On Oct 29, 2008, at 9:19 AM, Bill Michaelson wrote: > I'm wondering how prevalent the practice of physically segregating > voice and data networks is in the Real World. > > What are the factors that typically lead to such a decision? > DIscussions of pros and cons are most welcome by me. > > Experiences, anybody?
In almost all cases it is much better to have two seperate networks. This may be impractical in some smaller installs, but in any office setting we always do this. The only reason I can think of not to is to eliminate the cost of the second cable. In the overall scheme though this is really a minimal cost compared to dealing with issues that may arise over having a fully integrated network. We also only install managed switches and do have seperate vlans. The vlans may be either port based or tagged. In the last five years of doing VOIP installs, we have only had one customer the refused to add the second cable, and they were also the most unhappy. They also demanded the lowest cost phone option (IP301) and a Snom for an operator console. It all worked, just not very well, and ultimately they relaced it all. I n the real world, there usually are very inexperienced people using and managing the network. What is trivial in the data side becomes critical on the voice side and since most networks are run by the data guys, having it as seperate as possible really helps keep it all working well. One of the not so obvious issues is when the data guys are having a problem and go around rebooting things, dropping phone calls. On this list we tend to only think about the voice side, just keep in mind any data operations which are also going on. _______________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
