will IP PBX's extinct PBX's?

I would expect VoIP phones to plug into the LAN just like new computers. LAN admin has trouble predicting impact on bandwidth but little else ...

The answer is you stop resting on your laurels and LEARN the new technology. If I can do it at age 58 anyone else can do too. All it takes is motivation. The thought of being unemployed at my age is a magnificent motivator.

We talked about this very t>You're absolutly right. The MAC revenue goes in the toilet, no more punch

Actually I for one would be very surprised if there'll be much rethinking. In today's economic environment a great many of the heretofore "sacred" buffalos are having the life squeezed out of them. If the phones are down because the network is down, well that's just one of life's little breaks. Catastrophic weather events of recent weeks have shown us that we do not simply have to have a freakin' telephone. If it's out, it's out and it'll come back all in due course.

As for network outages, I think if you were to examine these you'll find the lion's share of them to be application outages and/or server outages, not general network failures. With today's modern commercial grade networking equipment and a properly engineered network environment, I think you're going to find that "the network" is going to be handing you pretty close to 5-nines reliability. If it isn't, then you need to be reexamining who is doing your network maintenance for you and what equipment they're using.

With all due respect to CISCO, they make some of the finest networking equipment in the world, but there isn't enough money in Bill Gates' bank account to entice me to put (or to recommend putting) any business critical telephone system on a "Wintel" (Windows/Intel) platform (i.e., Cisco). If you want grief with your phone system, let Cisco put it all on a Wintel server farm for you (yes, multiple servers required) and then shut the hell up when you start feeling the grief and paying the consequences along with paying for a Smartnet contract for support.

IMO there are several fairly good design VOIP phones systems out there, but none which are based on Microsoft Windows.

People making the decisions, don't make the decision for technical reasons. Padding a resume and politics make the decision. A lot of the VoIP installs I have seen, have paid over 50 to 75% more for VoIP install and recurring when compared to traditional PBX's and designing a system right. When someone says " I can just stick calls over my existing network with out any changes or bandwidth increases"..... run away. For good calls, you need ~80k per call. Using my WAN costs me ~.07 to .09 a call when I can get LD for under .02 to ..03 nowadays for the medium to large size business.

A certain gov't agency had a rude wakeup call when the nachi worm took down their network and they could no longer use their computers or phones. I got a VoIP system that I am playing around with in the lab but, still got a long way to go to match the dependability of a good pbx or the local LEC/CLEC. By the time you add a bunch of UPS's, E911, QoS monitoring, IDS and firewall stuff, it all adds up. Lotsa hidden costs. Anyone think of asset management as a cost? Yup, it's one of the forgotten. As is having to increase your WAN pipes for more data. I have seen a lot of phones on E-Bay. Cisco 7690's are a lot easier to sell then Lucent 8510T ISDN or similar proprietary phone. ;-)

Scotty

My intertel axxess system with it's windows 2000 based call processor server has been rock solid.

Well, in the place I work, I am the guy responsible for the LAN/WAN (switches, routers, T1 lines for data), doing many of the cat 5 cabling runs, AND programming the phone system.

And I LOVE voip - 75% of moves/adds/changes simply invlove somone moving to a new desk, and they need their extension to follow them. With voip, it's simply a matter of unplugging the phone and bringing it to the new desk and plugging it in.

Now lets take a closer look at what's behind this. I know a bit about the Mitel IP offering and IP communication and frankly what you are saying, while possible, isn't practical.

First, the 5220 is usually deployed to use DHCP to assign an address, VLAN, and identify the call server. This all comes from a specifically configured, but otherwise standard, DHCP server (or it's own internal DHCP server).

Now if you take this phone home, it will get it's DHCP information from the ISP which will not include the call server address or VLAN information. So it will not work. This assumes that you do not have a VPN device at home with a VPN server in the office.

If you do have a VPN device it can provide the DHCP service and information for the phone, but no VLAN (sorry only one VLAN per tunnel). This will work but without any QoS over the internet and the VPN add latency for the encrypt/decrypt. Still I've had this work with " acceptable" results.

On the other hand you can deploy the 5220 with the call server address pre-programmed and the remaining information coming from DHCP. This comes close to what you say is so easy BUT the call server address in the office must be the same as the address from outside the office which is not how networks are done. Internal addressing is normally private IP addresses and Internet has to be a public address. Again with VPN equipment you can overcome this little problem.

Now Mitel does have a product called Teleworker (a separate server) that will combine VPN with IP phones, but while this simplifies things, it does add cost.

Now if you use is smart and has a Linksys are home to keep all the bad guys on the internet one of his home LAN. Then the phone just won't work until you reconfigure the Linksys to forward all UDP traffic to the phone.

Now you might think I'm against the Mitel VoIP solutions, but actually I'm not. I think Mitel has the best one out there so far. It's only shortfall is a not so good remote trunk (PSTN) gateway solution (Cisco wins that one part). This is why when we were picking a VoIP PBX solution to add to our product line we went with Mitel (and Nortel BCM in the small market). I just hate it when people say "Oh it so easy". It's not, but it will get there, and it will take over.

