Advice for a new VoIP Setup

Dear all,

I am new to the VoIP bandwagon and am extremely confused by the options available in the VoIP market. I have a few fundamental questions about the working and installation of a full fledged VoIP solution.

The Environment: We are a small-mid sized business with about 100 employees. We are relocating our office in about a year to a newly constructed building. The new building will have a new network infrastructure built from scratch. Plans are still being discussed and any customizations can be made. We would be having a separate server room, a gigabit ethernet backbone, WiFi connectivity, T3 line and rest of the works.

Requirements: Every employee should have a IP hard-phone in his/her desk Soft Phone options should also be present for remote users (hardly 10 -

15 of them)

Questions:

1) How exactly does VoIP work? Do I provide the connection between my VoIP network and the local exchange? Or, Do I just route the voice traffic to a VoIP provider through my T3 line and pay somebody to take care of the connection from IP to PSTN?

2) Who are the most common vendors and what solutions do they offer which could match my requirements?

3) What would be the cost ( a ballpark figure) ?

4) What hardware would I be required to buy?

5) What level of technical expertise is required from the compay?

Thanks in advance,

J
Reply to
jislord
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Either one, as you prefer. Or a mix of both.

miguel

Reply to
Miguel Cruz

Excellent time to be considering a VOIP system! Plan on individual VOIP telephones, depending on vendor, model, features and quality, to cost in the ballpark of $100 to $500 apiece. Multiply that by 100 phones, assuming

1 for each employee, and you can get some idea where this is headed. The main controller, again depending on vendor, features and quality, will command another $5000 to $30,000.

Upstream connectivity to the PSTN is something I don't personally think I would trust to just anyone. We're talking about your *business* here, so I'd tend to lean toward one of the majors, i.e., one of the regional Bell operating companies or MCI or Sprint.

A perfect time to do VOIP!

Plan on establishing at least 2 VLANS and put your phone system on a separate VLAN with 802.1p/q QOS (Quality Of Service) and priority VLAN tagging. When choosing your Etherswitches, make sure they provide VLAN support and Power-Over-Ethernet (POE) to run the phones. All VOIP phones require power, hence all 4 pairs of the Cat-5/6 Ethernet cable will be needed.

When cabling, plan on separate cabling for any printers. You can run your Office PC off the 2-port switch built into the VOIP phone, but they do not recommend connecting printers (or hubs) to these ports.

If the employees need "display" phones, i.e., callerID + multiple line capabilities, multiple line keys, speedcall buttons, etc., then we've eliminated most of the low-end phones.

Yes, normally - especially if you're concerned about dependability

You could do this too, tho I wouldn't - at least not yet. I don't think this service is yet mature enough to trust my business phones to it.

My personal recommendation would be a MITEL SX200_ICP "Premier Bundle". Great feature set, IMO.

Probably in the ballpark of $50,000. The phones themselves will be your single biggest expense. I'd guess a Mitel SX200-ICP Premier equipped with

100 IP user licenses, 100 voice mail licenses would go somewhere in the ballpark of $18~20,000 plus the phones. Figure $100 apiece for low-end, non-display (Superset 5207) single line phones, $200 apiece for a display model (Superset 5215) with 7 line buttons and $300 apiece for their high end, 14-line model (Superset 5220) (and these are just wild guesses). You'll want at least the mid-priced phone for its ability to allow connecting a PC to the back of the phone, thus allowing for only 1 Ethernet cable to each office or workstation.

Actually nothing. Mitel has leasing plans available that make good business sense, plus the lease cost is tax-deductible.

You'll want to go with a major brand with an established nationwide network of VARs and dealers. This means systems from one of the big 5, in alphabetical order; AVAYA, CISCO, MITEL, NEC, NORTEL. You certainly can also purchase a cheapie from any one of a half-dozen other manufacturers, tho I sure wouldn't if the success of my business depended upon the reliability/dependability of the phone system.

On a related note I would personally avoid the CISCO phone system, mainly because I've seen it, used it amd hated it. CISCO's IP phone system (Call Manager) is based upon a cluster of Microsoft Windows-based servers, with all of the usual security problems, patches and reboots associated therewith. System administration (routine adds, moves & changes, even simple user name changes) are cumbersome. True, Cisco also has a smaller "Call Manager Express" which they claim will handle "up to" 100 lines, but with your stated needs you'd be maxed-out on capacity the day you installed it. Cisco would be a good choice for your DATA network but I think you'll see best bang for your buck with a MITEL phone system.

Your softphone requirements also would be a good fit for a MITEL system. Either or both their YA-PRO and/or TELEWORKER systems will address this need. MITEL also has some WI-FI phones. Just beware that VOIP over WI-FI can quickly flood the WI-FI bandwidth once you start getting a few calls in progress. I'd plan my WI-FI system with the intent of having no more than 6~8 concurrent wireless phone users per access point.

Reply to
Mitel Lurker <wdg

You can also go in for Asterisk IPPBX. It has more features but require tech skill and support to operate.

appan kh

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Reply to
appankh

You'll certainly want that. It can be provided by a third party vendor, or you can bring in suitable PSTN lines (probably a PRI, in your case) and install your own gateway. Most IP PBX's have this capability.

I would recommend the latter approach, unless you can arrange for a dedicated IP connection between you and the vendor's gateway. Once your traffic hits the public Internet, it is at the mercy of network conditions there, which can lead to voice quality issues. This is rare, but it's something to think about.

