A very nice solution for a small office (30 users) is Cisco Call Manager Express. It runs on a Cisco router, even their smallest ISR platform, the 1800 series. You can run it on a Cisco 2811, put a PRI interface in it if you need that many PSTN connections (23) or a four port FXO card and connect four POTS lines to it. Your in-office calls will go through the office LAN and whenever someone dials "9" for an outside line they roll over to a POTS line.
The setup is not trivial, but not too much for a giant like Dr. Piwowar. You'll need to think about ensuring that your office LAN has enough bandwidth for the normal data traffic and the new VoIP traffic. One of my colleagues calculated the B/W for our bank branch VoIP at about 51Kbps per call, so 8 concurrent calls would eat up about 409Kbps -- shouldn't be a problem for a 100Mb LAN. The real bite is the handsets. Those things are really expensive and where Cisco et al make their profit. 7960s which are at the low end are $40-$60 a piece while the more capable phones (extra buttons, color display) can run hundreds. -Mike __________________ Michel David Lowe > -----Original Message----- > From: Computer Guys Discussion List [mailto:COMPUTERGUYS- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tom Piwowar > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2008 10:01 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [CGUYS] T1 vs DSL? > > >A phone call is easy in a circuit switched environment (well > >not exactly but you get my point). As long as you can seize a > >circuit it's yours. > > A a 64K data stream would consume less than 1% of a slow Ethernet (10 > Mbps) LAN. So providing good VIOP in house would be no problem. The > capacity problem only happens on the WAN. > > So I'm thinking that a system that uses IP in house with the option of > connecting to either the PSTN or an IP network would be the wisest thing > to shop for today. > > Thanks. This is very helpful. > > > ************************************************************************* > ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** > ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** > ************************************************************************* ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
