Question about implementing VOIP

Personally I'd suggest looking into the Mitel SX-200 ICP "CX" model. It's literally a complete "office in a box". Here in the US it is sold exclusively by the Sprint Products Group (SPG) division of Sprint North Supply. The SPG model is called the "i4". It's literally all in one small box, about the size of a TIVO. It has a built-in 16-port layer 2 POE (power-over-ethernet) etherswitch plus a WAN input to tie back to your Internet connection. Voice mail is also built-in, ACD is there too! Each phone also includes a built-in layer 2 switch and auxiliary ethernet jack where you connect your PC or laptop. As shipped, the SPG i4 supports up to

40 (max) VOIP sets, 4 analog lines (for faxes, modems, power-fail cut-thru lines, etc, and 6 analog Loop Start/Class trunks (incl callerID). Installable options include T1 and PRI and can be extended to 12 LS/Class trunks with an added internal module. Pretty spiffy little box for someone really interested in "doing it right".

In order to keep your old Norstar phones you'd need Mitel's CITELINK Gateway. Unfortunately this option is not supported by the i4 but it *IS* supported on the higher-end Mitel MN3300 ICP PBX. The 3300 is the exact same physical size as the SPG i4 but has a lot more horsepower (up to 700 VOIP phones) and (unfortunately) does not have the built-in etherswitch. Computer retailer CompUSA just completed installing Mitel 3300s in all 230 of their stores and has the whole shebang networked together nationwide. Way cool!!

ATZ!

There is a much better one for VoIP-related questions: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip We keep its Web interface here if you are interested:

What's driving your change to VoIP, anyways? BTW, you've mentioned "developing VoIP applications". Plenty times people mean to say "CTI applications" (computer-telephony integration) when they say "VoIP". CTI is a different animal, and requires different approaches. One of examples of such apps would be an Outlook customer record lookup on incoming call's CallerID. Most of CTI apps would not require you to uproot a phone system, especially considering you have a very nice one already.

Give more information about what exactly you are trying to do to folks at comp.dcom.voice-over-ip, and I think you'd be pleased with quality of answers in that very diverse forum.

I've read a lotta good info about VOIP from this ng, including yourself, thanks. But what perplexes me is that I've asked here before about larger PBXes and received little if any help, because most of the people here work with smaller office systems. Then I read the other day that one of the Mitel systems can support up to 700 users, I believe it said. Well, that's the first time I've seen info about a larger PBX system. But it's VOIP, and I'd really like to know about not just larger VOIP, but regular larger PBXes, too. However, from what I've read here, it seems that Mitel has a very competitive system for either.

But then I think I should just talk to people at some of the other community college districts and see what they are using. Also we deal with a large city school district, and their systems are AT&T/Lucent/Avaya, as far as I know. But I get the feeling that as long as the idi^H^H^H managers here can be penny-wise and pound foolish, we will be living with our existing POS PBX and centrex for the forseeable future. Not that it makes much diff to me, since I get paid by the hour, no matter what I do. ;-)

Mitel has both conventional TDM systems as well as new VOIP hybrid systems for virtually any size application, from a small office with only a dozen lines up to a corporate enterprise-sized system with 60,000 lines. What's your pleasure?

Although I cannot name any for you off the top of my head, I know that there are some colleges/universities using MITEL systems. I could probably find out the names of 1 or 2 of them if you'd like.

Mitel has been in the "pbx business" for more than 30 years and while they're not the biggest in the business, their systems compare quite favorably and in many instances are even less expensive than a similar system from someone like Nortel, for example. Right now Mitel is considered by industry analysts to be the "leader" in the new VOIP systems. Again, not the biggest, but is said to be selling more new systems right now than their competitors.

Mitel's 700-line VOIP system is 700 lines with a single main controller. You can cluster multiple main controllers together to make a "virtual pbx" to arrive at as large of a VOIP system as you need. It's no longer about just a single box. By clustering you also spread your risk and eliminate the chance of a single point of failure.

Mitel's VOIP main controllers (both the 3300 and the 200ICP) can also support conventional TDM peripherals, including phones and trunks. With the Mitel system you aren't forced to put all your eggs in one basket.

