Let me expand on the bandwidth point HTH made and maybe shed light on your requirements....
A 100baseT switched (no hubs) network has a lot of bandwidth when you think in terms of VoIP. The uLaw stream (uncompressed) from an IP500 phone to the Asterisk box is not going to take more than 80K of bandwith from the bandwidth pool. That means 60 phones ALL in a single call would only be using around 5 megs of throughput. At that point packet scheduling becomes far more important than bandwidth. Gigabit is nice but the value of QoS in comparison is very evident. If cost becomes a driving factor, you may want to focus on upgrading port count and remain at 100baseT instead of going to Gigabit. A properly configured 100baseT network with good QoS rules will yield great performance over an unregulated 100baseT network. Do you know your real traffic needs? I would check how much traffic is via user download, www browsing, streaming, email, etc, etc... You may find that some simple rules save you quite a bit of cash. Just a thought and alternative... Gigabit is also very tempting so that whole spiel may have been for not. 8) Also, pay heed to the PoE stuff you are hearing about. I may be wrong but I am pretty sure you want to be careful what you connect to a PoE port. Otherwise you wind up with fried PoE injectors and end devices. I believe PoE ports would only be used for a PoE phone in essence. Just as a reminder and warning. Cheers, Wiley -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Colin Anderson Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2005 8:47 AM To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion' Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Systems Admin; Telecom Newbie - What do I ne ed? >But currently, I only have one ethernet jack per office. Routing >another 60 or so ports would add a very substantial expense in both >cabling and backbone expansion (what category ethernet is required, >BTW?). Most decent phones have an ethernet passthrough (2 port) so you can plug in your PC. As long as your LAN is decent (Cat5 100baseT switched) the overhead using VoIP is negligible. I have used the 3Com NJ wall jacks with good success: http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/detail.jsp?tab=features&pathtype=purc hase &sku=3CNJ90 It's basically a 4 port switch that you replace your wall jack with. I used the NJ200, it allows you to set priority per port, although I think they are discontinued now. In combination with a 3Com power over Ethernet injector, I was able to expand a 24 port LAN to a 96 port LAN with a per-port cost of $62 Cdn. And, 24 ports of those 96 are PoE, so I can plug my phones right in to port 1 and they power up, no external power supply needed. hth _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users