On Thu, 2006-07-27 at 11:51 -0400, Michael Richardson wrote: > John> One of the major selling features of VoIP is convergence. If > John> you are running parallel networks you are giving up one of the > John> major selling points. > > I agree. That's why I would hesistate to install a new network, when > at a similar price, you can fix the existing network. > > The catch is that you need phones that can do VLANs: to avoid as > many cable runs as possible, you need to plug the desktop PCs into the > phones. Oops, back to needing the really expensive phones.
What phones are you using? Granstream, Linksys, Polycom all support both VLAN (802.1Q) and Layer 3 QOS. The point I'm driving at here is reusing the CAT3 network is not only more problematic but its also not any less expensive than fixing the CAT5 LAN. As a bonus the customer also benefits from having their LAN fixed which is something they probably need done anyhow. Why spend more money retrofitting the CAT3 (which will still have issues) when you could spend less upgrading the CAT5 and solve not only the VoIP issues but their general LAN issues as well? What am I missing here? John