You might want to visit their web site,

You should be in the predicament I'm in. I'm pretty well experience with AT&T G3i pbx's. Since G3iv10 the switches have been VoIP aware. We've got a G3iV11 yet we don't use VoIP because it would probably tax our network infrastructure (100-Base-T) but I disagree with the assessment.

In addition - even though I've experience they won't assign the maintenance to me. I don't know why.

I would agree with your assertion. The Usenet group discussion format is actually more suitable for do-it-yourselfers than for a designer working on a 500+ extension PBX. If you are charged with a task to design or at least evaluate such expensive piece of equipment, you would have hired a consultant. This way, if the design was done incorrectly, you can (theoretically, at least) demand some reparation that would be covered by the consultants errors and omissions insurance policy (and he better have one before starting the consultant business). OTOH, if you took an advise from a Usenet newsgroup, you are completely on your own. This is not to say that there are no large-scale PBX techs hanging out in this group, quite opposite. It's just unlikely that anyone will be willing to spend hours to answer a detailed question on a very complex system.

I would not call AT&T/Lucent/Avaya "POS PBX" (if POS means what I think it does the way you put it ;-) Their large scale Definity PBX is a rock solid system with plenty techs available to service it (though not cheap), and it is very well suited for educational projects. You can also VoIP-enable it, but I personally don't think you would want to tinker with VoIP in a school. At least not until it becomes a mature technology, which ше is not as yet.

(bellsouth).

This is not easy question - no easy answer. However, you must start with recognizing that "VoIP" does not refer to ONE thing. It's an umbrella term with many subdivisions. First of all, for your specific situation, you need to distinguish between two vastly different applications of VoIP: Trunk-side or Station-side. Or, if you like: WAN-side or LAN-side. Trunk-side means (in general terms) that your lines to the outside world are IP. Today, your lines are analog, thus the trunk cards in your Norstar are LS/DS Analog Trunk Cartridges (in Nortel/Norstar parlance), 4-circuits each. A completely traditional TDM phone system can utilize trunk-side VoIP with specialized (reasonably affordable) equipment. For example, if your company had another office somewhere, you could utilize Norstar systems in each location, tied together seamlessly over your data network, or a VPN/Internet arrangement. In trunk-side VoIP, the only "IP" is the transmission medium/technology between one phone system and another. Your phones are regular Norstar sets - M7208s, 7310s, etc. The user experience is exactly the same as in a non-IP environment.

Station-side VoIP is another matter completely. In this environment, your telephone sets are client IP devices, residing on your LAN just like PCs, printers, etc. You do not have two separate cable plants. You plug your phones into the network, and your phone system exists on the LAN as a "voice server." Your IP phone system makes use of your data network, but it invariably will tie into the "outside world" (PSTN, public switched telephone network) through analog or TDM trunks.

There is an "emerging" technology (or, more specifically, "emerging application") of VoIP that provides the ability to tie a phone system into "internet trunks." Services such as Vonage are providing the means to reach the PSTN via the internet. There are some challenges for the small business with this type of service, but in my opinion it's exactly the direction you should be looking in to find a beneficial VoIP application.

I'll be glad to explain more if you'd like.

jakesnake

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Thanks you for the info. if I could only convince the admins that the Crisco crap isn't the best choice..

If it's your IT people making the selection, you're screwed. Fortunately we were able to get an audience with our IT folks and had Mitel come in and do a head-to-head presentation against Cisco.

For something that's been written up, go out to the Mitel web site and grab the write-up about the CompUSA deal. Mitel went head-to-head w/Cisco again and Cisco lost this one too. Mitel ended up winning the CompUSA contract and put complete Mitel MN3300 VOIP pbx systems in 230 CompUSA stores across the nation and networked the whole thing together. Complete story here:

If you can't find it there let me know and I'll e-mail it to you.

