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Thanks for your reply, David, Martin. Much appreciated and made me
think about a few things. No, we don't have VoIP currently; we have a plain old Meridian switch. I think we can get cards to extend its capabilities but the whole idea of the staff members using VoIP was to save money and I don't think the handful of short-term potential users warrants this expenditure. I'm not concerned about remote users contacting ordinary desktop phones (yet). I've done that before with a company called voiptalk and an Astlinux box and it worked great (apart from some echo now and again). It would be fine just going remote SIP software to internal SIP software (possibly via a SIP gateway provider or whatever they're called if we need one -- would we need one?). If I go down the DIY Asterisk route, then my users would be given some SIP software on their PC (not Skype!). An advantage to building an Asterisk (or probably Astlinux) server would be that it would prove (or otherwise) the viability of running an Asterisk-like service in our network. This may ease any future migration worries from those above (and from me!) But are there any other advantages -- ie, if we needed a SIP gateway provider, would it work out cheaper than Skype on such a small scale?; would it consume less bandwidth than Skype (this is my main concern)? David Kerr wrote: Skype is great for casual use. But, it uses it's own proprietary protocol and requires Skype at both ends, or you pay for Skype-out service. Skype protocol cannot (easily) be hooked into a Asterisk PBX. There are solutions but they require running the Skype client and hooking in to its API, and I am not sure that they are mission-critical ready.Do you run a VoIP system in your office today? Do you want remote users to contact their colleagues on a telephone at their desk, or is it OK for them to run Skype (or other SIP) client? If you run VoIP today, then setting up remote (travelling) users to use a standards-based SIP client (like X-Lite) and hooking them into your existing VoIP PBX might be a good way to go. If you do not run a VoIP system already and just have a traditional PBX, with direct dial from BT and you want office-bound to use regular telephones, then you need Skype-out like service. You could sign up with any UK VoIP service to give you this. If it is OK for everyone to use SIP-clients on their computers (or SIP phones) then sure you could set up your own VoIP PBX based on asterisk. But do you really want to do that if you are not committed to VoIP in your office already? Mixing VoIP and non-VoIP in the same office is not really practical. You have to keep it up 24/7/365. etc... As an alternative consider a hosted virtual-PBX solution, someone else runs the PBX in their data center, not yours. Take a look at www.pbxes.com for example. David On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 4:55 AM, David Caldwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Hi all, I have a hopefully straightforward question! We have a handful of users on our network who want to use Skype to talk to colleagues back at the office from various international destinations as well as the UK. At what point would it be more economical (financially and bandwidth-wise) to sign up with a SIP provider and build our own VoIP server and set these users up to use our VoIP service rather than Skype? Like all useful technologies, once the cat's out of the bag, other people are going to want to use VoIP as well. I would project about 40 semi-frequent VoIP users after about a year. For bandwidth, I'm guessing it's going to come down to the codec choices and Skype seem to do pretty well with quality vs bandwidth. They're pretty cheap too -- so, is it worth my efforts building a VoIP box at all? What do you guys think? Thoughts and suggestions welcome! Thanks, David. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Caldwell Network Services Canterbury College New Dover Road Canterbury Kent CT1 3AJ +44(0)1227 81 1271 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php _______________________________________________ Astlinux-users mailing list Astlinux-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/astlinux-users Donations to support AstLinux are graciously accepted via PayPal to [EMAIL PROTECTED]. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Caldwell Network Services Canterbury College New Dover Road Canterbury Kent CT1 3AJ +44(0)1227 81 1271 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
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