RE: Voice over ip

[Kurt Buff]

Title: Message

My pleasure.   Some other thoughts...   If you are looking to add a VOIP gateway to a currently existing phone system, the Altigen and Artisoft systems, and probably the 3Com and Cisco systems, are not the best bet. I don't know what would be your best bet either, although I'm sure you can find something.   OTOH, if you are looking to get a new or replacement phone system that has VOIP capability, I'm sure that any of the four I mentioned will do the trick. I include as a new system one that is destined for a remote office that you want to tie to other offices.   I saw someone mention Nortel's product, and its scalability. I know nothing about Nortel's product, but scalability is definitely an issue for some people.   With regard to that, I would still prefer the Altigen product, if you are starting small and growing large. If you are putting together an installation for anywhere up to about 200 people, any of the four I mentioned will do it, with a single server in your rack. Once you reach approximately that size, you'll be talking about multiple boxes most likely. Altigen has some really nice features for tying together those multiple boxes, and for tying together multiple offices that each have their own boxes. Artisoft isn't as nice for that, and you'll have to ask your Cisco and 3Com reps how well they scale, and in what manner, but I don't believe that they will do quite as well, unless their offerings have changed recently.   Both the Altigen and Artisoft products require a passive backplane system (with a Single Board Computer installed in it) for systems over about 20 or 30 people, and I'd make really, truly sure that whoever puts that system together knows what they are doing. If you are going to support more than that minimum number of users, this is not something that you can just grab a Compaq, Dell or other major server manufacturer for.   OTOH, a system using a PCI-based passive backplane system is really kinda cool, and very comparable in price to a good server from one of the major server manufacturers.   HTH,   Kurt    -----Original Message----- From: Chris Bodnar [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 13:24 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Voice over ip Thanks Kurt. That was exactly the type of information I was looking for.       Chris Bodnar The Lehigh Group 610-966-9702 X:134   -----Original Message----- From: Kurt Buff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 3:27 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Voice over ip   I have used (read, used in production and administered from the ground up) two different products that have VOIP capability, and have trained on a third.   The Altiserv package from Altigen is my favorite, and is well worth investigating - I'd purchase it before anything else. The Televantage package from Artisoft is OK, and worth putting into the mix as a comparison. The 3com product is interesting, but I don't have enough experience I've seen the Cisco product, but not recently, although it also looked interesting.   The first two, from Altigen and Artisoft, allow you to place standard analog phones on the desktop, and centralize the VOIP in the server, which incidentally both work well under Win2K. They also have a multitude of other features which make office automation easier.   The other two require you (at my last experience with them) to have proprietary phones, which were much more expensive. This may have changed for either or both of Cisco and 3Com products, however, as I have not seen them in a while.   Kurt   http://www.sunbelt-software.com/ntsysadmin_list_charter.htm