Actually, Cisco may very well be the best choice as convergence become more ubiquitous, both from the standpoint of service providers and end-users. I certainly would argue that their products aren't "crap," for sure. I spent a good part of the last 5 years hating Cisco, because I lost many deals to them. I've sold/installed NEC, Avaya, Nortel/Norstar, Toshiba, Mitel, Samsung, 3Com, and Inter-tel. I was in national sales for many years, then operated an interconnect company, and I got very frustrated watching Cisco win the contracts. The reality is that IT personnel are increasingly cast in positions of influence, as telephony is more and more falling into their domain. IT guys by and large like Cisco. They know the products, the distributors, the tech support, etc. It's hard to convince a "hard-core" Cisco network admin to put a legacy PBX name onto their network. Why should they, especially when Cisco's CallManager/Unity platform is rock solid? They do IP as well as anybody; their phones are well-built; and, most importantly, their near-obsessive emphasis on comprehensive network viability and long term service agreements have proven successful, where 3 years ago I predicted failure for the approach.

The main lesson I've learned is that VoIP is all about the application. The technology itself WORKS. It's rock solid. However, the network environment must be properly engineered, meaning that voice QoS absolutely, positively must be the fundamental principle on which every component is chosen and deployed. Bandwidth alone means squat. It's all about QoS. I've seen applications supporting a single IP phone over a 2.5mb pipe completely fail because of too little attention to QoS.

FWIW, my experience has been that there are many excellent products on the market. Mitel makes a good product, but so do NEC, Nortel, Avaya, and Inter-tel. It's getting very much like PCs and servers now. The technology employed is all very similar. All the major manufacturers do a pretty good job of it.

jakesnake

Cisco's data networking equipment is unquestionably the best available at any price. Unfortunately in most cases Cisco turns out to be the highest price.

Cisco is a very aggressive and highly successful MARKETING company.

Jake, you've hit the nail squarely on the head here. Nearly 100% of the VOIP deployment failures and no doubt a very high percentage of VOIP problems and issues take root in QOS issues (802.1p/Q). One of the reasons for this is the simple fact that not every piece of network equipment even supports 802.1p/Q. Quite frankly, a high number of data networks are a cluster-phuque of equipment and technologies, lashed together with a spit and a promise by "network wannabe's" and "network think-they-ares". The sad fact is a great many businesses rely on networking support from individuals whose technical expertise wouldn't make a pimple on a network professional's backside.

There are a great many folks out there today who could take a truckload of network gear and lash it all together and probably get it to work. However, not very many of these same folks could put that network together

*correctly* and make it work *right*.

Mere possession of a resume with all of one's "Credentials" and industry "certifications" also do not make them an expert. Virtually anyone with an I.Q. just slightly above that of a common house plant can go to a boot camp or cram for and pass practically any of these exams and be awarded the wallpaper. The certificates mean zero.

Having seen several of these products in presentations, I would have to say, in my own opinion, that Nortel, NEC and EADS (Inter-Tel) are, by today's VOIP standards, pretty much a collection of "also-rans" in the industry and playing catch-up from way back in the pack. Again working from my own experiences I would have to say that there are only 3 serious players churning out true commercial class VOIP *systems* today, Mitel, Ayava and Cisco. Any one of these three would make for a good system.

My chief gripe with the CISCO VOIP system, i.e., their Call Manager and Unity voice mail, is that it's all a hodge-podge of PC-based applications running on a proprietary load of Microsoft Windows Server and Exchange Server. By the time you get the whole she-bang all up and running you're going to literally have a server farm just for your phone system. My second gripe is the required Smartnet contracts ($$$) and that maintaining it requires far more time and expertise from support personnel than any of the purported "savings" from eliminating MACS. In the third place any CISCO voip installation is going to amount to a full forklift replacement of your existing phone system. Is that really what you want to do? I sure don't.

Once was the time when your company's "phone system" was just as stable as Jesus and could be DEPENDED UPON to provide reliable service for *at least* 10 years minimum. I think if we look we'll see that in fact many systems kept chugging away for as long as 20 years. How much different are yesterday's phone systems from today's? They still place and take calls, offer multiline support and advanced features. What happened? Technology of course moves forward, but when it does so at the expense of reliability and dependability just to have a more modern-looking instrument with a user-defined "boodley-boodley" ring tone, I think a terrible disservice has been done. Does any of us really want our "business critical" telephone systems to be dependent upon a Microsoft OS? I don't. Presently when the servers go down we can at least still call someone. How are you going to call them when your phones go down too? I can just hear our CEO, "What the hell do you mean "the phones are down too"? Isn't this, in a nutshell, what Cisco's trying to get you to buy into?

