i'm working for some friends of mine and i would like to consolidate the 4 T1
lines at their business. before doing this, however, i need to get a good idea
of the traffic profile for the VoIP lines that currently occupy 2 of the T1s.
to consolidate the T1 lines, i was thinking about using trunk with CARPed
firewalls. since the T1s carry mission-critical data on a regular basis, i
cannot disconnect them and experiment at my leisure. i have not yet figured out
how the T1 lines get their public IPs, but i hope it's DHCP (they're through
Ameritech/SBC NW of chicago). the main confusion for me is how to best connect
the lines to the firewalls:
T1 #1 T1 #2 T1 #3 T1 #4
x x x x
| | | |
??????????????????????????
| |
x x
FW #1--FW #2
x x
ideas on what to put in place of the ?s would be great.
two of the T1s are attached to old hardware-based VoIP devices, one is a Merlin
PBX (for voice lines) and the other is an AdTran (for the fax lines). a T1 is
attached to each of these. i plan on measuring the traffic that these two lines
see over a month or so to determine how fully the lines are being used. to
monitor the lines without event, i'll wire a passive ethernet tap on a patch
panel. any recommendations on packages to use to profile the traffic?
cheers,
jake
