lines will be used for that sort of stuff. I’m not planning on making them part of the phone system. The full T1 is still cheaper than what we currently pay for our POTS lines, so that will make everyone happy.

I’ve been using the Polycom configs and TFTP to change settings on the phones already. It works very well. I have a default SIP conf that sets up all the phones default settings and then a config for each individual phone that sets the extension, etc. Is there a different way to do this? I’ve just been going on the documentation from Polycom, which of course does not include anything about asterisk.

Thanks again,

Jeremy