Correct, but they -DO- need it now and you cannot just march in there with some off-the-shelf VOIP system, plug it all in and expect it to work and expect the customer to be happy with it. Likely they'll hate it, at least until you replace some of their antiquated hardware (Cisco included) with something that can support 802.1p/q QOS. Of course that's going to cost them some more money, often a lot more money, to replace (or upgrade) etherswitches that were otherwise fine before bringing the phone system onboard. All too often these additional costs to upgrade the infrastructure are not mentioned by would-be VOIP providers. Cisco won't even tell you up-front before signing the contract unless you ask, because they don't want you to know (beforehand) the total cost picture. When it comes to adding ram and replacing network peripherals the story you'll hear is, well those would need to be upgraded no matter whose system you put in. (which is correct, just that Cisco isn't as up-front about it as I think they should be).

By contrast, before Mitel will sell you a converged system they will come in and perform a "network qualification" study and then tell you what has to be done first. And lets be clear on something, Mitel could care less whose network equipment you use, just as long as it's all the same brand.

Which in the grand scheme of things is utterly absurd! Why the hell bother with VOIP at all if you're still going to need a *separate* damned cabling infrastructure to support it? The goal here is to REDUCE the amount of cabling required, not double it.

Well, no it doesn't, but why do VOIP at all if you cannot take advantage of the existing network hardware and infrastructure. My opinion is if you're considering VOIP that you need to do it the right way, all the way, or not at all.

It's likely to take the same or less money to converge your voice & data networks together than it is to double the network hardware and cabling investment. Of course this means you've got to find some network geek who knows how (and here's the real root of the problem, not many do).

Nonsense. It's only "bleeding edge" because it requires opening the book and learning how to do VLAN'ing and packet priority tagging and upgrading some aging hardware to support it. If you don't know how to do this already then you better get the books open or else not plan on doing networks for a living much longer.

Well God forbid that anyone should have to learn how... Mitel sells their SX-200ICP system two ways; one for your "separate" network clientele and one for a converged network. However, you cannot buy the converged product unless you hold advanced certification (by Mitel) on the technology required. One of those requirements happens to be a CCNA, but they can give you a qualification test and waive the CCNA requirement. Take it from someone who took Mitel's ntwk qualification course, having the CCNA would have been a lot easier. The Mitel test was a booger and there was no study guide for it.

I seriously doubt you'll find any system more well-documented than the Mitel MN3300 and SX200ICP product lines. They have a completely separate (and thorough) manual just for networking guidelines.

Gee, lets venture a guess who that would be. Still these certificates only mean that you passed the exam, it doesn't mean that you know how to do anything. Show me someone who can demonstrate that they "know how" and We'll hire them. Show me someone who has the credentials and I'm afraid they'll have to prove themselves, regardless of the litany of sheepskins attesting to their networking prowess. Theory and Application are two completely different disciplines. The combination is great, but without application ability the theory is just that, theory. I'll take the application guru any day.

Anyone who throws together (or already has) a duct tape network of mixed brand equipment is (IMO) a very poor candidate for a converged VOIP system.

A "joke" which in most cases wrongfully assumes that "the network is down" when in fact the network is just fine; it's one of the damned MS-based servers or MS-based applications that is down. Our "network" seldom ever goes down, but hardly a week goes by that we haven't lost at least one server or application. Almost without exception the common denominator is Microsoft. This is 99% of my entire argument against deploying a Cisco Call Manager. The last thing on God's green Earth I want is my mission-critical phone system running on a damned PC and/or with a Microsoft OS. Linux would be an improvement, but we'd still be on a PC and that's just not where I want my phone system, at least not on my watch.

God Save The Queen!

Cisco might be a good choice - a lot depends on what you place emphasis on in the eval.

sometimes it isnt all that important that 1 vendor is the "best" choice for specific issues, because the tin has to work as part of a bigger system - overall compatibility and the system may be as important so long as that piece will do the job.

cisco have 1 or 2 big advantages over any of the other Voip / IPT vendors - they can provide all the LAN and wan plumbing as well, and are likely to have supplied at least some on a typical existing corporate network.

you need to remember that although in theory sticking this all together and making it work is engineering rather than black magic - it isnt simple yet. Different QoS schemes, inconsistent default settings, different protocol sets and incompatible call signalling all make this stuff painful sometimes when you mix multiple vendors.