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Well, that's not as good an excuse as 'I couldn't answer the phone because my cell phone was in a Dead Zone.' There are a lot more dead zones than there are downed networks.

Did you all read about the fine the Calif. PUC slapped on SBC for violating the mandatory grace period for cell phone users? Somethiong like $12 million.

We are using the Mitel Teleworker product with very good results. Perhaps I oversimplified. Initial set up is a little involved, but once done it provides 100% functionality of your multiline office telephone at home. Yes, VPN required...

The goal was to allow telecommuting with the full feature set of the office multiline business telephone and that goal was met, in Spades. All line key functionality including ACD (including supervisor) & voice mail. The best anyone had prior to this was featureless OPX which at best was a single analog line with comparatively quite expensive recurring monthly charges.

With the Mitel Teleworker server (which by the way -Does Not- run on MS Windows) the only recurring monthly charge is for the home DSL line (or cable modem service), which is being paid for by the employee and you can use it from literally anywhere you have broadband access. (i.e., from your hotel room)

Mitel also offers their "Your Assistant Pro" (soft phone) which runs on your laptop (or PC). It achieves even more advanced "Home-Office" integration (IMO) than the Teleworker does and (vers 2.x) works standalone without requiring a server. Their new release 3.x of this product (sadly, IMO) does require a Win2K server, but brings with it a lot more bells & whistles. At least this is an adjunct application and the core phone system isn't running on Windows.

I've used automatic set relocation on SL1s since 1992, just not as seemless as VoIP

Yes.

If you want to look at the computer industry for an analogy, the phone vendors want to be a Dell, HP, or maybe a Compaq. Not a DEC, Data General, Prime, Wang, etc...

They may be killing off some of their VARs but if the alternative is for them to go out of business, what other choice do they have?

I was around in the 80s when mini-computers ruled. Of the major player of the time I think HP is the only one left. And you have to wonder if the reason they survived is because their mini computer base was small enough that they were able to jump into PCs without the mini computer division charting the path. Yes I know IBM was around in mini computers then but most of those systems only got installed as a part of a division of a larger company or a larger company forcing them on their "agents".

Just some thoughts.

I'm not directing this at anyone on this list but...

As a computer systems guy working with small businesses it has always APPEARED to me that the phone system VARs intentionally do the wiring in ways that require large fees for MAC. At least it looks that way from where I sit.

And this is precisely the technology I was talking about. Mitel's Teleworker, which yes, requires a host server, and yes, also requires VPN and a little configuration work on the home router. However, you only set it up once, and once done, it's done. By the way, Mitel's Teleworker host does -not- run on a Microsoft Windows platform. It uses Linux and can be installed on virtually anything you have available, even a Pentium-II.

It's getting easier literally with each passing day.

For one thing, the PSTN issue has been solved. Mitel's new "LIM" (line interface module) plugs into the back of the (also new) 5220DM instrument and provides a standard RJ-11 jack where you can connect a conventional POTS line. It has two modes of operation, depending upon how you initially configure the phone. In one mode the POTS line is always available as one of the line keys and can be manually selected at any time at the user's whim. The second mode of configuration is for the POTS line to only be available for use when the set loses communication with its IP host.

As for the "small market" I have to ask why you would choose the Nortel BCM over the Mitel SX200_ICP CX (or MX)? The "CX" is marketed in the US exclusively by the Sprint Products Group (SPG) as the "Sprint i4" and is in every way imaginable a complete "office in a box". It includes a built-in 16-port POE layer-2 Etherswitch, Internet gateway with a firewall and embedded voice mail including auto-attendant. It supports 40 IP stations and includes 6 LS/Class trunks (expandable to 12) and 4 conventional analog lines (expandable to 8) for fax machines, modems & etc. ancillary devices. With the addition of software options it can do IP trunking (24 IP trunks max) and provide T1 trunking support. About the only thing it cannot do (yet?) is route outbound calls over the Internet. For the small market, this one's a no-brainer.

Nowadays we have to be careful anytime we say this brand or that brand cannot do something. VOIP technology (and the underlying hardware) is advancing literally by the hour. I honestly do not think there's any question that Mitel is way out in front of the pack in this race. The biggest thing Cisco has going for them is a huge marketing organization and an almost limitless budget for advertising. Never forget Ron Popeil and his stupid little "pocket fisherman". It would not surprise me at all to see one or more Cisco ads running during the Superbowl.

Remember too the old saying, "if it won't run, chrome it". The best advertising campaign possible won't make up for the fact that yours is not the better mousetrap.

Me too. That's why I do all the MAC's to our PBX now. We had to switch vendors to do that - the old one said it would void our service contract if we did any of it ourselves. So we said "ok, goodbye..."