WAY OT: VOIP classHi, I've been on this train a while, started looking for implementation of VoIP a few years ago. Mid 2008 we are finalyy going to implement it as well.
I can't tell you about callses as I'm on the other side of the big pond but. 1) Make sure your MAN/WAN connections are up to it. - They need to be fast enough (about 80k per simultanious call) - You need some form of quality controll to make sure time critical packets like VoIP and later probably Video etc, are delived in time during heavy traffic - Time for the VoIP etc packets on the line must not me to high (ping times < 100ms) and not change to mutch (jitter < ?%) 2) Make sure your LAN connections are up to it. - You need managed switches that can handle the QoS 802.1p protocol - The switches need to have large enough buffers for 802.1p when you expect lots of VoIP calls. 3) At first I thought I needed VoIP capable hardware from "real" companies like Mitel, 3Com or Philips, Siemens, Alcatel, etc. However, last year I attended a seminar about Open software VoIP sollutions and found out Asterisk with the proper support is stable enough for some universities or towns to totally rely on it. When you wand redundancy by havind a second VoIP server at a second site suddenly Asterisk gets very interesting as most of the "real" companies charge extra licensed for a second server. Also "when you want the supported features a VoIP server has to be used by a lot of people in the company prices can soar when you use a server with licences. I've looked at a hybrid solution because of all the hardware we still have. I then asked if their product supported voicemail boxes for all users and roaming users. Sure they said. I then asked for the price to have ALL users use these features and the price more then doubled. That's the nice thing about open software. If the feature is there it is free for all to use. Product software upgrades can be expensive as well. If you have a SA or something like it on the product that can be expensive as well. When you look at alternatives make sure al least one company is offering Asterisk with support from them. That way you have the support of someone who knows the product and you get all the features and upgrades for free. Support for an Asterisk server is usually A LOT cheaper then on a commercial product as they need only to charge you for their time. I'm not telling you that you should no longer look at commercial products, but if you have at least one Linux machine in you network now then you know Open software can sometimes be the sollution. It's like that with VoIP as well. Have a look at the features it supports. http://www.asterisk.org/ Met vriendelijke groet, Bonno Bloksma hoofd systeembeheer tio hogeschool hotelmanagement en toerisme begijnenhof 8-12 / 5611 el eindhoven t 040 296 28 28 / f 040 237 35 20 [EMAIL PROTECTED] / www.tio.nl ----- Original Message ----- From: Sharyn Schmidt To: [email protected] Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 4:03 PM Subject: [IMail Forum] WAY OT: VOIP class We are being forced to bite the bullet and begin implementation of VoIP, beginning mid 2008. Guess who will be in charge of the implementation and troubleshooting? Yep, that would be me. What do I know about this? Other than how it works in theory, nada and nothing. I'm in the Central Fl area. Can anyone recommend a good class to take that will at least give me a good idea of what I need to learn? Thanks! Sharyn