So using a single vendor may be 1 way to either reduce the risk, or make sure you have 1 target for the follow up lawsuits if it all goes horribly wrong.....

That is one of the better posts I've read about the pitfalls of Cisco VoIP. The Avaya VoIP product runs on top of their already established switch platform and it doesn't run Windows. :)

We've got one G3iV11 in our organization and the boss is buzzing about VoIP in the state. I told him we couldn't use VoIP because our network is nowhere near robust enough and why piss away the CAT-5 infrastructure already in place for the phone system?

That pretty much killed station side VoIP. Of course that doesn't mean that eventually our local loops (yes, we still use loop start!) will end up being replaced by a card that brings everything in via IP. State already has it's own QOS equipped network to do so.

this isnt entirely fair - most corporate data networks (or at least the LANs) were put together before QoS was an issue - so didnt need the complexities.

it is worth remembering that even now the cheapest way to put together just a LAN for IP telephony is to ignore the existing data network and build a separate network from hubs and switches in parallel - a dedicated packet voice network doesnt need QoS (which is where most of the complication and money is needed for a converged network) as there arent any surges of data packet traffic to delay the voice......

Agreed - but a lot of that is because packet voice equipment, and how to glue it into a converged network also carry data is still bleeding edge - not in the sense that it doesnt work, but in that most of the manufacturers dont yet set their kit up for convergence by default, and most needs some manual config changes to make it play correctly.

And - very few manufacturers seem to document the requirements for their equipment completely either.

Again not really fair - all the accreditations i have seen are from a single manufacturer.

so complaining they dont cover the cases where e.g. Avaya kit works over Nortel LAN switches, with a Foundry layer 3 core and Cisco ATM based WAN is asking for more than the piece of paper is intended to say.

the standard support joke is that IP Telephony means that no-one rings to complain about a major phone outage - because they cant.

FWIW in the UK the main telco (BT) is claiming that the public voice network will be IP end to end in around 10 years. Part of this includes giving IP transport as an option all the way to a consumer.

So at that point IP Telephony in companies is probably going to be common as muck.

wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Whew, a ton of knowledge here, folks, and a hell of a well-conceived, balanced veiwpoint. I could spend the afternoon replying to it, but for now I'd just like to make a couple of points, mostly in complete agreement with wdg (sorry my newreader didn't pick your name). For the past several years, I've been charged with the task of selling VoIP, and after scores of sales calls, needs analyses, and presentations, I find myself in the somewhat awkward postion - for a guy with an interconnect/telephony background - of not believing in the technology. Far more often than not, it simply doesn't make sense for the average business, for all the reasons mentioned above. The ROI - when assessed intelligently and HONESTLY - is years (or many months for the small business) out, and even then it's assuming that all goes well with the deployment and usage. You simply cannot figure in all the myriad costs - in both hard and soft dollars - at the outset, and if attempted you'll cut your legs off and lose the deal. I've based my sales career on the same principle that guided my career in higher education - honesty and integrity. I don't mean to sound self-righteous. Indeed, selling on those ideals is as much a matter of practicality and good business as anything, i.e., telephony is built on long-term relationships. It does no good to sell something as critical as telephones on false pretenses. Anyway, enough of that. The bottom line is that VoIP has created a real quandary for me: People want it, but I don't think it's the best choice - usually. However, my competition sells it with the fervor of a television evangelist, and VoIP - when presented in all its glory by a talented, "informed" sales professional - is very attractive. What do I do?