All of the major PBX vendors offer IP functionality now, though they are extremely proud of it, and charge accordingly. Asterisk is a very viable option and you should give it serious consideration.

Excluding the cost of suitable LAN hardware (more on that below)...

Mainstream VOIP PBX's, licenses, phones, POE switches, etc. will probably run between $40,000 - $100,000 for that environment.

I don't believe that you can get an IP telephone that's suitable for the business environment for under $150, but that's a judgement call. Using that standard, and selecting Asterisk (and a suitable server on which to run it) you could easily have what you need for under $20,000.

No matter which route you go, you'll need LAN hardware that supports QoS. You'll probably want POE switches that are compatible with the phones you plan to use, but that's not a necessity, just very nice to have.

And of course your actual telephony hardware.

That depends entirely on the system you decide on. If you roll your own with Linux and Asterisk, you will definitely need moderate Linux admin skills and a working knowledge of Asterisk (which doesn't come easily).

On the other hand, there are "canned" versions of Asterisk that install the entire OS and software from a CD, something any Windows admin can do. From there, it's merely a matter of learning the functionality of the vendor's system and admin tools.

Reply to
John Nelson

I like the latter. From what I've seen it just doesn't make sense to mess with PSTN interconnects. However I've not found VoIP providers who support encryption. That means your conversations are naked over the link to your VoIP provider. (With the amount of US gov't tapping that happens maybe it doesn't matter.)

I usually start here.

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I've been looking at VoIP providers again recently. I've found prices in the $0.013/minute range, $0.029-0.039/minute for toll-free incoming. Lines are $2-5/month.

You *could* get away with just dropping SIP phones on your network and having them connect directly to your VoIP provider. You'll probably want something local though. There are businesses that specialize in such systems. I run some Asterisk boxes but not for situations like this.

--kyler

Reply to
Kyler Laird

Since others have answered question one, I woul like to add my two cents into a couple of other items here.

I would strongly look at a Shortel system. They are not the biggest, but are one of the longest players in the VOIP PBX market and have basically the easiest to use, easiet to administer, and most distributed system in the commercial market.

They are almost always chosen (over 85% of the time) for implementation when they are seriously looked at in your list of products.

The ease of management, and the ease at which your users can use the advanced features make it the best choice most of the time.

I used to work with it in is version 1 and 2 variations, and have been with another company that recently implemented it, and I absolutely love the product. You get a lot of extra reliability and redundancy without all of the extra expense.

Figure approx $1000 per user including implimentation and first year's maintanance. It seems to average arround there, but can be less or more depending on requirements.

For shoretel, just the phones, a W2K or Win2003 server for voice mail, and the appropriate quantity of switches. 1 switch can handle up to 24 analog lines, or 120 IP phones, but come in smaller capacities as well. You don't have to have a switch at each office, but it increases the reliability should your wan links go down.

For this system, very little. It is very easy to set up (can be set up on a table using a laptop), and all of the administation and configuration is web based. You will want an expert at getting data prioritization initially, but you should get that with any VOIP install just to avoid problems. Once the wan is configured, though, most shops do all of their system administration, including ACD, Voice Mail, and adds/moves/changes in-house.

BTW, I have no ties to the company, just a big fan of their product.

Reply to
Bytemaster

Dear Friend, Hi, my name is Sam and I'm an IT consultant. I'm convinced that

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is the best solution. Either you become a Retailer Customer or open your mind and go for an Agency.

Please do feel FREE to contact me on snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com for further questios you may have.

Kind Regards,

Sam

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Reply to
ubifone

Does "open your mind" equate to "lower your personal standards and become a spammer" in some parlance I'm not familiar with?

miguel

Reply to
Miguel Cruz

Don't feed the troll..!

Ivor

Reply to
Ivor Jones

He might not have realized that folks were on to him.

Why is it every ethically-challenged business thinks they can spam discussion groups and have people politely wade through the trash?

-wolfgang

Reply to
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht

I'm a technician that has been installing / servicing Mitel systems since 86. SX2000 (E stream - 0k, that just impresses me.)

Although you could get a 200ICP for less, I'd recommend the 3300 if only for the beauty of the administrator interface. IMHO, less of a learning curve than the

200ICP but has more power.

I frequently work with customers to train them to make their own changes and would far rather train them on the 3300. The help file system is excellent. If you'd rather be self maintaining, I'd recommend the 3300.

Then with Mitel, (either system) you also get the ability to have YA Pro which is software that can do some amazing things with your desk phone or can act as a softphone for your PC/laptop.

With an add on product mitel calls the "teleworker" you can take a deskphone home to run off of your broadband internet. Bear in mind that the quality of the phone call is dependant on your broadband provider (no matter what phone system you choose, Avaya, Nortel, Cisco, etc) we've had some very good luck with it. We have one installation that has a 3300 with a Teleworker server that has

50+ phones at their main office and 10 remote offices with 5 to 10 phones each all running off of the main office PBX through SBC's public internet service. Works quite well. I believe that it's also quite possible to run remote phones through the public internet without having to purchase the teleworker solution. You'd have to do a couple of things to set up the network and activate the jitter buffer on the phone but if you just wanted to try a remote phone without the cost, it should work just fine.

I've also installed Cisco Call Manager and worked on some other non-Mitel products, but the Mitel 3300 is hands down my favorite.

Dry Aquaman

BTW: I just got to play with the new 5235 phone just this morning. Great Phone! Be sure to check this one out!

Reply to
dry_aquaman

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