Buisness VOIP

[Mavykins]

Hi

Does anyone have experience with setting up buiness VOIP services, basically im looking to convert all my companies phones to IP phones, and start using VOIP due to we need far more telephone lines than we have.

I have been looking around and found the linksys SPA9000 and a linksys spa400 which allows me to convert 4 standard PSTN lines into VOIP (we have 2 PSTN lines), and allows me to add VOIP accounts aswell, also ive been trying to find a decent VOIP provider which would allow me to have unlimited voip calls, and allows to me to have multiple incoming and outgoing calls using one account.

Does anyone have any experince with this or can give me a few pointers?

[kandy]

Your going to have alot of fun :)

Snom/Aastra are the best of the hardware phone bunch, Ciscos are pretty good to but bloody expensive. I've heard fairly good things about the Linksys kit but haven't got round to trying any yet.

With regards to VoIP trunks, I've been running our office on them for the past 18months. First 4 months was hell, until I switched to a different provider. I would heavily recommened Gamma Telecom or Telappliant (www.voiptalk.org) for your SIP trunks. I run ours over a normal DSL, IPMAX I have used as well just make sure you have a good understanding of its quirks. With what you have said (unlimited calls etc.) go for voiptalk.org.

Also your normally limited on bandwidth, so codec selection is important. g.729 uses around ~32kbps (8kbps BR), so you can get around 7/8 simultaneous calls down a DSL if your lucky. My experience has shown 5 is a safe number on a standard 256k upload.

Also would highly recommend asterisk. Failing that, Trixbox, to run your PBX.

[__OpenGL__]

Everything Kandy said. Asterisk rocks.

[Cabe]

Avoid Polycom phones like immigrant avoiding HM Customs.

[RTO]

Hehe Cabe. The IP300 are fine for 'grunt' phones :p The IP600's are much nicer :)

Mav: If you want to be free of all the hassle, I can recommend VoxHub (http://www.voxhub.com) for a managed service. They run a nice control panel on top of Asterisk and you just need a DSL line and your phones (which they can supply you with).

[kandy]

Polycoms are the scum of the earth :P

You can't program the ****ing keys to send a DTMF sequence, like *1. Only a single digit!!!!

Also getting them to autoconfigure via DHCP is a nightmare, while its perfectly possible the hash job they have made of the XML style config files is enough to make you want to pull your hair out.

Hopefully thats changed now, I ditched polycom when I stumbled across the above. Saying that they did have excellent sound quality however. My experience of this was on the IP300 and 600 about 12 months ago, cant remember the firmware version.

The ninja star conference/loudspeaker phones are ace tho.

Really test everything thoroughly before you deploy. VoIP is a lot of fun, but if you've got people screaming at you because its not working it can really ruin your week.

[Mavykins]

Asterisk looks like a good idea, is it easy to setup, and what sort of hardware would you recommend, i need to have the ability to attach 2 phones to it, i do have a spare poweredge 650 lying around.

[kandy]

For 2 phones you could use an absolute dog of a machine. For that number of handsets tho you might want to follow RTO's suggestion of hosted PBX, generally not much point in deploying a PBX unless there are 5+ phones.

It would however be cheaper to deploy a PBX than hosted if you already have the hardware.

[Mavykins]

sorry what i meant to say was attach 2 analog phone lines to it, i need about 6 telephones in total

[kandy]

If your not going to use VoIP for your external telephone lines, then you will need a card to connect the lines to like a 4 port Sangoma/Rhino etc.

Personally I would go with VoIP over DSL, it works if setup properly.