Another point I'd like to make concerns the comments about "also-rans," etc. I have a slightly different take on that, because I actually prefer the "hybrid" approach of some of the legacy manufacturers, and I like the fact that their early forays into IP seem to have been characterized by the same issue/quandary that I mentioned above. For example, NEC makes one hell of a PBX. There are early 2400s out there that have been running solid since

1980 (I know of one in KY that has never needed service). They so much believe in their TDM architecture, that they indeed were slow to embrace IP, and they lost ground by being late to market with a competitive product. However, what they eventually developed was a truly hybrid product, which in my opinion is the only way to go with IP at this point. I still prefer the traditional PBX design with incorporated IP gateways (station side) and proprietary networking (trunk side) over the WAN. In my opinion, trunking convergence can make a lot of sense, and IP stations can prove useful for remote offices and mobile workers. However, at the end of the day, I don't want my phones on the LAN. I think a system that provides the ability to pick and choose makes the most sense. And I'd rather have an IP product made by a telephony company than a TDM product made by a data company.

jakesnake

Maybe you're not really cut out to be in sales in this "new" market. Your competition is very aggressive and more of a professional marketing organization today than the technology company they were yesterday. Your analogy of "Telivision Evangelist" may be a whole lot closer than you realize. When making the sale becomes more important than making it work, you're dealing with the wrong vendor and something's wrong. Right now you're up against the Amway of VOIP system competitors. All that matters to them is sales, nothing else, period.

Today for established users of large TDM phone systems, i.e., those with

1000+ lines, VOIP makes sense only for IP trunking applications and short notice (i.e., business recovery) deployments. These "established" clients already have the dedicated copper infrastructure in place and a blue bazillion bux invested in proprietary instruments. They're NOT READY for VOIP and probably won't be for years. You can sell VOIP to these clients too, but not on the scale of a forklift replacement that the "TV Evangelist" would advocate them buying unless their present system is archaic, i.e., something like an old Dimension 2000. In that case, yes, they're ready. However, if their phone system is that old, one can only imagine what shape their data network is in.

For the client just starting out or moving to new digs or adding a new branch or satellite office, VOIP makes perfect sense almost 100% of the time.

Mitel's VOIP (the 3300) is a perfect fit for an existing Mitel TDM client already with one of the larger SX2000 systems. The MN3300 VOIP product is a hybrid and supports all of the SX2000-Light series TDM cabinets and 90% of the installed TDM instruments (Everything but the old Superset 3 and

4). For smaller Mitel clients with the SX200 EL/ML (TDM) products (i.e., hotel/motel applications) there's the new SX-200_ICP, another VOIP hybrid that supports the full maximum configuration (672 ports), again reusing over 90% of the customer's existing electronics and instruments. Both systems (SX200ICP and MN3300) offer "in-the-skins" voice mail and 100% of the existing set features, yes, even ACD, even on the new VOIP phones. These are but two examples of how to move your phone system to VOIP without throwing the baby out with the bath water. Sounds like NEC is wisely pursuing this same course.

Like NEC, Mitel has also been in the PBX business for more than 20 years building legacy phone systems that, like the Energizer Bunny, just keep going and going. However, unlike NEC, Mitel recognized the need to embrace VOIP as far back as the mid-1990s and their Networked Voice And Data (NeVaDa) product of the era demonstrated their committment to be one of the VOIP pioneers and major players. That committment is demonstrated today in a very competitively priced product that by any measure is a leader in the industry.

Comparing just functionality and feature sets, I'd have to say that Mitel's closest competitor is probably Avaya. It certainly isn't Cisco. The problem is getting the word out and into the customers ears above the deafening drone of the "TV Evangelists". Give me an audience with the decision-makers and I can point out the mistake in listening to the evangelist.

This is where we disagree. More often than not, I think this is precisely NOT how to do IP, because rarely do the ends justify the means, in my experience. Now I realize I've picked one comment out of a pretty comprehensive argument, but I do think we diverge on this point. In real-world terms, it's rare that doing IP "all the way" makes any sense, given the very points you've made about LAN/network viability. However, IP can make sense as a *part* of an overall networked communications arrangement. As I stated somewhere else, IP can be deployed in a hybrid environment to decent effect, e.g., office-to-office trunking and selective IP stations, most notably for small remote offices and telecommuters. With the ubiquity of broadband internet, things like ditributed call centers can make a lot of sense, too. Again, as you pointed out, this won't succeed automatically, but in my opinion the challenges of creating viable VPNs over huge internet pipes (cable/dsl) can more readily be met by run-of-the-mill IT personnel.

jakesnake

That sounds good but it does not address the QoS issue: how to maintain Quality of Service on a local area network!

The switches needed are cheaper (and their cost is shared) than a PBX.

QoS requires that the phone usage somehow gets priority over other trafic. Does your LAN have IPV6?